But there is no evidence that Buddhist rites were employed at funerals until the death of the retired Emperor Shomu (756). Thereafter, the practice became common. It was also to a Buddhist priest, Dosho, that Japan owed the inception of cremation. Dying in the year 700, Dosho ordered his disciples to cremate his body at Kurihara, and, two years later, the Dowager Empress Jito willed that her corpse should be similarly disposed of. From the megalithic tombs of old Japan to the little urn that holds the handful of ashes representing a cremated body, the transition is immense. It has been shown that one of the signal reforms of the Daika era was the setting of limits to the size of sepulchres, a measure which afforded to the lower classes much relief from forced labour. But an edict issued in 706 shows that the tendance of the resting place of the dead was still regarded as a sacred duty, for the edict ordered that, alike at the ancestral tombs of the uji and in the residential quarter of the common people, trees should be planted.
Not yet, however, does the custom of erecting monuments with inscriptions seem to have come into vogue. The Empress Gemmyo (d. 721) appears to have inaugurated that feature, for she willed not only that evergreens should be planted at her grave but also that a tablet should be set up there. Some historians hold that the donning of special garments by way of mourning had its origin at that time, and that it was borrowed from the Tang code of etiquette. But the Chronicles state that in the year A.D. 312, when the Prince Imperial committed suicide rather than occupy the throne, his brother, Osasagi, "put on plain unbleached garments and began mourning for him." White ultimately became the mourning colour, but in the eighth century it was dark,* and mourning habiliments were called fuji-koromo, because they were made from the bark of the wisteria (fuji). Among the Daiho statutes was one providing that periods of mourning should be of five grades, the longest being one year and the shortest seven days.
*"On the death of the Emperor Inkyo (A.D. 453), the Korean Court sent eighty musicians robed in black, who marched in procession to the Yamato palace, playing and singing a dirge as they went."
PASTIMES
Foremost among the pastimes of the Japanese people in all epochs was dancing. We hear of it in the prehistoric age when the "monkey female" (Sarume) performed a pantominic dance before the rock cave of the Sun goddess; we hear of it in protohistoric times when Inkyo's consort was betrayed into an offer that wrecked her happiness, and we hear of it in the historic epoch when the future Emperor Kenso danced in the disguise of a horse-boy. But as the discussion of this subject belongs more intelligently to the era following the Nara, we confine ourselves here to noting that even the religious fanatic Shomu is recorded as having repaired to the Shujaku gate of the palace to witness a performance of song and dance (utagaki) in which 240 persons, men and women, took part; and that, in the same year (734), 230 members of six great uji performed similarly, all robed in blue garments fastened in front with long red cords and tassels.
The tendency of the Japanese has always been to accompany their feasting and merry-making with music, versifying, and dancing. At the time now under consideration there was the "winding-water fete" (kyoku-sui no en), when princes, high officials, courtiers, and noble ladies seated themselves by the banks of a rivulet meandering gently through some fair park, and launched tiny cups of mulled wine upon the current, each composing a stanza as the little messenger reached him, or drinking its contents by way of penalty for lack of poetic inspiration. There were also the flower festivals—that for the plum blossoms, that for the iris, and that for the lotus, all of which were instituted in this same Nara epoch—when the composition of couplets was quite as important as the viewing of the flowers. There was, further, the grand New Year's banquet in the Hall of Tranquillity at the Court, when all officials from the sixth grade downwards sang a stanza of loyal gratitude, accompanying themselves on the lute (koto). It was an era of refined effeminate amusements. Wrestling had now become the pursuit of professionals. Aristocrats engaged in no rougher pastime than equestrian archery, a species of football, hawking, and hunting. Everybody gambled. It was in vain that edicts were issued against dicing (chobo and sugoroku). The vice defied official restraint.
LITERATURE AND POETRY
Having no books of her own, Japan naturally borrowed freely from the rich mine of Chinese literature. By the tutors of the Imperial family, at the colleges of the capital, and in the provincial schools the classics constituted virtually the whole curriculum. The advantages of education were, however, enjoyed by a comparatively small element of the population. During the Nara epoch, it does not appear that there were more than five thousand students attending the schools and colleges at one time. The aim of instruction was to prepare men for official posts rather than to impart general culture or to encourage scientific research. Students were therefore selected from the aristocrats or the official classes only. There were no printed books; everything had to be laboriously copied by hand, and thus the difficulties of learning were much enhanced. To be able to adapt the Chinese ideographs skilfully to the purposes of written Japanese was a feat achieved by comparatively few. What the task involved has been roughly described in the opening chapter of this volume, and with what measure of success it was achieved may be estimated from the preface to the Records (Kojiki), written by Ono Yasumaro, from the Chronicles (Nihon Shoki) and from the Daiho Ritsu-ryo, which three works may be called the sole surviving prose essays of the epoch.
Much richer, however, is the realm of poetry. It was during the Nara epoch that the first Japanese anthology, the Manyo-shu (Collection of a Myriad Leaves), was compiled. It remains to this day a revered classic and "a whole mountain of commentary has been devoted to the elucidation of its obscurities." [Chamberlain.] In the Myriad Leaves are to be found poems dating nominally from the reigns of Yuryaku and Nintoku, as well as from the days of Shotoku Taishi, but much more numerous are those of Jomei's era (629-641) and especially those of the Nara epoch. The compiler's name is not known certainly; he is believed to have been either Tachibana no Moroe or Otomo no Yakamochi. Old manuscripts and popular memory were the sources, and the verselets total 4496, in twenty volumes. Some make love their theme; some deal with sorrow; some are allegorical; some draw their inspiration from nature's beauties, and some have miscellaneous motives. Hitomaru, who flourished during the reign of the Empress Jito (690-697), and several of whose verses are to be found in the Myriad Leaves, has been counted by all generations the greatest of Japanese poets. Not far below him in fame is Akahito, who wrote in the days of Shomu (724-749). To the same century—the eighth—as the Manyo-shu, belongs the Kiraifu-so, & volume containing 120 poems in Chinese style, composed by sixty-four poets during the reigns of Temmu, Jito, and Mommu, that is to say, between 673 and 707. Here again the compiler's name is unknown, but the date of compilation is clear, November, 751.
From the fact that, while bequeathing to posterity only two national histories and a few provincial records (the Fudo-ki), the Nara epoch has left two anthologies, it will be inferred readily that the writing of poetry was a favourite pursuit in that age. Such, indeed, was the case. The taste developed almost into a mania. Guests bidden to a banquet were furnished with writing materials and invited to spend hours composing versicles on themes set by their hosts. But skill in writing verse was not merely a social gift; it came near to being a test of fitness for office.