Of games played in-doors checkers (_go_) and a kind of dice (_sugo-roku_) were much in vogue; while the favorite outdoor sports were foot-ball, polo, and hawking, together with horse-racing and equestrian archery. At wine-feasts, various kinds of songs, some classical, some popular, were chanted with dancing, and Chinese and Japanese stanzas were composed and sung. From the end of the eleventh century personal adornment was carried so far that even men began to imitate women in the matter of painting their eye-brows and blackening their teeth, much as though they sought to disguise themselves in the likeness of the puppets set up at the festival of the third month. Not inaptly did the wits of the time dub these mummers "lunar courtiers," or "elegants from cloud-land." On such occasions of festival and sport, men and women of noble rank mixed freely, and laxity of morals ensued. The ceremony of marriage had been duly established, but wives still continued to live in their own houses, where they received the visits of their husbands. In short, the gratification of the senses was the first object of the time, and if men thought of anything more serious, it was only the building and endowment of a temple where prayers might be said and litanies sung for the prosperity of themselves and their children in this world and their happiness in a future state. All these circumstances should be viewed only in conjunction with the progress of the political power of the Fujiwara family. The great deeds of Kamatari and the scarcely less distinguished services of his son Fuhito established the renown of the family, and in the marriage of the Emperor Shōmu with a daughter of Fuhito we have the first instance of a procedure which afterward became common, namely the elevation of a subject to the position of imperial consort. A daughter of another Fujiwara, Fuyutsugu, became the consort of the Emperor Nimmyō, and bore him a son who afterward ascended the throne as Montoku. Thus Fuyutsugu became the reigning sovereign's grandfather on the mother's side, and the Fujiwara family occupied a position of transcendent power. This emperor married the daughter of Yoshifusa, his mother's elder brother, and had by her a son, who when only eight months old, was declared heir apparent, and ascended the throne in his ninth year under the name of Seiwa, so that in two succeeding generations one of the sovereign's grandfathers was a Fujiwara. Nor had there been another instance of the scepter coming into the hands of such a young ruler. From Yoshifusa, also, began the custom of appointing a Fujiwara to the post of _dajō daijin_ (chief minister of state), a post which not only was the highest and most respected under the sovereign, but also as a rule had been reserved for an imperial prince of unusual virtue and ability. Failing such a candidate, it had even been left vacant. Furthermore, owing to the extreme youth of the Emperor Seiwa, his grandfather Yoshifusa was