The _samisen_ is early taught. Girls of seven or thereabouts are made to learn it while their fingers are still very pliant. But the lessons are hard to learn as the tunes have to be committed to memory, for there are no scores to refer to. There is no popular method of notation; the marks which are sometimes to be seen in song-books are too few to be of use to any but skilled musicians. The lighter _samisen_ does not require much exertion to play; women can thrum it for hours on end; and they make slight indentations on the nails of the middle and ring fingers of the left hand for catching the strings when those fingers are moved up and down the neck to stop them. But with the heavier kind the indentations are deeper, and the constant friction of the strings hardens the finger-tips and often breaks the nails, while still worse is the condition of the right hand which holds the plectrum. The plectrum, the striking end of which is flat as in the one for the slender-necked _samisen_, is heavily leaded and weighs from twelve ounces to a pound when used by professionals; and the handle, which is square, is held between the ring and little fingers for leverage and worked with the thumb and the forefinger. At first the pressure of the corners upon the second joint of the little finger is very painful; but the skin becomes in time indurated and insensible to pain. It requires both strength and dexterity to strike the thick, hard-drawn strings with such a heavy plectrum. The peculiar scale on which it is based has prevented Japanese music from being appreciated by foreigners. That it is crude is undeniable; indeed, no other Japanese art has been left so undeveloped. In most other arts we have stamped our national individuality upon what we borrowed from others; but in music we can hardly say that there is anything characteristically Japanese about the slow tunes of the thirteen-stringed _koto_ or the quicker jangle of the three-stringed _samisen_. They have of course changed in our hands from their original forms; but the alteration is not something that we can attribute to our national genius as we should in the case of our pictorial, glyptic, or ceramic art. Moreover, music has never, like the other arts, had munificent patrons. We read often enough of a great daimyo or lord in the old days surrounding himself with famed painters, sculptors, makers of lacquered ware or swords, but never of one taking under his protection a musician of note. What musicians enjoyed his favour were those employed for the performance of music at sacred rites; and none won the daimyo’s patronage by the charm or power of his music. No encouragement was then held out to music; and even the musicians whose names are known to posterity earned their living, precarious at best, by catering to the general public.