Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/290

 her son had been done to death by Sutoku's incantations. These complications inaugurated the struggle between the two great clans of Minamoto and Taira, and plunged the nation into a succession of sanguinary wars.  —The names of these courtesans are appended to poems in three of the Japanese classical anthologies.  —The reader will observe that a serf marriage was legally recognised. It was not a mere contubernium, as in Rome. In many respects, as indeed might be expected, the condition of the serf in Japan resembled that of the slave in Athens. 