Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 1/Chapter 7
Chapter VII
THE HEIAN EPOCH (Continued)
(End of the Eighth to the Middle of the Twelfth Century)
IT was in this epoch that Japanese civilisation assumed many of the external features so much and so justly admired by foreigners in modern times. The nation's profound appreciation of natural beauties asserted itself in the embellishment of the new capital, though the prim mathematical regularity of the city's Chinese plan might well have deterred any exercise of Japanese taste, which abhors stiffness and formality. Along the sides of the streets willows and cherries were planted. Limpid streams flowed from green hills that held the city in their embrace. Every mansion had its park, and in every park the four seasons found well-devised opportunities for the display of their special charms. From temples whose colossal roofs looked down upon the dwellings of their parishioners, the sweet and sonorous voices of mighty bells tolled the hours, and the sound of chaunted litanies summoned people to bow before altars resplendent with gold and silver. Each month brought an opportunity for the city to make holiday. Sometimes people flocked to watch the spring sun rise above the cherry-blossoms at Sagano; sometimes they went to see autumn moonlight bathe the maples by the Oi-gawa. Sometimes they lavished great sums on brilliant festivals in honour of the numerous deities, whose places of worship had now become comparatively magnificent in architectural proportions and interior decoration. Many of the graces that distinguished all phases of Japanese mediæval life and all branches of Japanese mediæval art were still wanting, or only present in embryo, the models and fashions imported wholesale from China not having yet been purged of their formal conventionalism. But the nation had turned its back finally on everything rude and archaic, and taken a long stride toward the heights of refinement it ultimately reached.
Architectural designs were obtained in the main from China. During the Nara epoch the construction of temples had chiefly occupied attention, but in the Heian era the palaces of the sovereign and the mansions of ministers and nobles were built on a scale of unprecedented grandeur. It is true that all the structures of the time had the defect of a box-like appearance. Massive, towering roofs, which impart an air of stateliness even to a wooden building and yet, by their graceful curves, avoid any suggestion of ponderosity, were still confined to Buddhist edifices. The architect of private dwellings attached more importance to satin-surfaced boards and careful joinery than to any appearance of strength or solidity. Spaciousness and elegance, however, were not altogether wanting. The main gate of the Palace was flanked on either side by guard-houses having a forest of pagoda-like minarets, which served as watch-towers, and there stood on its east and west, inside, two buildings, where officials assembled before proceeding to the place of audience, which consisted of twelve halls, symmetrically disposed and each having its own status. Beyond these there was the "hall of pleasure and plenty," where social entertainments were held; the "hall of the word of truth" for rites of worship; the "hall of military virtue" for soldierly exercises; the "hall of central tranquillisation" for venerating the spirits of the imperial ancestors; and, finally, the residence of the sovereign, comprising sixteen halls and five galleries.[1] At the entrance to the principal of these sixteen halls—the Shishinden or "purple hall of the north star"—there were planted a cherry-tree and an orange-tree, the "guardian cherry of the left" and the "guardian orange of the right." The floor of all these edifices was raised some six feet above the ground, and was reached by flights of wooden steps placed at frequent intervals.
The general plan excepted, there was little to distinguish the Imperial Palace from the mansion of a great nobleman or minister of State. The latter consisted of a principal hall, where the master of the house lived, ate, and slept—there being no practically recognised distinctions of dining-room, sitting-room and bedroom,—and of three suites of chambers, disposed on the north, the east, and the west of the principal hall. In the northern suite the lady of the house dwelt,[2] the eastern and western suites being allotted to the other members of the family. It was essential that no room should face the north, lest supernal influences of malign tendency should pervade the household. Corridors joined the principal hall to the subordinate edifices, for as yet the idea had not been conceived of having more than one chamber under the same roof.
In front of this row of linked buildings a garden was laid out. Much care and sometimes large sums of money were lavished on its construction. But the general plan was almost uniform. Little of the great variety of landscape, breadth of design, and subtlety of arrangement that ultimately distinguished Japanese parks could be seen in the gardens of the Heian epoch. Any one who has made a study of Chinese paintings must have recognised that they fall into one of two broad categories, literary pictures and artistic pictures. The former are to the latter what the stiff formality of the square ideograph is to the graceful softness of the cursive script. In the literary picture, the rocks assume fantastic shapes; the cliffs marshal themselves in strange, unnatural phalanxes; the trees, gnarled and distorted, grow in perplexing places, and the whole scene suggests rigid irregularity and conventional quaintness. Something of that was visible in the gardens of the Heian time. The general design had only one orthodox type. A lake, not ungracefully shaped, occupied the centre, surrounding an artificial island to which wooden bridges gave access. Trees of various kinds, notably pines, trained with infinite patience into strange curves of stem and wayward disposition of branch, overhung the lake, presenting strong contrasts of foliage. A waterfall, or the semblance of one if the reality could not be achieved, fed the lake from the south, and on its eastern and western shores, respectively, stood an "angling grotto" and a "hermitage of spring waters," whither the family and their friends repaired on summer evenings, gaining access to these buildings by corridors which formed the boundaries of the garden and were recessed at intervals by waiting-rooms for domestics and guards. In the most orthodox park a limpid stream flowed, with ribbon-like windings, from the row of buildings to the eastern and western sides of the lake, and was spanned here and there by bridges of varied form. Round the margin of the lake and at the feet of the "angling grotto" lay rocks of many hues, beaten into fantastic shapes by centuries of collision with rushing waters. The arrangement of these rocks did not yet suggest the complete concealment of art which was attained in later ages. Although the great painter, Kose no Kanaoka (850-890), whose perception of the glories of decorative art was almost a revelation, devoted his genius to the planning of parks and rockeries, his designs did not break away altogether from the hard stiff style of the Chinese horticulturists, nor give much promise of the delightfully natural originality that distinguished the work of his successors in subsequent eras. Nevertheless he certainly showed his countrymen that the Chinese "garden of the sacred fountain" (shinsen-yen), which they had hitherto regarded as an inviolable model, might be replaced by other conceptions, and within the two centuries immediately following his death, Kyōtō was enriched with a number of detached palaces and noblemen's villas sufficiently grand and beautiful to be recorded in the pages of history. Of these the most famous was the "tiled hall" (Kawara-in) of the Minamoto chief, Tōru; so famous, indeed, that its owner received the pseudonym of the "tyled first-minister" (Kawara-no-Sadaijin). This villa has a special interest because its park showed the first definite attempt to reproduce in miniature one of the country's most celebrated scenic gems, the "salt-shore" (shio-hama) of the province of Mutsu. Fidelity of imitation was carried to the extent of boiling down eight hundred gallons of sea-water daily, and putting the salt into the park lake so that the traces of its water might be realistically briny. Kyōtō had no less than ten "detached palaces" by the beginning of the twelfth century, and on days of festival their western gates were thrown open for the admission of all visitors without distinction of rank. But it did not occur to any annalist or writer of the era to pen detailed descriptions of these buildings or their surroundings. All that can be certainly affirmed is that nature in her normal aspects began at this time to be taken as the best guide by planners of parks and gardens.
