JAPAN
the sovereign of England to his Ministers and leading civil and military officials, or at a reception by the President of the United States in the White House, pens and paper were handed round, and all the guests were invited to spend several hours composing versicles on themes set by Mr. McKinley or King Edward, and further, if the pastime were repeated again and again, day after day, until the construction of couplets became an engrossing national occupation, such a state of affairs would represent with tolerable accuracy the custom that began to come into vogue in the middle of the seventh century,—a custom which produced its best results from a literary point of view a hundred years later in the Nara epoch, and continued in an even increasing degree through several generations.
But although this poetic mania is here associated with the introduction of Chinese literature, it did not derive its metric inspiration from that source. The Japanese system of versification is their own,[1] nor did their poets borrow anything from the treasures of Chinese literature. It is a system radically different from the Chinese system; radically different from the system of any other country, Eastern or Western. Uniquely in this one path they ignored their neighbour's influence, and wrote unrhymed lines which derived their poetic character solely from the rhythmic beat of a fixed number of syllables, five followed by
- ↑ See Appendix, note 31.
152
