One thing to be specially noted in this connection is the introduction from China of the idea of poetic tournaments, the beauty of which consisted in the offhand and quick composition of one long series of odes by several persons sitting together, each supplying in turn either the upper half or the lower half as the case might be, the two in combination giving a poetical sense. This usage of capping verses known as _renga_ came to be very popular, from the Court downward, as early as the thirteenth century. After a while the same practice was applied to comic poetry, thus producing the so-called _haikai-no-renga_, or comic linked verses. This coupling of verses gave plenty of occasion for sharpening one's wit as well as one's skill in extemporising. It is to a later attempt to express all these subtleties in the upper half of the poem composed by one person that the present _kokku_ owed its origin. You can easily imagine the effect such an exercise produced on the popular mind. Besides the moral good which this literary pursuit has brought to the populace, it has given a fresh opportunity for the cultivation of our habit of attaching sense to apparently meaningless groups of phenomena, and our fondness of laconic utterance and symbolic representation, not to say anything about our love of nature and simplicity. All this tends in my view to show that we Japanese have a strong liking for wit in the wider sense of the word. We try to solve a question, not by that slower but surer way of calm deliberation and untiring labour like the cool-headed Germans, but by an incandescent flash of inspiration like the hot-blooded Frenchmen. This fact is singularly preserved in the earlier sense of the now sacred word _Yamato-damashî_, which had not its present meaning, viz., 'the spirit of Japan' in the most elevated sense of that term, but signified 'the wit of the Japanese' as contrasted with the 'learning of the Chinese' (_wakon_ as opposed to _kansai_). The word _tamashî_, which now expresses the idea of 'spirit,' corresponds in the compound in question to the French _esprit_ in such combinations as _homme d'esprit_ or _jeu d'esprit_. Turning now to the consideration of other sets of phenomena, as an illustration of the Japanese character, let me tell you something about the tea-ceremony and kindred rites.