The area occupied by the buildings and the park was enclosed, in the case of a princely or noble mansion, by a high earthen wall having a fosse at its foot; but people of inferior rank had to be content with a wooden fence. Social status influenced the form of the principal entrance-gate also. The "four-footed gate," that is to say, a two-leaved gate having a roof supported by four pillars, was the most aristocratic; a "two-footed" gate, still with two leaves, came next in order of respectability, and a postern was the humblest of all.
The interior arrangement and furniture of an aristocrat's mansion showed much refinement in this era, though the architect suffered himself to be trammelled by rules which he afterwards violated with advantage. The principal hall—distinguished externally from the minor edifices by having a four-faced roof without gables, whereas they had roofs of only two faces with gables at the ends—was usually of the same dimensions, 42 feet square. Its centre was occupied by a "parent chamber," 30 feet square, around which ran an ambulatory (hisashi) and a veranda (yengawa), each 6 feet wide. The "mother chamber" and the ambulatory were ceiled, sometimes with interlacing strips of bark or broad laths, so as to produce a plaited effect; sometimes with plain boards. The veranda had no ceiling. Sliding doors, a characteristic feature of modern Japanese houses, had not yet come into use, and no means were provided for closing the veranda, so that, at night, the space included in the "mother chamber" and the ambulatory was alone habitable. The ambulatory, however, was surrounded by a wall of latticed timber or plain boards, the lower half of which could be removed altogether, whereas the upper half, being suspended from hinges, could be swung upward and outward. It was thus possible to regulate the amount of light and air admitted. Privacy was obtainable by hanging blinds of split bamboo in the place of the latticed wall, and communication from the ambulatory to the veranda was by doors, three on each side of the room, opening outward. As for the "mother chamber," it was separated from the ambulatory by similar bamboo blinds, with silk cords for raising or lowering them, or by curtains. Round the outer edge of the veranda ran a railing, broken at three places to give access to wooden steps by which the garden was reached, and the main entrance had a porch to shelter palanquins and ox-carriages.
Such was the general scheme of all aristocratic dwellings. It was derived in great part from the plan of Buddhist temples. The idea of dividing the interior space into several rooms had not yet been conceived. Neither was the floor covered with thick rectangular mats of uniform size, fitting together so exactly as to form a perfectly level surface. That extensive use of tatami, as this essentially Japanese kind of mat is called, came into fashion at a later period. In the Heian epoch floors were boarded, mats being sometimes laid in a limited part of the room only, and always in the space which served for a bed. The aristocratic sleeping-place of the time was a species of movable matted dais. Its sides were lacquered, and posts rose from each corner to support a canopy and curtains of silk and fine gauze,—a mosquito net in fact. This drapery was held in place round the base of the dais by means of weights in the form of Dogs of Fo, chiselled in bronze or silver, and the mats had broad borders of brocade for patrician dwellings and of coarse cotton cloth for humbler folks. Toward the close of the epoch it became customary to cover the floors entirely with mats,[3] especially in rooms reserved for the habitation of women, and the lattice-work panels and hinged doors surrounding the "parent chamber" were replaced by sliding doors which, being mere skeletons of interlacing ribs covered with thin white silk,[4] acted like windows for admitting light. Then, also, the partitioning of wide interior spaces into several rooms began to be practised, and the partitioning was effected by means of sliding doors similar to those mentioned above, or covered with thicker paper which now began to offer a field for the brush of decorative artists. As years passed and as the scale of living grew more and more luxurious in Kyoto, the dimensions of great noblemen's mansions became extravagant, and at the beginning of the eleventh century an imperial edict limited the size of a house to two hundred and forty yards square, at the same time imposing other restrictions as to the materials of roofs and walls. These vetoes proved quite ineffective.
House-furniture was then, and always remained, a comparatively insignificant affair. The Japanese never had to trouble themselves much about such things as curtains, carpets, chairs, sofas, or tables. When an aristocrat wanted to read, for example, a small cushion was placed on the floor for his seat, having on the left an arm-rest, in front a lectern, on the right a bookcase. All these objects were made of rich lacquer. A screen also stood close at hand; not the six-leaved folding screen of later times, but a silk curtain depending from a horizontal bar, which was supported by a slender pillar fixed in a heavy socket. A metal mirror mounted on an elaborate tripod-stand, a clothes-horse, usually of gold lacquer, and a species of low two-shelved table on which stood a censer and a box of incense-implements, completed the furniture of the apartment in warm weather, but in winter there was added a box for burning charcoal—metal braziers not having yet come into fashion. For lighting purposes the commonest device was a rush-wick laid in a shallow vessel of oil from which the end of the wick projected. This vessel was either supported on a bamboo tripod, or fixed to an upright rod moving in a vertical socket, so that the height of the light could be regulated at will. The annals speak of "combustible earth" and "combustible water," in other words, coal and oil, as having been presented to the Court in the middle of the seventh century by the inhabitants of a part of Japan corresponding to the present province of Echigo,[5] but it does not appear that coal was ever employed in ancient times. Tallow candles seem to have been in use from the ninth century. They were set on a pricket stand. In short, the Japanese of the Heian epoch were as well supplied with lighting apparatus as any of their successors until modern times.
For riding abroad ox-carriages and palanquins were used. The palanquin, essentially a Chinese institution, was originally reserved for the sovereign, the Empress, and the chief ritualist,—an imperial prince,—but that rule ultimately lost its exclusive force. In general form the palanquin bore a strong resemblance to the sedan-chair of the eighteenth century in England. The shafts, however, were of great length, and a long curtain of thin silk completely draped the body, concealing the inmate from public gaze. Sometimes richest gold lacquer covered the woodwork of this vehicle; sometimes the body, shafts, and roof were of glossy black, contrasting finely with the snow-white curtain and the gilded mountings. A very much more elaborate and brilliant equipage was the ox-carriage. Its portly wheels and strong shafts were generally black, but the body glowed with richly tinted lacquer, and was set off by ornaments of silver elaborately chased and chiselled. Delicate bamboo blinds, coloured green and having bands of red brocade and tassels of silk, hung at the four sides, and the ox, generally a jet-black beast of fine proportions, was handsomely caparisoned with red harness. One of these carriages, moving along at a stately pace and escorted by a strong body of officers in flowing robes of silk and brocade and men at arms with picturesque costumes and glittering accoutrements, presented a spectacle in harmony with the luxurious extravagance of the time. "Carriage folk" stood on a special social pedestal then just as they do now. Everybody kept a carriage if he could possibly afford the luxury, and everybody that could not afford it tried to borrow one for public occasions. Now and then economical sovereigns made efforts to check the spendthrift tendency of the aristocrats in these matters, but no permanent success was achieved.
There was an elaborate code of procedure for the guidance of equipages meeting en route. Whether to dismount from horseback, whether to stop one's carriage, whether to get out of it and stand on the road; whether even to unyoke the ox whether to limit the etiquette to an attendant's obeisance,—all these and other points were regulated by accurate canons.
