allusion, and color. But to understand the compositions of the people no scholarship is needed: they are characterized by the greatest possible simplicity, directness, and sincerity. The real art of them, in short, is their absolute artlessness. That was why I wanted them. Springing straight from the heart of the eternal youth of the race, these little gushes of song, like the untaught poetry of every people, utter what belongs to all human experience rather than to the limited life of a class or a time; and' even in their melodies still resound the fresh and powerful pulsings of their primal source.

Manyemon had written down forty-seven songs; and with his help I made free renderings of the best. They were very brief, varying from seventeen to thirty-one syllables in length. Nearly all Japanese poetical metre consists of simple alternations of lines of five and seven syllables; the frequent exceptions which popular songs offer to this rule being merely irregularities such as the singer can smooth over either by slurring or by prolonging certain vowel sounds. Most of the songs

which Manyemon had collected were of twenty-six syllables only; being composed of three successive lines of seven syllables each, followed by one of five, thus:--

Ka-mi-yo ko-no-ka-ta
Ka-wa-ra-nu mo-no wa:
Mi-dzu no na-ga-re to
Ko-i no mi-chi.[1]

Among various deviations from this construction I found 7-7-7-7-5, and 5-7-7-7-5, and 7-5-7-5, and 5-7-5; but the classical five-line form (tanka), represented by 6-7-5-7-7, was entirely absent.

Terms indicating gender were likewise absent; even the expressions corresponding to "I" and "you" being seldom used, and the words signifying "beloved" applying equally to either sex. Only by the conventional value of some comparison, the use of a particular emotional tone, or the mention of some detail of costume, was the sex of the speaker suggested, as in this verse:--

I am the water-weed drifting, finding no place of attachment:
Where, I wonder, and when, shall my flower begin to bloom?

[1. Literally, "God-Age-since not-changed-things as-for: water-of-flowing and love-of way."]

Evidently the speaker is a girl who wishes for a lover: the same simile uttered by masculine lips would sound in Japanese ears much as would sound in English ears a man's comparison of himself to a violet or to a rose. For the like reason, one knows that in the following song the speaker is not a woman:--

Flowers in both my hands,--flowers of plum and cherry:
Which will be, I wonder, the flower to give me fruit?