Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/216

JAPAN. Therefore polite society tabooed every form of wooing more demonstrative than the use of pen and paper. Nothing could exceed the decorum of the aristocratic lady. She hid her depravity behind a mask of demureness. To allow her face to be seen in public or her voice to be heard by a stranger was a shocking solecism. If she had not a carriage to ride abroad, she covered her face with a hood. She never addressed a man of the lower orders except through a servant, and even then did not permit him to ascend to the level where she sat. With one of a better, though still inferior, grade she conversed directly, divided from him, however, by a paper sliding-door; and the next step of condescension was to talk from behind a screen, hiding her face with a fan. Even her own step-brother must not be met face to face.

The pastimes of the upper classes reached their highest point of elaboration in this era. At the head of all stood the game of competitive-couplet making (uta-awase). The manner of this pursuit, as practised in the Nara epoch, has already been briefly described. New importance was given to it by the Empress Kōkō, at the close of the ninth century. In her Palace of Horikawa she organised poem parties on an unprecedented scale. The proprieties were strictly observed. On one side of the room the ladies were marshalled, on the other the men, and a genuine contest of literary skill ensued, every guest being required to 190