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Rh the literary men of this period belonged. The question of authorship is, however, of minor importance, as the characteristics of the Nō are rather those of a school of writers than of individuals.

Whoever their authors may have been, their primary object was the promotion of piety. In some cases a patriotic or martial enthusiasm is the inspiring motive, and a love of nature is discernible in almost all, but the staple material is the mass of legends associated with the Buddhist and Shinto religions. A monk or guardian of a Shinto shrine is most frequently the chief personage of the play, and the virtue of hospitality to the priestly order, the sin of taking away life, the praise of particular deities, the uncertainty of life, and the transitoriness of human things are favourite themes with them.

In the Nō, next after religion comes poetry. Not that they are exactly poems. Purely lyrical passages are not wanting, but much, both from the point of view of metre and of diction, is undeniable prose. Not a little is in an intermediate style, in which the seven and five syllable phrases succeed one another with great irregularity, and the language is alloyed with a less poetic element. The admission of Chinese words, although in moderation, also tends to lower the poetic level. It will be remembered that these are rigorously excluded from the older classical poetry.

A very striking feature of the Nō is the lavish use which they make of the poetic devices mentioned in a previous chapter. Pillow-words are freely introduced, and parallelism is a common ornament. But the greatest favourite of all is the "pivot-word," which is employed in the Nō to an extent and in a manner previously unknown to