Page:Hundredversesfro00fujiuoft.djvu/7



Hyaku-nin-isshiu, or ‘Single Verses by a Hundred People’, were collected together in 1235 by Sadaiye Fujiwara, who included as his own contribution verse No. 97. They are placed in approximately chronological order, and range from about the year 670 to the year of compilation. The Japanese devote themselves to poetry very much more than we do; and there is hardly a home in Japan, however humble, where these verses, or at least some of them, are not known. They are, and have been for many years, used also in connexion with a game of cards, in which the skill consists in fitting parts of the different verses together.

Japanese poetry differs very largely from anything we are used to; it has no rhyme or alliteration, and little, if any, rhythm, as we understand it. The verses in this Collection are all what are called Tanka, which was for many years the only form of verse known to the Japanese. A tanka verse has five lines