and extermination, are touchingly told in the Heike Monogatari, the rhythm and pathos of which made it a favourite with blind musicians who sang its most poetic passages to the accompaniment of the biwa, a four-stringed lute. This was the origin of the Japanese lyrical drama. A century and a half after the fall of the Taira clan, when the Hojo family who had usurped the authority of their liege, the Minamoto shogun, began to decline, an attempt was made to uphold the supreme power of the Emperor in fact as well as in name; but just when success seemed within reach of the loyalists, the Ashikaga family deserted the Imperial cause and seized the Shogunate, which they held for two centuries. This war for the supremacy of the rightful Emperor, with its numerous romantic incidents, is recounted in the Taiheiki, a work of little historical value though written by one who lived in those times, which, however, being composed in an elegant and poetical style and teeming with adventures of every kind, became a favourite alike with the scholar and the soldier. This book was often read to young men of the military class to incite them to the emulation of the heroes of the valorous deeds recorded therein. In course of time, the recital of this and similar works became a regular profession.
Hideyoshi, better known as the Taiko, who had risen from the ranks to be the most powerful general in the latter half of the sixteenth century, was intimate with artists, poets, and other men of peaceful calling, whose society he sought in his leisure hours. Among the best known of these associates were Rikiu, the first master of the tea ceremony in his day, and Sorori, a man of great wit, whose position in the Taiko’s court was almost identical with that of jesters in the courts of mediæval Europe. Numberless anecdotes, for the most part apocryphal, are told of Sorori’s ready wit, and many a witticism, of which he was innocent, is fathered upon him and, on the strength of his traditional reputation,