As to costume, comparing the Heian epoch with the Nara, there is found in the former a marked tendency to increased elaboration and fuller dimensions. The head-dress, in the case of princes and principal military officials, became again an imposing structure glittering with jewels; the sleeves grew so large that they hung to the knees when a man's arms were crossed, and the trousers also were made full and baggy, so that they resembled a divided skirt. Unprecedented importance attached to the patterns of the rich silks and brocades used for garments. The sovereign's robe of State was necessarily ornamented with a design of nine objects,—the sun, the moon, the stars, a mountain, a dragon, etc.,— but no restrictions applied in the case of subjects. The designer was free to conventionalise his motives or to follow nature closely, and the embroiderer's needle came to the assistance of the weaver's shuttle. From this era may be said to have commenced the manufacture of the tasteful and gorgeous textile fabrics for which Japan afterwards became famous. The decorative design on a garment did not serve as a badge of rank. Colour indicated social status. The sovereign wore a yellow robe in the Palace and a red one when he went abroad. Deep purple and crimson followed these colours in order of dignity. A fop's ideal was to wear several suits, one above the other, disposing them so that their various colours showed in harmoniously contrasting lines at the folds on the bosom and at the edges of the long sleeves. A successful costume created a sensation in Court circles. Its wearer became the hero of the hour, and under the pernicious influence of such ambition men began even to powder their faces and rouge their cheeks like women.
The costume of women reached the acme of unpracticality and extravagance in this epoch. Long flowing hair was essential. Unless her tresses trailed on the ground when she sat down, a lady's toilet was counted contemptible, and if her locks swept two feet below her heels as she walked, her style was perfect. Then, what with developing the volume and multiplying the number of her robes, and wearing above her trousers a many-plyed train which followed her like a gigantic enlargement of the fan that never for a moment left her hand, she always seemed to be struggling to emerge from a cataract of habiliments that threatened at any moment to overwhelm her. The records say, and the paintings of contemporary artists show, that twenty garments, one above the other, went to the costume of a fine lady à la mode of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Of course the object of this extravagance was not to produce an appearance of bulk. On the contrary, the aim of a well-dressed woman was to have her robes cut so deftly and to don them so skilfully that they conveyed the impression, not of a mass of stuffs, but of a play of harmonious colours. There was nothing garish or rainbow-like in the combination. The ground colour—that is to say, the colour of the outer garment—seemed at first to be all-pervading; but closer inspection showed that where these multitudinous robes lay folded across the bosom and where their pendent sleeves telescoped into one another, each ply receded by a fraction of an inch from the ply below it, so that the whole produced the effect of a slightly oblique section made across numerous superimposed layers of differently tinted silks. Much attention was directed also to the art of transmitted colour. By using material thin enough to give passage to a breath of the underlying garment's hue, and by carefully studying, not the science of colours, but their practical values in combination and in contrast, the aristocratic lady of the Heian epoch dressed herself so that she seemed to move in an atmosphere of delightful tints, tender and rich but never crude or obtrusive. Fashion, being governed by the instincts of art rather than the suggestions of fancy, was not capricious. There were few changes of shape or style. All that was necessary was to have robes of appropriate colour for each season—robes resembling the bloom of the plum and the cherry in spring; that of the azalea and the scrabra in summer; that of the bush-clover, the yellow or white chrysanthemum, the dying maple leaf and the flower of the ominameshi (Patrinia scabiosefolia) in autumn, and that of the pine spray and the withered leaf in winter. There were colours that might be worn at all times of the year, but the four seasons had their distinctive tints. In a contemporary record of a fete at the Palace of the Emperor Shirakawara in the year 1117, it is stated that forty ladies made their appearance costumed in the most novel and beautiful styles. Some wore as many as twenty-five suits, showing glimpses of purple, of crimson, of grass-green, of wild-rose yellow and of sapan-wood brown, their sleeves and skirts decorated with golden designs. Others, by subtle commingling of willow sprays and cherry blossoms and by embroidered patterns picked out with gems, represented the poem of the jewels and the flowers. Others had costumes to recall that "water is nature's mirror;" or that "the sun of spring disperses doubt and care," or that "love lurks in summer's hazes."
But if the ladies of the Heian epoch took nature's guidance in choosing colours and decorative patterns for their costumes, they relied solely on art in making up their faces. The eyebrows were either plucked out by the roots or shaved off, and in their stead two black spots were painted on the forehead; the teeth were stained until they shone like ebony; the face and neck were covered with white powder, and the cheeks were rouged.[6]
The rule still held that ladies must never show their faces in public. Those that had no carriages for riding abroad enveloped their heads in a species of silk hood. This hood helped them to manage their long hair also. The back hair was disposed under the hood, and the ends were pushed into the girdle. Generally when a lady went abroad on foot, she wore a wide-rimmed picturesque hat, and an umbrella was held over her head by an attendant.
It is to be noted that men showed greater extravagance than women in the matter of costume and ornaments. The romantic Emperor Kwazan carried a mirror on his hat, and in the reign (987—1011) of his successor, one of the Fujiwara magnates had crystal notches for his arrows. Bows, arrows, and swords became mere ornaments. The sheath of the sword, the quiver, and even the bow were magnificently lacquered and sometimes studded with gems. Gold lacquer was used even for ornamenting the sleeves. No self-respecting aristocrat failed to have a looking-glass on his person or to apply perfume to his clothes. A dignified bearing was sought by severity of line, and in the beginning of the twelfth century this foible had been carried so far that a well-dressed man looked as if his garments had been cut out of boards, and his movements were carefully studied to enhance that effect. He expended as much thought on his head-gear as a modern lady of the West does upon her hat, for though the orthodox shapes of head-covering did not present much variety, there were many little points upon which care and taste might be exercised. Colours, as has been already shown, served to distinguish ranks under the system inaugurated in the seventh century, but that rule having lost much of its force in the Heian epoch, families commenced to design badges for purposes of distinction. A long skirt also began to be used in this era as a mark of social status, but the innovation did not receive extravagant development until the succeeding period.
The viands of the time and the method of cooking and serving them, though not so varied and elaborate as those of modern days, nevertheless indicated a high state of refinement. It is not possible, of course, to speak with much detail of this subject, but, reducing the matter to arithmetic, it appears that rice was prepared in ten different ways; that there were nineteen staples of fish diet and twenty-two ways of cooking them; that there were three relishes; nine edible sea-weeds; twenty-four kinds of vegetable; seventeen varieties of fruit; eleven kinds of cake; six kinds of flesh of animals and birds, and three kinds of beverages.[7] Religious superstition interfered with diet as with everything else. The flesh of deer, boar, and cattle ceased to be eaten, but as the sport of flying hawks at wild duck and pheasants survived even the veto of Buddhism, the flesh of those birds as well as of barn-door fowl appeared constantly on the tables of the upper classes. Milk, however, and a species of cheese or butter obtained from it, went entirely out of vogue. Many combinations of edibles were tabooed from superstitious motives. For example, sesamum must not be eaten with onion; vinegar with clams; parsley with the flesh of the wild boar; ginger with plums and so on. Nearly every month, too, had its list of forbidden foods.
