CHAPTER II
HISTORICAL WORKS
The authorship of the Gempei Seisuiki is doubtfully ascribed to one Hamuro Tokinaga, of whom we know little or nothing. He is also conjectured to have written the Heiji Monogatari and Hōgen Monogatari, but of this too there is no certainty. The precise date of its composition is likewise unknown. It must belong to the early part of the Kamakura period.
The Gempei Seisuiki, as its name indicates, is a history of the rise and fall of the Gen, and Hei, two great noble families whose struggles for supremacy convulsed Japan during the latter half of the twelfth century. It is in forty-eight books, and embraces the period from A.D. 1161 to 1185. No doubt itself suggested by the Chinese Yengi or "Paraphrases of History," of which the San-kwo-chih is the best known, the Gempei Seisuiki is the first example in Japan of a large class of quasi-historical works to which there is nothing precisely similar in our literature, though a comparison with Shakespeare's historical plays will convey some idea of the relative proportions of fact and fiction which they contain. They have no original plot, and little or no introduction of imaginary personages. The writers content themselves with following the general course of real history, while adorning it with what flourish their nature prompts.
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