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A HANDBOOK OF MODERN JAPAN

Japanese poetry has no rhyme, no parallelism, no alliteration, no accent; it is almost all lyrical, and abounds in acrostics, anagrams, and palindromes. Its chief subjects are taken from nature, and a poem may be evoked by the simplest thing. Although Japanese poetry is difficult to understand, it is interesting to study.

Japanese literature of the new régime is too varied to enumerate, as it covers, in both original and translated work, about all the fields of modern thought, as well as the fields of the old régime, just mentioned.

The development of newspapers is, perhaps, one of the most interesting phases of the progress of New Japan. The year 1902 was the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of Japanese journalism. Before that time small sheets, each like a modern "extra," were issued to give account of a murder or an important event, and were hawked about by street-criers. But the "Nisshin Shinjishi," started in 1872 by an Englishman named Black, was the first attempt at a real newspaper.[1] Now there are probably more than 1,000 papers, magazines, etc., published in the empire. The newspapers are issued daily, and cost from 25 to 50 sen per month. Most of the metropolitan papers indulge in wood-cuts, even cartoons.

At first the press laws were rigorous and the

  1. ↑ It is, however, only fair to state that Joseph Heco, who was probably the first naturalized Japanese citizen of the United States, claims the same honor for his "Kaigai Shimbun," published in 1864 to give a summary of foreign news. See his "Narrative of a Japanese," vol. ii. pp. 53, 59.
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