s well as five of the Six National
Histories (Roku Kokushi), the Zoku Nihonki, the Nihon Koki, the Zoku
Nihon Koki, the Montoku Jitsuroku, and the Sandai Jitsuroku; and saw
a bureau of poetry (W aka-dokoro) established in Kyoto. Fine art also
was cultivated, and it is significant that calligraphy and painting
were coupled together in the current expression (shogwa) for products
of pictorial art. Kudara no Kawanari and Koze no Kanaoka, the first
Japanese painters to achieve great renown, flourished in the ninth
and tenth centuries, as did also a famous architect, Hida no Takumi.

INTERVAL BETWEEN THE CAPITAL AND THE PROVINCES

Thus, in the capital, Kyoto, where the Fujiwara family constituted
the power behind the Throne, refinements and luxury were constantly
developed, and men as well as women amused themselves composing
Chinese and Japanese poems, playing on musical instruments, dancing,
and making picnics to view the blossoms of the four seasons. But in
the provincial districts very different conditions existed. There,
men, being virtually without any knowledge of the ideographic script,
found the literature and the laws of the capital a sealed book to
them, and as for paying periodical visits to Kyoto, what that
involved may be gathered from the fact that the poet Tsurayuki's
return to the capital from the province of Tosa, where he had served
as acting governor, occupied one hundred days, as shown in his Tosa
Nikki (Diary of a Journey from Tosa), and that thirteen days were
needed to get from the mouth of the Yodo to the city. The pageant of
metropolitan civilization and magnificence never presented itself to
provincial eyes.

ORIGIN OF THE SHOEN

Much has already been said on the subject of land tenure; but as this
problem is responsible for some cardinal phases of Japanese history,
a brief resume will be useful here. There were four chief causes for
the existence of shoen, or manors. The first was reclamation. In the
year 723, it was decreed that persons who reclaimed land should
acquire a de facto title of tenure for three generations, and, twenty
years later, the tenure of title was made perpetual, limits of area
being fixed, however--1250 acres for princes and nobles of the first
rank, and thereafter by various gradations, to twenty-five acres for
a commoner. But these limits were not enforced, and in the year 767
it became necessary to issue a decree prohibiting further
reclamation, which was followed, se