It is not to be inferred that the writers of Japan, enamoured as they were of Chinese ideographs and Chinese style, deliberately excluded everything Chinese from the realm of poetry. On the contrary, many of them took pleasure in composing versicles to which Chinese words were admitted and which showed something of the "parallelism" peculiar to Chinese poetry, since the first ideograph of the last line was required to be identical with the final ideograph. But rhyme was not attempted, and the syllabic metre of Japan was preserved, the alternation of 5 and 7 being, however, dispensed with. Such couplets were called _shi_ to distinguish them from the pure Japanese _uta_ or _tanka_. The two greatest masters of Japanese poetry were Hitomaro and Akahito, both of the early 8th century, and next to them stands Tsurayuki, who flourished at the beginning of the 10th century, and is not supposed to have transmitted his mantle to any successor. The choicest productions of the former two with those of many other poets were brought together in 756 and embodied in a book called the _Manyoshu (Collection of a Myriad Leaves)_. The volume remained unique until the beginning of the 10th century, when (A.D. 905) Tsurayuki and three coadjutors compiled the _Kokinshu (Collection of Odes Ancient and Modern)_, the first of twenty-one similar anthologies between the 11th and the 15th centuries, which constitute the _Niju-ichi Dai-shu (Anthologies of the One-and-Twenty Reigns)_. If to these we add the _Hyaku-ninshu (Hundred Odes by a Hundred Poets)_ brought together by Teika Kyo in the 13th century, we have all the classics of Japanese poetry. For the composition of the _uta_ gradually deteriorated from the end of the 9th century, when a game called _uta-awase_ became a fashionable pastime, and aristocratic men and women tried to string together versicles of 31 syllables, careful of the form and careless of the thought. The _uta-awase_, in its later developments, may not unjustly be compared to the Occidental game of _bouts-rimés_. The poetry of the nation remained immovable in the ancient groove until very modern times, when, either by direct access to the originals or through the medium of very defective translations, the nation became acquainted with the masters of Occidental song. A small coterie of authors, headed by Professor Toyama, then attempted to revolutionize Japanese poetry by recasting it on European lines. But the project failed signally, and indeed it may well be doubted whether the Japanese language can be adapted to such uses. Influence of Women in Japanese Literature.