Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/215

THE HEIAN EPOCH women surrendered themselves to the poetical delirium, so that a dainty thought deftly expressed came to be counted a sufficient price for a lady's virtue. Imperial concubines received the addresses of court officials. To rob a man of his wife did not shock society. Brothers and cousins suffered such thefts at each other's hands. Fujiwara no Tokihira, regent and prime minister, purchased his uncle's wife. Mothers received the embraces of their step-sons. Such vices among the patrician classes found a rude reflection in the conduct of the plebeians. Women were expected, or compelled, to be facile under all circumstances, and in the general extermination of shame Buddhist priests took their part by openly violating their vows of celibacy or abandoning the cowl for the sake of pursuing an illicit intrigue.

This immorality was not accompanied by immodesty. On the contrary, social punctilio exacted the closest observance. A love affair might be notorious, but it must never be scandalous or obtrusive. Even the preliminaries of marriage consisted often in an interchange of letters and poems rather than in meetings or conversations. A man estimated the conjugal qualities of a young lady by her skill in finding scholarly similes and her perception of the cadence of words. If, indeed, a woman was so fortunate as to acquire a reputation for learning, she possessed a certificate of universal virtue and 189