Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/172

 fluent speech created a new epoch. Sōrai took for models the poetry of the Tang dynasty and the literature of the Sui and the Kan, and his methods were assisted by men of letters who had immigrated from China, and whose instruction in the sounds of the ideographs had the effect of imparting unprecedented value to rhetoric. Yet these drafts upon China's wealth of philosophy and erudition served rather as grounds for new departures than as models for exact imitation. The tendency of the era was towards originality in everything. History received treatment that might almost be called scientific at the hands of Arai Hakuseki. The emotions and passions of humanity found a great dramatic portrayer in Chikamatsu Monzayemon. Elegance and conciseness of phraseology had an unsurpassed exponent in Matsuo Bashō, the celebrated composer of impressionist stanzas. Keichiu successfully rehabilitated the memory of Japan's ancient age of classic poetry, the age which produced "The Collection of a Thousand Leaves" (Manyoshiu). Kitamura Kigiu performed a similar office for the Heian epoch. Kada Azuma-maro and his great pupil, Kamo Mabuchi, purged the Japanese language of its exotic elements, and revivified popular faith in the divinity of the Throne and in the traditions of Imperial government. In brief, men's thoughts shook off the trammels of convention; material prosperity asserted its superiority over caste distinctions; the nation,