Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/73

Rh the language consists. It was no easy matter to remember so many, either in reading or in writing. To meet these difficulties the Japanese did two things: they restricted themselves to a limited number of characters for use as phonetic signs, and they wrote these in an abbreviated or cursive form. There are two varieties of the script thus produced, which are known as the Katakana and Hiragana. No exact date can be assigned for their introduction, but for the present purpose it is sufficient to know that both had come into use by the end of the ninth century. They simplified writing enormously. It is hardly too much to say that without them the labour of committing to paper the lengthy compositions of this period would have given pause to the most industrious scribes.