In the Tang Period when the cultural progress was remarkable there appeared very many distinguished literary men, among whom we must first point to Po Chu-i as one of the greatest in due consideration of his influence on Japan in the Heian Period. The fact may be attributed to various causes that his reputation in Japan towers absolutely high above the others, though our estimation of his works is not always the same as that in China. On this fact opinions have been given so far, chiefly from the literary point of view and from the character of his plain poems. Many of these literary men were at the same time scholars and most of them were governmental officials by profession, though in those days it was almost the same situaion both in china and in Japan. In this treatise the writer is going to study Po chu-i from the standpoint based on the fact that he was a governmental official, and examine, therefore, the popular favour of his poems in this country also from that point of view. Now, the writer divides the class, receptive of new culture, in this country into two parts, the upper and middle class-they were all aristocrats and the writer points out the fact that the former tried to receive his poems mainly as their literary ornament while the latter did more than that, sympathizing with the way he led his life, especially with his feelings of joys and sorrows as an official, moreover they received him as a guide in life. Under the government of the days, however, the literary men of the middle class were standing on the brink of downfall. Po Chu-i, their guide, was, on the other hand, an official highly advanced in his position. For that reason there could be found the tendency for them to look upon him even as an ideal figure. Though fairly sharp political poems can be seen in Po Ghu-i's early works, the impetuous charges of them gradually disappeared in the course of time, and he was, to some extent, contented with his life. Accordingly the spirit through his whole life was fundamentally a sensible optimism. In this very point can be found the reason why his poems are regarded as pregnant with something tranquil. The decadent mood in the aristocratic circles of this country avoided anything magnificent or anything sharply stimulative. It is here that we find out the secret of Po Chu-i's popularity among the nobles in Japan. So, those who were not satiafied with the existing state of affairs and those who wished to go forward beyond the sphere of this corrupted aristocracy had to get ahead of Po Chu-i, encouraged by something else, although greatly influenced by Po Chu-i.
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