A strange custom had its origin in the importance attached to cleanliness in the art of cooking. Before dinner was served, the cook, dressed in ceremonial robes, came into the guest-chamber, made his obeisance, placed a cooking-board on the ground, and holding a knife in his right hand and a pair of long chopsticks in his left, proceeded to kill a fish and prepare it for the fire, never allowing anything to touch it except the knife and the sticks. Seen for the first time, the spectacle was frank enough to be disgusting; but its revolting features were soon forgotten in consideration of the dexterity, grace, and solemn dignity of the officiating cook's movements and demeanour. Sometimes the host himself took a conventional part in this function by way of special compliment to his guests.
Considering how much the Japanese borrowed from China during the interval from the seventh to the twelfth century, it is not surprising to find that, like the Chinese, they used a large table for dining purposes. But they did not employ chairs or stools, nor were dishes handed round. They sat on cushions, and all the viands for each diner were ranged before him in utensils reserved for him alone. Even salt, vinegar, and soy were not in common, every convive having his own special supply. According to Chinese custom the principal viand is piled in a large bowl or dish from which all help themselves at will. Such a method could never have been reconciled with the Japanese instinct of cleanliness. Besides, the Japanese considered that a good dinner must be picturesque as well as palatable. The shaping and decorating of trays and stands, and the arranging of the viands upon them became a deeply studied art. Fine porcelains were not yet procurable, for China, under the Sung emperors, had not begun to manufacture on a large scale the delicate, translucid ware for which she afterwards became famous, and Japan's ceramic ability was on a still lower level. Cups and bowls of solid céladon stone-ware filled the place of honour at aristocratic feasts, and tea,[8] on the rare occasions of its use, was drunk from cups of unglazed pottery, as was sake also, though a favourite decanter for serving it took the form of a section of fresh, green bamboo. Effects of purity and due subordination were studied by fashioning many of the trays and stands out of milk-white pine, cut to the thinness of a wafer, the viands themselves being so disposed as to give a play of colour and an air of variety. Lacquered utensils also had a place at the board, but were always in a minority. The ménus of two dinners given by Fujiwara Ministers of State in the eleventh and twelfth centuries have been handed down by annalists. One of them shows that arithmetical symmetry was considered as well as the pleasures of the palate. There were eight entrées—rice-dumplings, three varieties of oranges, chestnuts (boiled), dried persimmons, pears and jujubes;—eight "dry viands"—steamed clam, dried bird's flesh, dried fish in slices (eaten with soy and vinegar), roasted sea-bream, fried suzuki (percalabrax), grilled salmon, roasted cuttle-fish and lobsters;—and eight "moist viands"—carp, trout, salt-trout boiled, pheasant (steamed with mushrooms), salmon-trout, boiled sea-bream, cuttle-fish soup, and suzuki soup. All these seem to have been served at once. When a guest took his place, he found that his section of the table bore a phalanx of vessels and utensils marshalled with symmetrical regularity. Immediately before him were a pair of chopsticks and a spoon; beyond these lay an empty cup, and, ranged in a line from left to right, having the cup for the centre, were a plate of sliced pears, a vessel of vinegar, a decanter of sake, and a pot of soy. Beyond these and parallel to them a row of four dishes were set, containing jelly-fish, trepang and bêche-de-mer. These constituted the hors d'œuvre. Beyond them, marshalled in two horizontal ranks of four plates each, were the entrées; and on the right and left, respectively, were the eight "dry viands" and the eight "moist viands," each group in two vertical ranks of four plates per rank.
Nothing in the way of table-decoration, as practised in Europe and America, seems to have been attempted. Flower and other decorative devices did, however, make their appearance in the banqueting-hall in accordance with peculiar customs. From ancient times, when offerings of scalloped paper and a mirror were presented at a shrine, etiquette required that they should be suspended from a branch of the Clyera japonica, since to touch them with the hand was to defile them. By refinement of conception habitual to the Japanese, this idea was extended to presents; they were fastened to a branch of some flowering tree. Then the same fancy received obscure development at the hands of poetasters, who, in sending a couplet to a friend or a lover, accompanied it by a blossom suitable to the season. If an article was too large to be hung from a flower-spray, convention must be complied with by tying the spray to the article.[9] The same custom found another form of expression in the despatch of letters: they were placed in a split bamboo held aloft by the messenger as he ran. Social etiquette delighted in this language of allegory. Thus, in the epoch under review it was customary to place in a hall, at times of feasting or couplet-composing, a miniature ship carved in the perfumed wood of the agallochum. It stood upon a tray strewn with sand among which glistened fragments of rock-crystal, coral, jade, carnelians, and other brightly coloured minerals. This was the ship of fortune arriving at the isle of elysium. In later times it often took the form of the mountain of paradise with the symbols of longevity, the crane, the tortoise, and the pine.
The development of singing, dancing, and music is among the most remarkable features of the Heian epoch. It would be an extravagance to say that the era produced any great scholars in the Occidental sense of the term, for the range of accessible knowledge was extremely narrow. Men profoundly versed in the Chinese philosophical writings were not wanting, but, as a general rule, refined accomplishments were the test of high education. From princes, ministers of State, and military magnates down to office-clerks and house-stewards, everybody studied singing, dancing, and the art of composing stanzas. Songs and dances of comparatively simple character had been in vogue from ancient times, as has been already seen. Now, however, not only were large drafts made upon the repertories of Korea and China, but extensive modifications and elaborations were devised by the Japanese themselves. Imperial progresses, public feasts, religious ceremonies, private entertainments,—every conspicuous incident of existence was treated as an occasion for playing instruments, treading measures, or extemporising verses. From perusing the literature of the epoch the student rises with a bewildered impression that society's perpetual occupation was to dance among forests of blossom or in the glow of the moonlight; to float over the water in boats with sculptured dragons or phoenixes at the prow, fair girls exquisitely costumed at the poles, and for passengers noblemen and high officials playing flutes and guitars and beating drums; to marshal gorgeous pageants in worship of the gods; to write verses for hanging on blossomy trees and plants or for reading at competitive fetes, and to issue or accept invitations to feasts or sports. There were twenty varieties of musical instruments—several kinds of flute, five kinds of drum, a species of pandean pipe, two kinds of flageolet, a species of harmonica, an oboe, a horizontal harp, a vertical harp, two kinds of guitar, and a cymbal, etc. Many of these became so famous for the beauty of their tone that special appellations[10] were given to them, and although neither their sound nor the music produced with them would have delighted Occidental ears, the Japanese were wont to say that if a skilled performer with a perfectly pure heart played on one of these famous instruments, the very dust on the ceiling could not choose but dance.
