paper backed with Chinese silk. The cover was of a reddish violet tinge, the rollers being of sandal-wood,—by no means an extraordinary get-up. The moderns then proceeded to defend their own exhibit; 'Toshikage,'[1] they said, 'though buffeted by wind and wave, pitched headlong into a stormy sea and in the end cast up upon an unknown shore, pursued, undaunted by suffering and disaster, the purpose which he had set before him, and succeeded at last in displaying, both at the foreign Court[2] and in our own country, the marvellous talent which it had cost him so much to acquire. The adventures of so dauntless a character, affording as they do a comparison between the manners of the Land Beyond the Sea and of our own Land of Sunrise, cannot fail to be of interest; moreover the same contrast has been maintained in the style of the pictures as in the matter of the text.'
It was painted on thick white paper such as poem-slips are made of, the outer cover was of blue paper and the roller of yellow jade. The artist was Tsunenori;[3] the scribe, Onō no Michikaze,[4]—a combination that could hardly have been more dazzling in its fashionableness and modernity. Against such claims as these the partisans of the antique were quite unable to prevail and Lady Chūjō's side scored the overwhelming victory.
In the next contest the Tales of Ise[5] were pitted against the story of Shō Sammi.[6] A long discussion ensued; but
- ↑ Having set out from Japan to China he was wrecked on the coast of Persia, where he acquired a magic zithern and the knowledge of unearthly tunes, armed with which he won great fame as a musician in China and Japan. See Aston's History of Japanese Literature, p. 76, and above, p. 16.
- ↑ China.
- ↑ Asukabe Tsunenori, flourished about 964 A.D.
- ↑ Also called Ono no Dōfū, the most celebrated calligraphist of Japan.
- ↑ A collection of short love-episodes, each centring round a poem or poems. See Aston's History of Japanese Literature, p. 80
- ↑ Already lost in the 15th century.
