Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/124

 ments is the kōdan, or historical narrative, known until recent years under the name of gundan (war story). In old-time Japan the life of the aristocrat and his doings lay entirely beyond the close scrutiny of every one outside the military class, that is to say, entirely beyond the scrutiny of fully nine-tenths of the nation. The warlike motives and methods of the patrician remained always a mystery to the commoner. Such a state of affairs would certainly have resulted in the growth of a large school of historical romancists had the pen enjoyed any freedom. But the exclusiveness of the samurai asserted itself as sharply in the domain of literature as in that of society, and although records of military incidents were compiled from time to time, they seldom rose above skeleton narratives without a breath of animation to stir their dry bones. To Buddhist priests is due the initiative in a movement which ultimately became a useful means of familiarising the masses with the salient events of their country's history. The priests, however, had no such purpose at the outset. The new rôle that they struck out, in the early years of the fourteenth century, aimed solely at opening to Japanese aristocrats the pages of China's warlike annals. Alike in literature and in the art of war the Buddhist friars of mediæval Japan were the repositories of knowledge, the great majority of the samurai knowing only how to fight. Thus there occurred to a learned abbot (Genkei)