Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/140

 Ladies further employed in naming dishes a vocabulary entirely different from that used by man.

It is plain, even from the outlines sketched here and elsewhere, that to be a master or mistress of polite accomplishments in Japan during the Military epoch, to understand the flower-arranging art, the tea and the incense cults (which will be spoken of presently), the etiquette of the table, the principles of poetical composition, and the elaborate dance movements, required long and industrious study.

There was no noteworthy change in great people's manner of going abroad, as compared with the Heian epoch. They still used six kinds of ox-carriage and four kinds of palanquin. The palanquin, which was in effect a light ox-carriage with the wheels removed and the shafts carried to the same length behind as in front, found, in this time, more favour than the ox-carriage. It received great modification at the hands of Yoshimasa, the prince of dilettanti. He substituted a single pole for the two shafts, and suspended the vehicle from the pole instead of supporting it on the shafts. Thus was obtained the kago, which played much the same part in old Japan as the jinrikisha does to-day. The kago held one person. Two men carried it, resting the pole on their shoulders, and trained bearers thought nothing of walking thirty miles a day, thus loaded.