Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/318

278 in 1185, the widows and daughters of the defeated Taira clan "were forced for daily bread to sell their bodies in the streets of Shimonoseki." But at least four centuries before that date the Hetaira had begun to set her mark on history and literature.

The poetry of the Nara period, which reflects the elegant court-culture of the eighth century and is represented by Manyoshiu ("The Collection of One Thousand Leaves"), was largely written by women, and contains at least one song by a "jūgyōjōfu," or "woman who goes about for pleasure." The kugutsu, who were summoned by innkeepers for the convenience of guests and were of much lower status, composed many famous little songs, whose memory has survived that of their authors. But the first light-o'-love whose orb burns brightly on the stormy darkness of the twelfth century, when Taira and Minamoto deluged the rice-fields with blood, was Tora Gozen. The most beautiful courtesan in Oiso, she became the mistress of the elder Soga, who slew his father's murderer in the hunting camp of the Shōgun Yoritomo at the foot of Fuji. Their tale is told in an historical novel, "Soga Monogatari," and the tourist who descends from the sulphur-springs of Ashinoyu to Lake Hakone will still pass on his way three monuments of stone, the smallest being commemorative of Tora. More striking still is the tribute paid to Takao, another type of immortal frailty, who refused with scorn the Lord of Sendai's offer to become his property. Endowed with every accomplishment, she enjoyed a higher social position than the geisha of those days, and regaining her freedom, was faithful (so far as professional exigencies would allow) to a lover of humble rank. Not only has her native hamlet of Shiogama erected a memorial-stone to