It can hardly be maintained that the Japanese nation has up to the present time produced much poetry of striking merit. The Naga-uta of the Manyōshiu, notwithstanding its limited resources and confined scope, gave a promise which was not destined to be fulfilled, and the tiny Tanka which succeeded it in popular favour was precluded by its very form from being a vehicle for the utterance of any but the merest atoms of poetical thought or sentiment. Again, the poetical element to be found in the Nō and Jōruri drama is so disfigured by ornament of questionable taste, and so imperfectly freed from prosaic dross, that we can only allow it a very modest place in the history of the art. Its importance lies rather in its keeping alive the national taste for imaginative writing than in any intrinsic merit which it possesses.
The conditions of the present day are more favourable than those of any previous time to the production of good poetry in Japan. The ordinary language, by the more thorough assimilation of its Chinese element, has gained considerably in fitness for poetical purposes, and its phonetic capabilities are now appreciably greater than in the time of the Manyōshiu. Still more important considerations are the great stimulus which the national life has received from the introduction of European ideas, and the attention which has been recently directed to the poetry of Europe, especially of England.
The credit of being the first to recognise the advantages which the Japanese poet might derive from a study of European models belongs to Toyama Masakazu, a Professor of the Imperial University, Yatabe Riōkichi and Inouye Tetsujiro, whose joint publication, entitled