It would be an interminable task to attempt any exhaustive description of the dances in vogue during the Heian epoch. Only eight varieties of genuine old Japanese dance existed, but these were supplemented by twenty-five Chinese, twelve of Indian origin transmitted by China, eighteen Korean, and eleven Japanese adaptations. When seventy-four varieties of dance are thus indicated, it must not be understood that there were a corresponding number of salient differences of style. It is true that the movements in every case were carefully trained, and that each combination constituting a particular dance could be distinguished by practised observers. But the main feature of variety had to be sought in the pantomime. Nearly all dances performed in Japan were pantomimic. The Japanese seem to have possessed, from the dawn of their national existence, a profound appreciation of the beauty and grace of cadence and emphasis in modulated muscular efforts, but the great majority of their dances had some mimetic import, and were not suggested solely by the pleasure of rhythmic and measured movement. That is the chief reason why these dances seldom produce in a foreign observer the sense of exquisite delight that they excite in the Japanese. The uninitiated stranger feels, when he sees them, like one watching a drama where an unknown plot is acted in an unintelligible language. In its origin the Japanese dance was an invocation addressed, as has been already explained, to the Sun Goddess to lure her from her cave. It was accompanied by a formula altogether subordinate to the dance, and serving chiefly to mark the cadence and the measure. Thereafter every offering made to the gods had to be supplemented by some music of motion, and gradually the dance and its accompaniment of metrical chant came to be prolonged after the conclusion of the offering, so that they ultimately constituted an important part of the ceremony of worship, as well as a prominent feature of the subsequent feast. Then followed their division into "chants of the worship-dance" (tori-mono-uta) and "chants of the fête-dance" (mayebari), both being included in the term Kagura, which mime may still be seen by any one visiting the shrine of Kasuga at Nara, and is, indeed, constantly performed at Shintô festivals elsewhere. Towards the close of the tenth century, the chants that accompanied the kagura as then danced, were committed to writing, and found to number thirty-eight. They are almost wholly devoid of poetic inspiration and depend entirely on rhythm and cadence of syllabic pulsations, five beats followed by seven, five again by seven, and then seven by seven. Here are some examples:—
SPECIMEN OF THE MAYEBARI (OR CHANT OF THE FÊTE DANCE)
Deeply dipping deep
In the rain-fed river's tide,
Robe and stole we dye.
Rain it raineth, yet.
Rain it raineth, yet,
Rain it raineth, yet,
Dies the colour never-more;
Never fades the deep-dyed hue.
SPECIMEN OF TORIMONO-UTA (OR CHANT OF THE WORSHIP-DANCE)
Sacred offerings pure,
Not for mortal beings spread.
But for her, sky-throned.
Majestic Toyöoka.
Offerings for the Gods divine.
Offerings for the Gods.
These verses, it will be seen, have no pretence to be called poetry: they merely supply the mo-tive of the dance in rhythmical language. The motions accompanying the first would suggest the dipping of cloth in lye, the dropping of rain, and immutability. The motions accompanying the second would indicate adoration, humility, and reverent presentation. In fact, all the Kagura dances may be described as solemn hand-wavings and body-swayings, without any movement of the feet except such as is necessary to preserve equilibrium, and without the least approach to strong emotional activity suggesting religious exaltation. The musical accompaniment was a weird, monotonous strain performed on a Japanese horizontal harp (koto), a shrill flute, and a drum. From the sedate Kagura the next step was to the Saibara, which may be described as street sonnets set to Chinese music with appropriate mimetic dances. In these the performers were usually men and women of the highest degree, the orchestra consisted of two kinds of flutes, and the dancers beat out the measure with ivory batons, commonly carried by nobles and ministers in that era. Sixty-one of these ancient dance-songs have been preserved. Like the Kagura they embody suggestions of simple scenes and simple actions, the only difference being greater variety of gesture, greater intricacy of movement, and more picturesque costumes. For example, a party of youths and maidens, robed in many-coloured garments and carrying toy nets and baskets, glide upon the scene, imitating the undulating movement of the waves, the slow sweep of the ebbing tide, the graceful searches for sea treasures, and, finally, the inward roll of the returning sea, chanting as they move:—
Salt-wavèd Ise's sea,
Ebbing, ebbing, leaves behind
Strips of salt sea-shore.
Wave-washed sea-weed gather we?
Sighing sea-shells gather we?
Gems the sea-waves wore?
VIEW OF KATSURA RIVER NEAR ARASHIYAMA.
SPECIMENS OF IMAYŌ.
Pass we by the sea-side road,
High swell the wave-hills;
Climb we by the hill-side track,
High the cloud-clad pass;
Wend we by the northern road,
High piled the snow-drifts;
Come, come by Ise's high way.
One way, only one.
Sad sadness of the sweet past.
Sweet the sad gone-by;
Mem'ry of a severed love.
Dead but ne'er to die.
Parents part and children part.
But of woes the worst,
The parting of lovers while
Love is still athirst.[11]
There was also a large miscellany of dances with accompaniment of street-songs (rika) and popular ballads (zokuyō), the motives of which generally betrayed extreme triviality of conception and the mimetic execution showed little fidelity. Many of them nevertheless found favour at Court and in aristocratic circles, where their frank silliness made a pleasant contrast to the stately measure of the classic dance. The "cloud-land coxcombs," who painted their faces after the manner of women and carried a looking-glass in their sleeves, had no difficulty in appreciating such flights of fancy as—
Ancient rat youthful rattie.
Rats of Saiji's fane,
Gnaw the cassock, gnaw the stole.
Gnaw the vestments well.
Tell the priest, tell the prelate.
Ah! the prelate tell.
Combs ten, combs seven,
Combs I counted yestereve.
Counted one by one.
One by one have vanished, combs.
Count to-day combs none.
To these varieties of dance-motives have to be added two which had wide vogue among all classes of the nation, namely, the Saru-gaku, or "monkey mime," and the Den-gaku, or "bucolic mime." The monkey mime was suggested by a courtier, who went about the Palace garden one night with the skirts of his robe tucked up, simulating cold and dancing to a refrain that will not bear translation. It was, in short, a comic dance adapted to any and every motive, its sole purpose being to create laughter. There were thirty celebrated Saru-gaku (or San-gaku, as it is also called), all of which were reputed to be capable of drawing tears of laughter from a confirmed misanthrope. The stanzas recited by Saru-gaku performers in early times have not been preserved. They seem to have been of a trivial, jesting character, unworthy of record and entertaining only in connection with the dance. Neither is it quite certain that the account here given of the origin of the Saru-gaku is correct. Some authorities maintain that the dance dates from the time of Prince Shotoku (572-621); that its real name was, not "monkey (saru) mime," but "three (san) instruments music;" that it derived the appellation from the fact of three kinds of Korean hand-drum having been then, for the first time, used to accompany songs, and that the prefix "three" (san) was afterwards changed into saru (monkey) owing to mispronunciation, or because the dance received an essentially comic character. Yet another theory assigns to the prefix san the significance of "dis-orderly," and attributes that designation to the irregular nature of the costume worn by the dancer. This perplexity illustrates a notable defect of the ideographic script: two different ideographs, one meaning "disorderly" and the other "three," are phonetically identical, and might easily be interchanged by a writer relying on sound only. It matters very little, however, how the dance originated or by what name it was called at first. The only point of interest is that, in the Heian epoch, it took the form of grotesque posturing and pacing to the accompaniment of a comic couplet, the playing of a flute and the beating of a hand-drum. The "bucolic mime" (Dengaku) belonged to a still lower rank of art than the Saru-gaku. It scarcely rose to the level of a definite combination of graceful movements, but was rather a display of mere muscular activity, in short, a species of acrobatic performance, including pole-balancing, stilt-walking, and a kind of sword-and-ball exercise by men mounted on high clogs. It nevertheless deserves the name of dance, because the movements of the performer were measured, and because there was a musical accompaniment of flute and drum. Thus described, the "monkey mime" and the "bucolic mime" seem very trivial and unworthy of attention, but it will be seen by and by that their developments are of some importance.
