Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/38

Rh right of property received so little respect that articles not in their possession were staked by gamblers, the loser pledging himself to steal them. Even the storehouses of temples and shrines were not safe against raids by unsuccessful gamesters, though not infrequently the winner of a sum of money sought to make reparation for previous acts of lawlessness by employing his gains to build or furnish a store for the sometime victim of his burglary. It has to be noted in partial extenuation of this disorderly conduct, that it was due, in some degree, to the contempt entertained by the military class for the other orders of the people, and that the priests, by their violence and extortion during the Heian epoch, had conferred on the men of the Military age a kind of right of retaliation. A samurai never thought of helping himself to the belongings of a comrade. He obeyed the theory that all sections of the nation were bound to contribute to the support of the military man, and that the highest codes of honour and integrity had binding force in the intercourse of military men only.

Singing and dancing were as much loved by the soldier in the provinces as they had ever been by the courtier in the capital. But there came into vogue now a new application of the former art; a kind of musical recitative, which never thereafter ceased to be popular. A Buddhist priest of the Tendai sect—Shinano Zenji Yukinaga—composed a prose epic based on the