As to literature, a difference similar in nature to those characteristics of the literature of the preceding age can be observed very distinctly. In the former period, though the essence of the literature in Japanese was profoundly influenced by the Chinese spirit, Chinese vocabularies and phrases rarely entered into sentences without being translated into Japanese. That is to say, the Japanese literature remained pure as to language, and went on side by side with the literature in Chinese. Now the combination of the two kinds began to take form. Chinese words, phrases, and several rhetorical figures began to be poured into the midst of sentences, the structure remaining Japanese as before, so that those sentences may be considered as forming a kind of hybrid Chinese, with words juxtaposed in a Japanese style, and connected by Japanese participles. This change resulted in making a great many Japanese words obsolete, and it has since become necessary for the Japanese constantly to resort to the Chinese vocabulary in writing as well as in speaking. The growth of Japanese as an independent language was thus regrettably retarded. At the same time Japanese literature reaped an immense benefit from this adoption of the Chinese vocabulary, for by it we became enabled to express our thoughts concisely, forcibly, and when necessary in a very highflown style, things not utterly impossible but exceedingly difficult for Japanese pure in form. The use of Chinese ideographs thus increased from generation to generation, until now it has become too late to try to eradicate them. All that which the Japanese nation has achieved in the past, its history, nay, its whole civilisation, has been handed to us, recorded in the language, which is woven of Chinese vocabularies and Japanese syntax, and denoted by symbols which are nothing but Chinese ideographs and their abbreviations, the Kana. A movement to supersede the Chinese ideographs by the exclusive use of the _kana_, which are very simple abbreviations of those ideographs, was initiated at the beginning of the Meidji era, but was dropped soon afterwards. Another radical movement to substitute the Roman alphabet for the Chinese ideographs and the _kana_ in writing Japanese, was started nearly at the same time, and still continues to have a certain number of zealous advocates. The success of such a movement, however, depends on the value of the civilisation already acquired by the Japanese. If that amounts to nothing, and can be cast aside without any regret, in other words, if the history of Japan counts for nothing for the present and the future of the country, then the movement would have some chance of success; otherwise the attainment of the object is a dream of the millenium.