If lengthy reference is here made to dancing and singing in the Heian epoch, it is because these pastimes occupied an extraordinary share of popular attention. The few sober men of the time came to the conclusion that a "divine fox" had bewitched the nation. This delirious mood looks even stranger when contrasted with the zeal for religion and the obedience to superstition that prevailed. Sovereigns, nobles, and princes, who did not shrink from impoverishing themselves to endow temples, set up idols, or have masses said for their welfare, and who were ready at all times to shave their heads and enter a cloister, nevertheless had no hesitation about indulging in voluptuous excesses of every kind. Perhaps the explanation is that morality did not enter seriously into the programme of education. The "Scripture of Filial Piety" and the "Analects of Confucius" were studied in the schools, but neither of these volumes touched the question of a supreme being or of a life beyond the grave, and though the Buddhist priests preached a noble doctrine, their own lives did not conform to their precepts. Thus the displays of munificent piety that characterised the era seem to have been an hysterical aftermath of extreme self-indulgence rather than an outgrowth of earnest conviction.
The education here spoken of must not be interpreted in the ordinary sense of the term. There was no such thing as national education in the Nara and Heian epochs. A few schools existed in Kyōtō, but they were founded and supported by the great families and destined solely for the instruction of the latter's children, relatives and vassals. The Wake family, the Fujiwara family, the Ariwara family, the Minamoto family, and the Tachibana family, each had its own school in the capital, but for the vast bulk of the nation no educational facilities of any kind existed. What the schools taught, too, was the art of employing the Chinese language deftly for composing stanzas and writing essays. Science and philosophy were not in the curricula. And even that meagre education ceased to be obtainable as Kyōtō fell into disorder towards the closing years of the Heian epoch. For in proportion as the Fujiwara nobles, who usurped the administrative authority, abandoned themselves to pleasure and neglected their official duties, their own followers set an example of lawlessness which provoked a retaliatory mood on the part of its victims, and, at the same time, not only did the provincial authorities become more and more independent of the central government, but the people also, rendered desperate by excessive taxation, took to robbery and piracy on an extensive scale. Gangs of bandits infested the provinces and invaded the capital itself, not hesitating even to besiege the house of a great noble. For several years a notorious leader of robbers lived openly in Kyōtō. At one time the officers of the Imperial guards trooped to the Palace en masse to clamour for rice; at another, armed soldiers intimidated and despoiled the citizens. A police force existed under the control of an official, who wielded large power. The members of the board (Kebiishi) over which he presided performed the functions not only of administrative police but also of magistrates and judges; the decrees of the board ranked with imperial ordinances, and persons violating them were treated as though they had disobeyed the sovereign's commands. But this organisation showed itself quite unable to preserve order. It could not check the lawlessness of the bandits that invaded Kyōtō and Nara; still less could it accomplish anything against the multitude of these depredators that infested the Island of Four Provinces (Shikoku). The bandits were, in truth, a sign of the time. Brigandage, in default of serfdom, suggested itself to many as the only possible refuge from the intolerable burden of taxation imposed to supply funds for the extravagant luxury of the aristocrats. Fourteen hundred houses lay untenanted at one time in Kyōtō, their inmates having fled to the provinces to live by plunder. The system of five-family guilds, under which the guild became collectively responsible if any of its members absconded without paying his taxes, ceased to have practical efficacy, for the guilds made their escape en masse. Once outside a circle of small radius surrounding Kyōtō, the fugitives were effectually beyond the reach of the central government's authority, for not only did the provincial nobles ignore Kyōtō's mandates, but also means of communication were so bad that the Court could not hope, by its own unaided strength, to follow and arrest a fugitive. It is true that some of the barriers erected to check the freedom of men's movements had been removed, but these artificial obstructions counted for very little compared with the absence of roads and inns, the dangers from bandits and pirates and the want of any organised system of conveyances. In the middle of the tenth century, a famous litterateur describes how a journey from Tosa to Kyōtō took more than fifty days, and a century later a high official spent a hundred and twenty days getting from Hitachi to the capital. The only important place easily accessible from Kyōtō was Naniwa, the modern Osaka. It was, in effect, the port of Kyōtō, and a man could travel thither by boat, calling en route at four towns, and paying a visit finally at the shrine of the three Sea-Gods at Sumiyoshi, where, if he intended to pursue his journey, he prayed very fervently for protection. Many a citizen of Kyōtō made the trip down the Yodo River to Naniwa merely for pleasure. Houses of entertainment abounded in the towns on the way, and before a ship dropped anchor she was surrounded by boats carrying courtesans, dancing girls, musicians, and other agents of amusement.
