Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/213



manufacture of Tanka at the court of the Mikado proceeded, as usual, during these periods of Japanese history. They were duly collected into anthologies from time to time; but as they present no features specially worthy of notice, and as they are admittedly much inferior in merit to the verse of earlier times, it is needless to dwell upon them here. A far greater interest belongs to a new development of the poetic art which now demands our attention, namely, the Nō or lyrical drama.

Like the ancient Greek tragedies and the mystery plays of the Middle Ages, the drama in Japan was in its beginnings closely associated with religion. Its immediate parent was the Kagura, a pantomimic dance, which is performed at this day to the sound of fife and drum at Shinto festivals, on a platform provided for the purpose. The antiquity of the Kagura may be inferred from the fact that when the Kojiki(A.D. 712) and the Nihongi (A.D. 720) were written, there was already a myth current which was intended as an explanation of its origin. The Sun Goddess, it is related, disgusted at the unseemly pranks of her brother Susa-no-wo, shut herself up in the rock-cave of heaven and left