The invention of these two systems of _kana_ syllabaries gave a powerful impetus to the growth of prose writing. Many varieties of composition, fictions, diaries, travels, and fugitive sketches, were added to the literature of the time. But as men who aspired to the title of scholar continued to write in Chinese ideograms, the domain of Japanese prose was occupied, almost exclusively, by women. It is recorded of the Emperor Ichijō (987-1012 A. D.) that he boasted that, although his own abilities did not entitle him to wear the crown, his reign was not less rich in talented subjects than had been the reigns of even Daigo and Murakami, historically regarded as the best sovereigns of the whole imperial line. The boast was not unwarranted, for in that era flourished great writers of both sexes, the charm and grace of whose diction have been vainly imitated by later generations. Of these, Mura-saki-shikibu especially attracts attention, on account of her celebrated work, the "_Genji-monogatari_," a romance in fifty-four volumes. Sei-Shōnagon's name is remembered for her "_Makura-no-sōshi_," as peerless a production in literary sketches as was the "_Genji-monogatari_" in fiction. Even more energy was expended on the production of verses than on prose writing. In the last part of the ninth century after almost a century of the sway of Chinese poetry, the tide flowed once more in the direction of Japanese verses, and they soon engrossed the minds of the noble classes. Beginning with the "_Kokinshū_," poems compiled by imperial order by Ki-no-Tsurayuki, himself a celebrated poet, no less than seven poetical compilations were made by order of the sovereigns during the rest of the Hei-an epoch, to which were still later added others to the number of twenty-one. The art of versification made a wonderful progress, but the rustic vigor and grandeur of the poems of the "_Manyō-shū_" gave place to tricks of phraseology and flowers of speech in the later poetry. Nor were poems with many stanzas approved any longer, for it became the pride of the later poets to embody clever wit and hidden charm in the space of thirty-one syllables. Thus poetry was stunted, and literary terms and the speech of everyday life unnecessarily separated each from the other.