Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/615

LITERATURE.] JAPAN 587 ient The earliest of the extant Japanese records is a work entitled rds. the Kojiki, or "Record of Ancient Matters," commonly asserted to date from the year 711. Prior to that time, in 620 and again in 681, two other works treating of ancient Japanese history are said to have been compiled, but neither has been, preserved. The emperor Temmu (673-686 A.U.), according to the preface to the Kojiki, resolved to take measures to preserve the true traditions from oblivion, and he therefore had all the records then existing carefully examined, compared, and purged of their faults. Their contents were then committed to memory by a person in the imperial household, named Hiyeda no Are. Before this record could be reduced to writing, the emperor died, and for twenty-five years Are s memory was the sole deposi tory of what afterwards became the Kojiki. At the end of this interval the empress Gemmio (708-715) commanded one of her ministers to write it down from the mouth of Are, and the work was thus completed at the end of the year 711. Soon after this, in 720, another work was completed entitled the Niliongi, or "Japanese Record," which is said to have so far superseded the Kojiki that the latter was almost forgotten. The Nihonyi, like the Kojiki, appeared during the reign of an empress (Gensho, 715- 723), and the yet earlier work of the year 620 was commenced under the auspices of the empress Suiko (593-628); the person called Are is also by some supposed to have been a woman. The Kojiki is to a very large extent pure Japanese, while in the Niliongi there are to be found numerous traces of direct Chinese influence: the chief object of the one was to preserve the form and spirit of Japanese antiquity, while the other rather fell in with the growing adoption of Chinese ideas. Both works may be described as ancient his tories, purporting to commence from the "divine age" and the very origin of all things, and replete with allusions to Japanese cosmogony and legends of antiquity ; they are held to be the chief exponents of the Shinto faith, or " way of the gods. " They formed a basis for many subsequent works of almost similar style, and were the subject of numerous commentaries. Of these latter writings the one demanding special mention is the Kojiki-den, an edition of the Kojiki with an elaborate commentary by a renowned scholar named Motoovi Norinaga, who lived during the 18th century. It was com menced in 1764, but the first part was not completed until 1786 ; the second was finished in 1792, and the concluding portion in 1796. The printing of this great work was begun in 1789, and concluded in 1822, Motoori himself having died in 1801. * r Fcramost among the later Japanese historical works is the Daini- Dries. honshi, or " History of Great Japan," in two hundred and forty book*. This was composed under the direction of one of lyeyasu s grandsons, the famous second lord of Mito (1622-1700), com monly known as Mito no Komonsama. This illustrious noble was a noted patron of literature, and collected a vast library by pur chasing old books from various temples or shrines arid from the people. At the old castle-town of Mito (in the province of Hitachi) there are still pointed out the ruins of this noble s library build ings, situated for greater safety within the castle moat, hard by the palace. Tradition says that among the numerous scholars who aided the lord of Mito in compiling the Dainihonshi there were several learned Chinese who had fled to Japan from the tyranny of their Manchu conquerors. This book is the standard history of Japan to the present day, and all subsequent writers on the same subject have taken it as their guide. Of all the succeeding histories the most worthy of note is the Nihon Guaishi, or " External History of Japan," by an author named Rai Sanyo (born 1780, died 1832), who also composed several other works, all of them in classical Chinese. The Guaishi is the most widely read, and forms the chief source from which Japanese men of education derive their knowledge of the history of their own country. It was first published in 1827, and numbers twenty-two volumes ; the author was occupied for no less than twenty years in its composition ; and ne appends a list of two hundred and fifty -nine Japanese and Chinese works from which he drew his materials. The book treats, in order, of the great families that held supremacy after the commencement of the military domination and the decadence of the mikado s authority, and thus introduces the reader to the Taira, Minamoto, Hojo, Kusunoki, Nitta, Ashikaga, later H6J6, Takeda, Uyesugi, Mori, Ota, Toyotomi. and Tokugawa houses. Many of these sections are necessarily very short, as they treat of only one or perhaps two generations, but the records of the chief clans are of considerable length. The writer invariably identifies himself with the particular family in each case, and thus the transactions of two or more factions who strove together for the supreme power at certain epochs have to be detailed twice or even thrice, each time from a different point of view and with varied colouring. The whole period thus rehearsed extends from the middle of the 12th century to the beginning of the 18th. Many other historical works exist, written in less learned style, and adapted for popular reading and the instruction of young students. The Gempci SeisuiH, or "Record of the Rise and Fall of the Gen and JTei,"is a noteworthy specimen 1 Sec a mo>t interesting paper entitled " The Revival of Pure ShintS," by E. Satow. in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. iii.. 