After four years’ stay in England, Fumio Murata (1836-1891) edited Seiyo-Bunken-Roku (1869-1871), in which he briefly alluded to Western prosody. In 1873，Hiraku Toriyama (1837-1914) published Seiyo-Zasshi drawing materials from Western books. It had an excellent article on Western prosody.
In 1876, Kiyoshi Nakane (1893-1913) issued Nihon-Bunten which was a book on Japanese grammar treated in the same way as English grammar, and in which he touched upon prosody and said, “ Japanese poetry has no rhyme.” Shuji Izawa (1851-1917), who had studied music in the United States, emphasized the importance of rhyme and published rhymed songs in Japanese in 1878.
Shoichi Toyama (1848-1900), Ryokichi Yatabe (1852-1899) and Tetsujiro Inoue (1855-1944) took interest in English poetry, and, in imitation of it, they invented and published the new-style poetry in Shintaiishi-Sho (1882). Kencho Suematsu (1855-1920), while staying in England, contributed “Kagaku-Ron” to Tokyo-Nichinichi-Shimbun (1884-1885). He said, “Japanese poetry usually has no rhyme.”
Indeed Japanese poetry had no rhyme though it was sometimes rhymed unintentionally， but these poets attempted to write verses modelled on Western poetry, and even composed rhymed verses in spite of the characteristics of the Japanese language. At first the new-style poetry was generally crude, but it developed into present Japanese poetry.
