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” “Sinecures and jobbery in the matter of promotions are steps towards the downfall of the State, and fatal to the permanence of the royal office.” ' Another work by Chikafusa is the Gengenshzu, in eight volumes. It contains a resumé of the myths which are articles of the Shinto faith. Like the /znkdshotoki, the celebrated work named Tatheiki is a history of the attempts of the Mikado Go Daigo to shake off the domination of the “ Eastern Bar- barians,” as the Kamakura Shoguns and their adherents 170 JAPANESE LITERATURE were called, and of the civil wars arising out of these enterprises which distracted Japan for more than forty years. The edition entitled Zachetkt Sdmoku has an introduc- tion purporting to relate the circumstances under which this work was compiled, on the authority of a “tradition,” the sources of which are unknown to us. Begun, it is said, at the instance of the Mikado Go Daigo, by a priest named Genye, it was continued by other priests at various times, until its completion in 1382. These writers, we are told, based their narratives on infor- mation obtained directly from the Shogun Takauji, Nitta Yoshisada, Kusunoki Masashige, and other chief actors in the political events of the day. Recent inves- tigation, however, seems to show that the author was really a priest named KoJIMA, probably belonging to one of the three thousand monasteries of Hiyeisan, who died in 1374, but of whom nothing further is known. If this be correct, either the former account is an imposture, of which there are not a few in the literary annals of Japan, or Kojima may have utilised materials collected in the manner just described. Internal evidence points to the Tathetkt being the work of one person who wrote some time after the events related, and who owed much more to his imagination than to direct communication with the heroes of his story. It begins with a sketch of the history of the Shogunate from its foundation by Yoritomo in 1181, and then goes on to describe the political condition of Japan at the accession of Go Daigo in 1319. The events of this reign, which ended in 1339, are given in considerable detail, and the work is continued to the close of the reign of Go Murakami (1368). TAIHEIKI 171 The Tazhezki, as it has come down to us, contains several chapters which have little or nothing to do with the general plan of the work, and look very like inter- polations by some later writer. Such are the chapters on “ Rebellions in Japan,” on the conquest of Yamato by Jimmu Tenn, on the Corean expedition of Jingd Kogu, and on the Mongol invasion of Japan by Kublai Khan. The addenda in the Sdmoku edition form, of course, no part of the original work. Tatheikt or “Record of Great Peace” is a strange name for the history of one of the. most disturbed periods that Japan has ever passed through. It presents a succession of intrigues, treasons, secret conspiracies, and open warfare, with wholesale sentences of death or banishment. This was not, however, the original name of the work. It was at first called Anki Yurazki or “Record of the Causes of Peace and Danger.” Another name for it was Kokuka Jirankt, or “ Record of the Cure of Civil Disturbance in the State.” These last titles rather suggest a philosophical history. But the Zazhezk7 is very much the reverse of this. It is clearly the work, not of a statesman or philosopher, but of a literary man intent on producing an ornate and romantic story. So long as this end is attained, fact and fiction are to him very much alike. It is difficult to say which predominates in his narrative. He is notoriously inaccurate in such matters as numbers, dates, and genealogies; but that is nothing to the way in which he embroiders his accounts of sieges and battles with details that cannot possibly have been handed down by eye-witnesses, and to the dreams, portents, and miraculous occurrences with which his story abounds. There are also numerous speeches, apparently adapted by him to the speaker and the / 172 JAPANESE LITERATURE occasion, but which, like those in Thucydides, have nevertheless a certain historical value. The serious way in which the commentators treat the Zazhezkz’s frequent excursions into the land of romance is not a little amusing. The style of Kojima (if he is the author) has been condemned by native critics as inflated and pedantic. It must be admitted that there is not a little truth in these charges. The Zazhezk¢ supplies abundant evidence of his erudition and command of all the resources of Chinese and Japanese rhetoric. His pages at times are highly charged with Chinese words and phrases, and fairly bristle with Chinese historical allusions and quotations. In this style of writing, a “ bamboo grove” means a family of princes, a “ pepper court” is put for