g (chobo and sugoroku). The vice
defied official restraint.

LITERATURE AND POETRY

Having no books of her own, Japan naturally borrowed freely from the
rich mine of Chinese literature. By the tutors of the Imperial
family, at the colleges of the capital, and in the provincial schools
the classics constituted virtually the whole curriculum. The
advantages of education were, however, enjoyed by a comparatively
small element of the population. During the Nara epoch, it does not
appear that there were more than five thousand students attending the
schools and colleges at one time. The aim of instruction was to
prepare men for official posts rather than to impart general culture
or to encourage scientific research. Students were therefore selected
from the aristocrats or the official classes only. There were no
printed books; everything had to be laboriously copied by hand, and
thus the difficulties of learning were much enhanced. To be able to
adapt the Chinese ideographs skilfully to the purposes of written
Japanese was a feat achieved by comparatively few. What the task
involved has been roughly described in the opening chapter of this
volume, and with what measure of success it was achieved may be
estimated from the preface to the Records (Kojiki), written by Ono
Yasumaro, from the Chronicles (Nihon Shoki) and from the Daiho
Ritsu-ryo, which three works may be called the sole surviving prose
essays of the epoch.

Much richer, however, is the realm of poetry. It was during the Nara
epoch that the first Japanese anthology, the Manyo-shu (Collection of
a Myriad Leaves), was compiled. It remains to this day a revered
classic and "a whole mountain of commentary has been devoted to the
elucidation of its obscurities." [Chamberlain.] In the Myriad Leaves
are to be found poems dating nominally from the reigns of Yuryaku and
Nintoku, as well as from the days of Shotoku Taishi, but much more
numerous are those of Jomei's era (629-641) and especially those of
the Nara epoch. The compiler's name is not known certainly; he is
believed to have been either Tachibana no Moroe or Otomo no
Yakamochi. Old manuscripts and popular memory were the sources, and
the verselets total 4496, in twenty volumes. Some make love their
theme; some deal with sorrow; some are allegorical; some draw their
inspiration from nature's beauties, and some have miscellaneous
motives. Hitomaru, who flourished during the reign of the Empress
Jito (690-697), a