Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/86

Rh ard predicting that fate had evil things in store for a family so infatuated as "to abandon the city of flowers in full bloom and go forth into the bleak wilderness; and when the Taira leader, Koremori, returned with an army which had failed to effect anything against the rival house of Minamoto, a writing was found next morning on the gate of his stronghold declaring that he was rushing to his ruin as swiftly as the current of Fuji River leaped towards the sea. Displays of cowardice, departures from the "path of the soldier," or acts of disloyalty, seldom failed to evoke satirical censure of this nature, and a cleverly turned couplet was as potent to invoke public ridicule or execration as is a leading article in a modern newspaper.

It will be observed that the middle and lower orders have not been spoken of in connection with the pursuits and pastimes here described. But they were not wholly excluded. They had their tea ceremonials, their incense parties, their dancing, their landscape gardening, and above all, their gambling, fashioned after aristocratic models, though on a greatly reduced scale. They had also their religious festivals and their fêtes, which will be spoken of independently. It was always characteristic of the Japanese that the fashions of the "upper ten" found imitators on the lowest planes of society. This is especially true in the matter of dancing. From the sixteenth century it became the custom to organise general