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But what may be called the classical form of Japanese prose was fixed by the Taketori Monogatari,* an anonymous work which appeared at the beginning of the Engi era , and was quickly followed by others. Still, the honour in which the ideograph was held never diminished. *The expression "monogatari" finds its nearest English equivalent in "narrative."
There is, indeed, a much closer relation between literature and pictorial art in China than in any Occidental country, for the two pursuits have a common starting-point calligraphy. The ideograph is a picture, and to trace it in such a manner as to satisfy the highest canons is a veritably artistic achievement.
No rigid convention fetters the fancy of the calligrapher or designer: each strives to make his characters more beautiful than any others; and generations upon generations of artists have been toiling from time immemorial with like emulation, so that through centuries and centuries of tire-less effort and study, the primitive hieroglyph or ideograph has been evolved into a thing of beauty indescribable.
The "northern and southern Wo" were probably the kingdom of Yamato and that set up in Kyushu by Ninigi, a supposition which lends approximate confirmation to the date assigned by Japanese historians for the expedition of Jimmu Tenno. *This word was originally pronounced Wa, and is written with the ideograph signifying "dwarf."
No more great towns; only thatched villages nestling in the folds of the hills, each with its Buddhist temple, lifting a tilted roof of blue-grey tiles above the congregation of thatched homesteads, and its miya, or Shinto shrine, with a torii before it like a great ideograph shaped in stone or wood.
Knox has translated the term "Shin," the Chinese ideograph for the Japanese word "Kami," by the English singular, God. This lends to the passage a fullness of monotheistic expression which the original hardly, if at all, justifies. The originals are indefinite as to number and might with equal truth be translated "gods," as Dr. Knox suggests himself in a footnote.
These new tokens were called kenji-kin, as they bore on the reverse the ideograph ken, signifying "great original." The issue of the new coins took place in the year 1710, and at the same time the daimyo were strictly forbidden to issue paper currency, which veto also was imposed at the suggestion of Arai Hakuseki.
It is now known that this writing of the Egyptians was of a most extraordinary compound character. Part of its pictures are used as direct representations of the objects presented. Again the picture of an object becomes an ideograph, as in the following instances: Here the sacred ibis or the sacred bull symbolises the soul. The bee stands for honey, the eyes for the verb "to see."
Notable among these are the many customs and appliances of foreign nations which, though adopted by the people, have not been completely modified to suit their own needs. In illustration is the Chinese ideograph, for the learning of which even in the modern common-school reader, there is no arrangement of the characters in the order of their complexity.
In the first place, few Japanese claim any acquaintance with the entire 50,000 characters; only the educated make any pretense of knowing more than a few hundred, and a vast majority even of learned men do not know more than 10,000 characters. Some Japanese newspapers have undertaken to limit themselves in the use of the ideograph.
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