It must not be supposed that the courtesan of those days descended to any depth of moral degradation when she espoused her abandoned calling. The æsthetic enthusiasm and voluptuous delirium of the era created an atmosphere in which polite accomplishments could eclipse any environment, and ministers to pleasure had honour irrespective of their methods. In this respect the morality of the era resembled that of Greece in the days when Praxiteles carved a statue of Phryne and Apelles painted Lais. There did not indeed exist a social vacancy which the Yujo[12] could fill, such as was created in Athens by the seclusion and ignorance to which wives were condemned. The Japanese wife took her due place in society, and owed as much to her literary attainments as to her beauty and tact. But the marital tie did not possess, even approximately, the value attached to it in Christian communities. A woman might occupy the leading place in a household and be the principal star in any social galaxy from that of the Imperial Court downward, without having the status of a lawful spouse. Students of Japanese history, when they observe the great part played by females in the politics and Court life of the Heian epoch, cannot fail to observe also that the ethical rule applied to women's conduct was almost as lax as that applied to men's.[13] The beautiful Aki, with hair that exceeded her stature by ten feet, who bewitched the Emperor Ichijo; the fair danseuse Tamabuchi, whom the staid Emperor Uda loved; the female augurs who held the threads of the Fujiwara intrigues; the group of brilliant writers—Sei, Murasaki, Daini no Sammi, Izumi, Koshikibu, and Udaisho—whose names are never to be forgotten so long as Japanese literature exists, not one of these celebrities can be said to have worn the white flower of a virtuous life. In the hands of the Fujiwara nobles women were an essential instrument, since it was by giving a daughter to be the mistress of a sovereign, if not his consort, that the political supremacy of the family was maintained in each generation. A woman might always be required to sacrifice her virtue in the interests of others, and naturally she did not shrink from sacrificing it voluntarily in her own interests. She fought the battle of life with every weapon that nature had given her. Yoritomo, the great Minamoto leader, before he came to power and during his exile in the province of Izu, loved a girl of good family who bore him a son. But her father, fearing Yoritomo's enemies, caused the child to be thrown into a river and married the girl to another man under another name. Yoritomo then paid his addresses to a younger daughter of Hojo Tokimasa, but was loved in turn by the elder daughter, Masa, who ultimately succeeded in winning his affections. By and by Yoritomo showed signs of transferring his heart elsewhere. Masa did not remonstrate with him. She sent a body of soldiers to raid the new love's house and drive her family across the border. Yet this Masa was a very high type of woman. Conspicuous for frugality, keen foresight, and wise judgment, she brought up her children admirably, and despite her own fierce ruthlessness towards a female rival, she spared no pains to soften the rude, sanguinary ways of military feudalism in the Kamakura epoch. In later life, when she passed through Kyōtō after worshipping at the shrines of Kumano, the ex-Emperor conferred on her a rank seldom won even by the most prominent statesman, and asked her to visit him, but she ridiculed the idea, declaring that though a rustic like her might go to pray at a shrine, she had no place in courts and among courtiers. If women could attain to such distinction in spite of the taint of irregular sexual connections and often by their aid, virtue might well cease to be esteemed. It goes without saying that incontinence was not counted a disgraceful feature in the life of a good man. The Emperor Ichijo, who lived in the midst of most sensuous surroundings and was himself a slave to an extra-marital affection, nevertheless had sufficient nobility of character to pass a winter's night in an almost nude condition in order that he might be able to sympathise fully with the sufferings of the poor. There was, indeed, a much lower depth of immorality to which men had learned to descend in that epoch, unnatural love. To the everlasting disgrace of the Buddhist priesthood, that vice had the sanction of their practice, and no condemnations of it are found in the literature of the time. All these circumstances prepare the student to find that the frail sister of mediæval Japan was in no sense a social outcast. She had ready access to the houses of ministers of state and other chief officials or prominent noblemen. Her singing and dancing were features at refined entertainments. She delighted aristocratic society with her clever manipulation of puppets, and she composed poems which found a permanent place in literature.[14] Men learned to call her "castle-conqueror" (keisei) rather than fille-de-joie.
The reader of course perceives that these descriptions of the manners and customs of the Japanese have been confined almost entirely to the upper classes. It must be confessed that with regard to the lower orders in the early ages, very little information is available. Independent reference will be made to the development of trade and industry, and in connection with that subject some light will be thrown on the life of the farmer, the mechanic, and the merchant. But in truth these people played a very subordinate part in the history of the nation. Except for the sake of the taxes they paid and the forced labour they performed, they were of small account. The artisan, however, especially the art artisan, became a person of great and growing importance from the time of the Empress Suiko (593—628) onward, since upon him devolved the task of building and decorating the grand temples and spacious mansions which began from that time to be called into existence. Thus the painter, the sculptor, the architect, the lacquerer, and the worker in metals, all were recipients of honour, patronage, and even rank, and in that way was laid the foundation of a class of men who gave to their country many beautiful works, and ultimately won for her the distinction of being as richly dowered with the art instinct and with competence to give it faithful expression as was even ancient Greece in her best days.
Brief allusion has already been made to the semmin, or "despised people," who did not belong to the agricultural, the industrial, or the trading class, being regarded as social outcasts. Since some affinities may be traced between their condition and occupations and those of the Roman servi, the term "serfs" has been applied to the semmin in these pages, and the facts relating to them may conveniently be set down here.
It has been postulated by ethnologists that slavery never constitutes a vital element of any social system in which a theocratic organisation is established. Communities where the military order has obtained the ascendancy are the natural home of caste divisions which relegate the industrial and agricultural functions to serfs and slaves. A partial vindication of that theory is traceable in the story of the Japanese, among whom the tiller of the soil, the mechanic, and the trader ranked as plebeians, or commoners, in comparison with the military patricians. But if the polity of Japan partook largely of the military character, it was purely theocratic in its alleged beginnings, and thus the social problems connected with it refuse to be solved by precedents derived from simpler organisations. The "commoners" (heimin) certainly were not serfs or slaves, according to any acknowledged rendering of those terms, and even the "despised people," while some of them may unquestionably be classed as slaves, do not find their exact counterpart in any system that has come under the notice of Western historians. As far back as the middle of the fifth century of the Christian era, Japanese annals refer to semmin. They speak of a nobleman who, being convicted of plotting against the Court (460 A. D.), was condemned to death, his posterity for eighty generations being degraded to the rank of common labourers. Thenceforth various incidents, legal enactments and ordinances exhibit six causes which operated to produce semmin; namely, crime, subjugation, debt, special circumstances of birth, naturalisation, and kidnapping. Treason in every form and armed conquest were sources of State slaves—corresponding to the Roman servi publici. A rebel or a conspirator against the sovereign suffered death—frequently shared by his sons and brothers—and all the rest of his family as well as his property were confiscated. As for conquest, the rights conferred by it held against Japanese as well as against aliens. Raids made by Japanese generals into the Korean peninsula resulted in the capture of numerous Koreans who, being carried to Japan, were drafted into the ranks of the semmin, and employed in various menial capacities. Probably sections of the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan suffered the same fate after subjugation by the invaders. With regard to debt as a source of serfdom, in very early eras its influence must have been considerable, for, at the close of the seventh century the sovereign found it necessary to impose restrictions. Proclamation was then made that where a creditor prescribed serfdom as a penalty for failure to discharge a monetary obligation, interest must not be charged. Later on, the first code—promulgated at the beginning of the eighth century—sanctioned the principle that an insolvent debtor's person might become the property of the creditor, but imposed legal limits of interest, namely, that interest payable every sixtieth day must not exceed one-eighth of the principal, and that, even though a period of four hundred and eighty days had elapsed without discharge of the debt, the interest must not aggregate a larger sum than the original obligation. The issue of serf parents remained a serf, but, by a curious stretch of liberality, an immigrant from a foreign land who had been a serf in his own country, acquired his freedom on touching Japanese soil, though, if he subsequently suffered degradation, any of his relatives following him to Japan shared his fate. The abduction and kidnapping of men and women and their sale into serfdom were practices against which laws had to be enacted in the eighth century. The crime was punished by a maximum penalty of three years' penal servitude. But here evidence is found of the large recognition accorded to rights of relationship, for the closer the degree of consanguinity between the person sold and the seller, the milder the penalty. A man selling his own parent or cousin became liable to two and a half years' penal servitude, but the sale of one's own child or grandchild involved only one year of punishment, and if the sale was that of a daughter, the law did not undertake to rehabilitate her.
As to the price at which a serf was valued, there is documentary evidence preserved among the archives of the Nara Court (eighth century). Three males, aged respectively 34, 22, and 15, were sold, the first two for a thousand sheaves of rice each; the third for seven hundred sheaves. Three females, aged 22, 20, and 15, sold at the same time, were appraised, the first two at eight hundred sheaves each, the last at six hundred. A hundred sheaves of rice represent a koku (5.13 bushels) which now sells for about 12 yen. Thus an adult male serf was valued at about 120 yen and a female at about 100 yen.
