Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/22

 question of smelling incense: it was a literary pursuit, designed in great part for testing the players' knowledge of classical poetry and their ability to apply the knowledge. Burning incense had been fashionable in Japan long before the Military epoch. As early as the seventh century, the names of twenty-four varieties of fragrant wood were known and used, the prince of them all being ranjatai, a quantity of which was imported by the Emperor Shomu (724—748) and placed in the temple Todai-ji. After the establishment of the military administration at Kamakura, it became the custom that each Shōgun, on receipt of his patent from the Throne, should repair to the temple, and cut off a small portion of the incense for his own use. The celebrated Ashikaga chief, Takauji, performed this ceremony with much state, and even the bluff soldier Oda Nobunaga did not neglect it. Not yet, however, had the pastime of "listening to incense"—a devotee never spoke of "smelling" or "sniffing" but always of "listening"—been elaborated into the form afterwards so fashionable. Shino Soshin, who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is regarded as the "father" of the pursuit, but it had undoubtedly received a great impulse from that king of dilettante, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, and his protégés Shukō and Soami, the founders of the tea cult. Now, for the first time, compound incenses began to be manufactured, so that the disciples of the Shino