Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/54

 to live the life which preceded the twelfth century. Their costumes were of the eleventh, their etiquette of the tenth century. They read Chinese with the intonation of the Tang period, and danced to the classic measure of the Bugaku music, the inheritance of an era preceding the ninth century. They delighted in the purism of the Fujiwara poetry, and affected the technic of the ancient school of painting. It is to their devotion to the past that we owe the preservation of the Kharma-kanda (ritualistic observances) of India and the early Buddhist doctrines of China.

The Tokugawa government humored and honored the court nobles because of their association with the Mikado and the place they occupied in the history of the nation. The kuges were given precedence over the daimios, and