The cooperation of these various causes must have produced a considerable number of semmin, and, indeed, the best statistics available indicate that the ratio was five per cent of the total population. Thus, since the population in the middle of the eighth century was estimated 3,694,331, the ratio of the male and female elements being at 4.6 to 5.4, there must then have been 84,970 male serfs and 99,737 female.
The treatment of serfs in Japan did not display cruelties like those practised in ancient Rome. There were five classes: guards of the Imperial sepulchres, servants employed in Administrative offices, domestic servants. State serfs, and private serfs. Men belonging to the first two classes differed little from ordinary subjects, and were often rehabilitated. They had establishments of their own and could acquire property. Domestic serfs may be described, not incorrectly, as poor relatives who, generation after generation, earned a livelihood by performing menial household duties in families to which they were bound by ties of kith and kin. It seems a misnomer to call such persons "serfs," but they were so classed in old Japan. State serfs were captives made in war, or the domestic serfs — that is to say, the indigent relatives — of men convicted of offences involving degradation and confiscation. The lot of these serfs was ameliorated, rather than aggravated, by transfer to the State. Private serfdom seems to have been the worst condition of all. The private serf was bought and sold like any ordinary chattel, the only proviso being that the transaction must be duly registered. But the lash was not used to compel work, nor is there any record that the idea of chaining a serf ever suggested itself to a Japanese householder or official. It would appear, too, that the prospect of an aged person's dying without having tasted the sweets of freedom, revolted ancient legislators. They enacted that, if a State serf attained the age of sixty-six, or became incapacitated by disease, he should be promoted to be an official employé and at seventy-six he was rehabilitated. Even a man who had been degraded for treason, was restored to his old status when he reached the age of eighty. Other causes of manumission were emancipation (which carried with it exemption from taxation during a period of three years from the date of rehabilitation), judgment of a law court, extinction of a master's family, meritorious service, and adoption of the Buddhist priesthood, for a Buddhist priest had no social status, and consequently a serf entering the priesthood ceased to be subject to social discrimination. But despite this disposition to lighten the lot of the serf, stringent measures were adopted to preserve the distinctions of caste. Nothing save the pride of rank prevented intermarriages between the patricians and the commoners (heimin). If, however, either a patrician or a commoner married a serf, the offspring of the union became a serf. Even among the serfs themselves, difference of grade originally constituted a barrier to marriage.[15] These harsh enactments received modification at the beginning of the ninth century. Thenceforth the issue of a mixed marriage received the status of whichever parent stood higher in the social scale. But the spirit of exclusiveness underwent no change, and there is also evidence that, in the long medieval era of incessant war, the practice of kidnapping young persons of both sexes and selling them into serfdom constituted one of the prominent abuses of the age.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 50.
Note 50.—Every one of these halls and galleries had its appellation, as, the "hall of everlasting benevolence," the "hall of sweet savour," the "hall of perpetual peace," the "hall of virtue and justice," and so on.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 51.
Note 51.—Hence the wife of a nobleman was usually called Kita-no-kata, or "the northern personage."
- ↑ See Appendix, note 52.
Note 52.—The dimensions of a mat were invariably six feet by three. It served as a unit of superficial measurement. Instead of saying that a room measured so many feet each way, people said that so many mats could be spread there. Two mats made a tsubo (six feet by six feet), the unit of area for lands and buildings alike. The convenience of this method of measurement is great. If a house is said to have so many feet of frontage and so many feet of depth, little idea of its accommodation is conveyed to ordinary minds, and even the dimensions of a room, when stated in feet, are difficult to picture to the imagination. But when a Japanese hears that a house has fifty tsubo, for example, of superficies, he knows that one hundred mats can be spread there, and as he is quite familiar with the space enclosed in a room of six mats, or eight mats, or ten mats and so on, he obtains at once a clear conception of the number of rooms that such a house may contain and their size. He speaks, also, of the cost of building at so much a tsubo, and can thus estimate at once the expense of erecting a house with a given amount of accommodation.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 53.
Note 53.—The paper of that time was not sufficiently tough to be fitted for such a purpose.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 54.
Note 54.—Echigo is now the chief centre of kerosene production in Japan.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 55.
Note 55.—The custom of putting red and gold on the lip had not yet been introduced.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 56.
Note 56.—Tea and two varieties of sake. The sake, or rice-beer, of that time was brewed just as it is at present. But, after brewing, it was often mixed with ashes of the Clerodendron tricotomum to give it a bitter taste. It then received the name of "black sake."
- ↑ See Appendix, note 57.
Note 57.—It is uncertain when tea was introduced into Japan. As early as the reign of Shomu (724-748), a tea-drinking entertainment took place in the Palace. The Buddhist
- ↑ See Appendix, note 58.
Note 58.—A spray of flowers thus attached to a present was called kokoro-bana (blossom of the heart; i. e. flower of good wishes). Originally real flowers were used, but subsequently artificial blossoms were substituted or even ribbons. In a still later age, it became customary to decorate with a paper butterfly the handle of a vessel used for pouring out sake on occasions of congratulation, and it is believed that the modern habit of attaching coloured paper to a gift had its origin in the "heart-blossom."
- ↑ See Appendix, note 59.
Note 59.—The annals of the Heian epoch contain the names of five celebrated flutes, four guitars, and nine harps. The names given to them were such as "Verdant leaves," "Rippling current," "Summer landscape," "Restful peace," "Autumn wind," "Pine-scented breeze," "Memories of the past," and so on.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 60.
Note 60.—Sung by the celebrated Shizuka when, after her parting from Yoshitsune, she had to dance before his brother and enemy Yoritomo.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 61.
Note 61.—Fille de joie. The term makes its appearance for the first time in books written at the beginning of the tenth century.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 62.
Note 62.—A striking illustration of the part played by women and of the morality of this Court is furnished in the closing scene of the Heian epoch. The Emperor Toba gave his heart to a concubine, Toku (afterwards called Bifuku-mon-in). The heir-apparent, Sutoku, though nominally Toba's son by his consort Soshi, was suspected to be the son of his grandfather, Shirakawa, who had been a lover of Soshi. Toba, at the instigation of his mistress Toku, caused the heir-apparent to step aside in favour of Toku's son. But the latter died childless at an early age. Sutoku then seeking to recover his birthright, was opposed by the lady Toku, who maintained that her son had been done to death by Sutoku's incantations. These complications inaugurated the struggle between the two great clans of Minamoto and Taira, and plunged the nation into a succession of sanguinary wars.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 63.
Note 63.—The names of these courtesans are appended to poems in three of the Japanese classical anthologies.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 64.
Note 64.—The reader will observe that a serf marriage was legally recognised. It was not a mere contubernium, as in Rome. In many respects, as indeed might be expected, the condition of the serf in Japan resembled that of the slave in Athens.