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A scion of the illustrious family of Seiwa Genji, Mitsuhide had served under several suzerains prior to 1566, when he repaired to Gifu and offered his sword to Nobunaga. Five years afterwards he received a fief of one hundred thousand koku and the title of Hyuga no Kami.

These two barons, however, made a special study of strategy and military tactics, with the result that they became authorities on the various methods of handling troops. In reference to the employment of cavalry, the Genji warriors and the first of the Ashikaga shoguns made use of horses largely, but in later days the Ashikaga did not move away from Kyoto and had no use for horses.

And other books are full of lust, not even to be mentioned, like the Genji Monogatari, which should never be shown to a woman or a young man. Such books lead to vice. Our nobles call the Genji Monogatari a national treasure, why, I do not know, unless it is that they are intoxicated with its style. That is like plucking the spring blossom unmindful of the autumn's fruit.

It will change the state of things truthfully pictured in such books as the Genji Monogatari, or Romance of Prince Genji, with its examples of horrible lust and incests; the Kojiki or Ethnic scripture, with its naïve accounts of filthiness among the gods; the Onna Dai Gaku, Woman's Great Study, with its amazing subordination and moral slavery of wife and daughter; and The Japanese Bride, of yesterday all truthful pictures of Japanese life, for the epoch in which each was written.

None of them could produce anything but hydroponic and tissue-culture foodstuffs, and natural foods from Poictesme had been less expensive, even on the planets of Gamma and Beta. So Poictesme had concentrated on agriculture and grown wealthy at it. Then, within fifty years of Genji Gartner's death, the economics of interstellar trade overtook the Trisystem and the mines and factories closed down.

Thirty years later, Genji Gartner died there, after seeing the camp grow to a metropolis, and was buried under a massive monument. Some of the other planets had been rich in metals, and mines had been opened, and atmosphere-domed factories and processing plants built.

The old Japanese were a war-like nation, and the toys provided for their sons at the Feast of Flags were helmets, flags, swords, bows and arrows, coats of mail, spears, and the like. The Feast of Flags itself is held on the day sacred to Hachima, the Japanese God of War, and the favourite game on that day is a mimic battle. The boys divide themselves into two parties, called Heike and Genji.

Like Alpha Gartner, the sun of Poictesme, and Beta Gartner, a buckshot-sized pink glow in the southeast, and Gamma Gartner, out of sight on the other side of the world, all named for old Genji Gartner, the scholarly and half-piratical adventurer whose ship had been the first to approach the three stars and discover that each of them had planets.

Ojin, the god of war, became Hachiman Dai Bosatsu, or the great Bodhisattva of the Eight Banners. Adopted as their patron by the fighting Genji or Minamoto warriors of mediæval times, the Buddhists could not well afford to have this popular deity outside their pantheon. For each of the thirty days of the month, a Bodhisattva, or in Japanese pronunciation Bosatsu, was appointed.

*The Genji Monogatari by Murasaki Shikibu, and the Makura Soshi by Sei Shonagon. Japanese Literature, by W. G. Aston. With the Heian epoch is connected the wide use of the phonetic script known as kana, which may be described as a syllabary of forty-seven symbols formed from abbreviated Chinese ideographs.