the Imperial harem, “cloud guests” stand for courtiers, the Mikado’s carriage is termed the “ Phoenix Car,” and his face the ‘‘ Dragon Countenance.” A fair lady is said to put to shame Mao Ts’iang and Si She, famous beauties of Chinese antiquity. Civil war is a time when “ wolf- smoke obscures the heaven, and whale-waves shake the earth.” Kojima does not hesitate even to insert long episodes of Chinese and Indian history which present some resemblance to the events which he is describing, especially if they lend themselves to romantic treatment. Still more trying to the ordinary Western reader than his ostentatious display of Chinese learning is the Buddhist theology in which Kojima was plainly well versed, and of which there is more than enough in the Tatheikt. Students of the history of religion, however, will find this feature of the work interesting. Kojima is a typical case which illustrates the national propensity for compromise and arrangement in matters of faith, In y TAIHEIKI 173 the Zazheikt he makes an attempt to reconcile three essentially conflicting systems, viz., Chinese philosophy, Shinto mythology, and Buddhism, including with the latter the older Indian myths which found their way to Japan in its company. Thus in a passage near the end of Book XVI. he describes the Yin and Yang (the negative and positive principles of nature according to ‘the Chinese) as the origin and source of all things. These two elements by their mutual interaction evolve Izanagi and Izanami, the creator deities of the Shinto Pantheon. Their child Tenshddaijin (the Sun Goddess) proves to be a manifestation of Buddha, one of whose services to humanity was at some far remote period to subdue the “Evil Kings of the Six Heavens” of Indian myth, and compel them to withdraw their opposition to — the spread of the true doctrine (that is, Buddhism) in Japan. Kojima, however, does not always draw his inspiration from China or from theology. Like the Hezke Monoga- tari, the Tazhetkt contains a number of highly poetical passages which owe nothing to foreign models or ideas. In metre they resemble Naga-uta, except that the order of the alternation of five and seven syllable phrases is reversed. Words of Chinese origin are not wholly excluded. One of these passages describes the enforced journey of Toshimoto, an adherent of the Mikado Go Daigo, to Kamakura, where he was executed for treason to the Shogunate ; and another, that of the same Mikado, to an exile in the island of Oki. The names of places along the route are ingeniously woven into the narrative in such a way as to suggest reflections suitable to the circumstances. This feature of the Zazhezki has had an enormous influence on the work of the dramatists and 174 JAPANESE LITERATURE novelists of the Yedo period, as is shown by the nume- rous direct imitations of the passages just described (known as michtyukt or “journeys”), and by the rhythmical swing of the alternation of seven and five syllable phrases, due to its example, which pervades so much of the subsequent popular literature. Europeans who propose to take up the study of the Tathetki will be glad to learn that there still remains a good deal of straightforward, business-like narrative, which, though not without occasional florid phrases and picturesque touches, is laudably free from recondite allusions and obscure metaphors, perplexing to the un- learned, and condemned as pedantic even by those who understand them, The language of the 7Zazhetk¢ is very different from that of the writings of the Heian period. Simpler forms are substituted for the older, more elaborate grammatical structure, and the vocabulary is enriched by the accession of a vast number of Chinese words, which no longer, as formerly, are only admitted to the literature after a time of probation in the collo- quial speech, but are taken straight from Chinese books. The importance of the 7Zazhezk¢t in the history of Japanese literature is far greater than its intrinsic merits would lead us to expect. More than any other work it is the foundation of the modern hterary style, and its good and bad qualities generally are reflected in the writings of a host of imitators, direct or indirect. The events and personages which it describes are the themes of a very large share of the modern litera- ture of Japan, and allusions to it are continually met with, Its popularity is further testified to by the fact TAIHEIKI 17 e: that there sprang up at Yedo and Kidto a distinct class of professors who earned a living by giving Tai- hetkt readings. They correspond to the biwa-bonzes who chanted the Heke Monogatari. : The following is an account of a battle between the -Shogun’s adherents and the monks of Hiyeisan, who had for once espoused the Mikado’s cause. It was fought near Karazaki, on the shore of Lake Biwa.