1874-5. of its class ; it treats only of the two rival clans of Minamoto and Taira, and of the deeds and feats of arms performed by the heroes on both sides. Most of these popular histories are illustrated by woodcuts, in many cases taken from portraits, &c., in ancient scrolls or paintings. Poetry having always been a favourite study, it is not surprising Poetry, that there should exist numerous volumes of verses either written or collected by the old court nobles. Of these the most ancient is the Manyoshiu, or " Collection of a Myriad Leaves," which dates probably froin early in the 8th century. But this work, notwith standing its great antiquity, is perhaps less familiar to the Japanese than the Hiakuninshiu, or "Collection of One Hundred Persons," which appeared considerably later, and includes some pieces written by emperors themselves. This was followed by almost numberless minor volumes of the same kind. Verse-making attained to such favour that it was a usual custom for one of the nobles to invito together several of his friends noted for their scholarship, solely for the purpose of passing away the time in this occupation. The collections thus obtained were either kept in the original manuscript or printed for convenience. The verses were in nearly all cases in the style known as uta, which may be described as the purer Japan ese ode as opposed to the shi, or style of Chinese poetry introduced in later years, and much affected by men of learning. The uta usually consists of thirty-one syllables, the arrangement being in what may be called 5 lines, containing 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables respectively. The meaning is continuous, though there is often a slight break at the end of the third line, what follows being in antithesis to what has gone before, or a fresh simile with iden tical meaning but a varied expression. Thus if the position of the two portions of the whole uta be reversed, the meaning is generally in no way altered. Each uta is complete in itself, and expresses one single idea. The Japanese do not possess any great epics, or any didactic poems, though some of their lyrics are happy examples of quaint ways of thought and modes of expression. It is", however, a hard task to .translate them into a foreign tongue with any hope of giving an exact rendering of the allusions contained in the original. 2 The uta are often inscribed on long strips of varie gated paper; and it is even now a common practice, when offering a present, to send with it a verse composed for the occasion by the donor. Again, even down to very recent times, when a man had determined to commit suicide, or was about to hazard his life in some dangerous enterprise, it was by no means uncommon for him to compose and leave behind him a verse descriptive of his intention and of the motive urging him to the deed. It is stated in Japanese histories that Sanotomo, the third and last sMgun of the Minamoto house, was so .extravagantly fond of poetry that any criminal could escape punishment by offering him a stajiza. Probably the largest section of Japanese literature is tlrat treat- Geo- ing of the local geography of the country itself. The works on grapliy. this subject are exceedingly numerous, and include guide-books, itineraries, maps and plans, notes on celebrated localities, &c. In most cases only one particular province or neighbourhood forms tie subject of the one book, but as very minute details are usually given these works are often of considerable length. Every province in Japan possesses many scenes of historic interest, and can boast of ancient temples, monuments, and other memorials of the past (this is especially the case in those lying immediately around Kioto or Tokio); and it is to preserve and hand down the old traditions relat ing to them that these guides to celebrated localities have been compiled. They have much resemblance to the county histories in England. Although mainly geographical, they contain no inconsider able store of historical information, which, as a rule, is printed at the head of each section. The traveller can thus ascertain without diffi culty the names of the principal villages, rivers, hills, &c., and can decide what temples, shrines, or monuments along his route are worthy of a visit. Inns, ferries, lodging-houses, &c. , receive par ticular attention. The Japanese maps are not, as a whole, very Map -, correct ; the greater part are struck from wooden blocks, copper plate engraving having been but lately introduced. Many of the sheets are coloured. The roads are laid down with some degree of care, and distinctive marks are allotted to the former castle-towns, the , post-towns, and the minor villages ; the distance from one town to its nearest neighbour is usually added in small characters along the line indicating the road. Very few maps include the whole of the country ; most of them show only a few provinces, and some consist of a series of engravings, each plate being devoted to a single province. Plans of all the cities and of the larger towns are easily procured, and these are drawn for the most part very cor rectly ; there are also road-books of the chief highways showing simply the towns, rivers, &c., along the route in question, much used by travellers in the interior. There are not many works on art, though there have been pub Art. lished several collections of engravings from drawings by famous Japanese painters. Of late years, however, some slight impetus has been given to this branch of literature, and many of the older 2 See the masterly treatise on this subject, entitled Classical Poetry of tfa Japanese, by B. H. Chamberlain, London, 1880.