ians
during the past two generations. From being a race manifesting marked
deficiency in music they have developed astonishing musical taste and
ability. During a recent visit to these islands after an absence of
twenty-seven years, I attended a Sunday-school exhibition, which was
largely a musical contest; the voices were sweet and rich; and the
difficulty of the part songs, easily carried through by children and
adults, revealed a musical sense that surpasses any ordinary Sunday
school of the United States or England with which I am acquainted.

The development of Japanese literature likewise conspicuously
reflects the ruling ideas of the social order, and reveals the
dependence of literary taste on the order. As in other aspects in
Japanese aesthetic development, so in this do we see marked lack of
balance. "It is wonderful what felicity of phrase, melody of
versification, and true sentiment can be compressed within the narrow
limits (of the Tanka). In their way nothing can be more perfect than
some of these little poems."[U] The deficiencies of Japanese poetry
have been remarked by the foreigners most competent to judge. The
following general characterization from the volume just quoted merits
attention.

"Narrow in its scope and resources, it is chiefly remarkable for
its limitations--for what it has not, rather than what it has. In
the first place there are no long poems. There is nothing which
even remotely resembles an epic--no Iliad or Divina Commedia--not
even a Nibelungen Lied or Chevy Chase. Indeed, narrative poems of
any kind are short and very few, the only ones which I have met
with being two or three ballads of a sentimental cast. Didactic,
philosophical, political, and satirical poems are also
conspicuously absent. The Japanese muse does not meddle with such
subjects, and it is doubtful whether, if it did, the native Pegasus
possesses sufficient staying power for them to be dealt with
adequately. For dramatic poetry we have to wait until the
fourteenth century. Even then there are no complete dramatic poems,
but only dramas containing a certain poetical element.

"Japanese poetry is, in short, confined to lyrics, and what, for
want of a better word, may be called epigrams. It is primarily an
expression of emotion. We have amatory verse poems of longing for
home and absent dear ones, praise of love and wine, eleg