9
forced, thus producing a laboured appearance. The expression of fictitious sentiment about the relations of the sexes and miscellaneous subjects, is not genuine poetry.”[1] Kada, true to his own principles, never wrote a line of amatory poetry. We can readily understand his contempt for the modern versifiers, when we recall the picture of licentiousness which some of the verses in the popular collection called hiakunïn shiu present. What in English must be disguised wider the name of love was too often mere sensual passion indulged in at the expense of the most sacred domestic relations. During the middle ages it seems to have been the practice for persons skilled in the trifling art of making stanzas of thirty-one syllables to assemble at drinking parties, and to draw lots for subjects to write about. The 67th stanza of this collection contains an allusion to this custom.
Atsutané has a note in the Tamadasuki the object of which is to refute the common notion that Keichiu, Motoori and Mabuchi ought to be considered the ancestors of the antiquarian school, to the exclusion of Kada. The cause of this notion is that the men who entertain it are merely versifiers and take verse-making to be an essential part of the labours of the antiquarians. Keichiu, who was a Buddhist priest, certainly did some service in editing the Manyôshiu, but to praise Mabuchi and Motoori for their poetry alone is to misapprehend the real character of the work they performed. This consisted in the revival of Shintô, and poetry was merely secondary with them. Kada’s memorial proves that he was the founder of the school of Pure Shintô. Mabuchi was his pupil, and Motoori in his turn the pupil of Mabuchi.
Kada had no children of his own, and adopted his nephew Arimaro (1706-1751). Arimaro came to Yedo, and taught his uncle’s views with some success. He was particularly learned in that branch of Japanese archæology which deals with the ancient system of Government under the Mikados, and having attracted the notice of
- ↑ Preface of Nobuyoshi to the collection of Kada’s verses entitled Shunyoshiu, quoted in the Tamadasuki, vol. IX, p. 6.
