FOREWORD
EXCEPT for obvious differences in local color and religious background the Mediaeval romances of Japan are much like those of Europe. Brave knights perform incredible feats of valor, wicked tyrants are circumvented or overthrown, supernatural influences play their good or evil parts, and sometimes distressed damsels, as in the tragic little story here retold, give up the quest of worldly happiness and resign themselves to lives of prayer. The chief differences are these: the frequency of suicide, for in the Orient the Almighty did not fix His canon ’gainst self-slaughter; the position of women in a civilization that knew nothing of the Mariolatry of our Middle Ages; and a weakening of the motive of love between the sexes, which is counterbalanced by an increased emphasis on the loyalty between squire and knight, knight and overlord, and above all on the loyalty of wife to husband.
The Heike Monogatari, or Tales of the Heike Clan who were all-powerful until the vices of their leader Kiyomori assisted the brave young warriors of the Taira to overthrow them, were being sung to musical accompaniment by the middle of the 13th Century. There were numerous versions; and,
L. V. L.
New York, November 1934