The political anarchy combined with the individualistic tendency of the age could not fail to lead to the moral dissolution of the people. To the same effect, too, the literature of the time, which was a revival of that of the Fujiwara period, contributed. The classical authors of Japanese literature at the height of the Fujiwara period were now perused, commented upon, and elucidated with devouring eagerness, the most adored among them being Murasaki-Shikibu, whose famous novel, _Genji-monogatari_, was regarded mystically and held to be almost divine. The nature of this literature was for the most part realistic, or rather sentimental, verging sometimes on sensuality. It was, however, clad in the exquisitely refined costume of beautiful diction and choice turns of phrase, borrowed or metamorphosed from the inexhaustible stores of Chinese literature. As to the revived form of literature in the Ashikaga period, the difference between it and that of the old time was so remarkable, that it could not be overlooked. Vulgarisation usurping the place of refinement, and coarse sensuality reigning rampant was the outcome of the cultivation of the classical literature. The moral tone of the stories and novels produced in this decadent age unmistakably reflects how low was the ebb of the sense of decency of that period, fostered by the naturalistic tendency manifested in the Fujiwara classics. These depict the dark side of the age, but in order not to be one-sided in my judgment, let me tell also about its bright side. The culture of the Ashikaga had from the beginning a trend to grow more and more humanistic as it approached the end of the period. One more aspect in the history of Japanese painting proves it to the full. Landscapes and still-life pictures, which had been formerly painted only as the accessories of religious images or as the background in the scroll paintings, before which the main subjects, that is to say, the personages in stories were made to play, began now to form by themselves each a special independent group of subjects for painting. This shows that the people of the time had already entered a cultural stage able to enjoy the arts for art's sake. Many pictures of such a kind by the brush of noted Chinese masters were imported into our country, and several clever Japanese artists also painted after them. Some of our artists, like Sesshu, went over to China to study the art of painting there. The differentiation of the school of Kano from the older Tosa was another result of this development. Most of these pictures were executed in the form of _kakemono_, or hanging pictures, so called from their being hung in a special niche of a drawing room or a study. Screens, or _byobu_, mounted with pictures, became also a fashion. In general, the furnishing of a house was now a matter of a certain educated taste, and various systems were devised and formulated by accomplished experts.