Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/391

Rh "Ten Wits," who flourished early in the eighteenth, and in their turn left imitators innumerable down to the present day.

Previous to the changes wrought by the revolution of 1868, it was considered one of the essential accomplishments of a Japanese gentleman to be able to write verses. This was not so difficult as might be imagined; for nothing was less honoured than originality. On the contrary, the old ideas had to be expressed in the old words, over and over again, plagiarism being accounted no crime, but rather a proof of wide reading and a retentive memory. Japanese gentlemen also composed Chinese verses, much as our schoolboys compose Latin verses. A good deal of all this still goes on. Numbers of persons, both men and women, make their living as teachers of the poetic art. Meetings are held, diplomas conferred, and time spent in elegant exercises, around which, as is the Japanese wont, a whole forest of technical terms has grown up. There lies before us the programme for 1904 of one of these teachers, an accomplished lady, whose poetry days are the first Sunday of each month. July and August are vacation time. The themes set for the other months, printed on neat little slips of paper and circulated among her friends and patronesses, are as follows, and may serve as specimens of a score of others:—