Consideration of the inscriptions of "Broken stele in Uji Bridge". The first volume "Broken stele in Uji Bridge" (known as "Uji-Bashi danpi") estimated to be constructed in about the 7th century is the oldest stele in Japan, and has the inscriptions composed of 24 phrases formed with one part of four characters. Conventionally, "Broken stele in Uji Bridge" is interpreted as the inscriptions of praising the achievement and researched on its historical significance. On the other hand, it is

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... ted that the stele is written in verse, but there are very little previous work about the inscriptions from the perspective of literary study. Through the analysis of expression of the inscriptions on "Broken stele in Uji Bridge", this article contributes to considering about its expressiveness as an early Japanese verse, and influence of Chinese literature written in the same period. Mainly, this article discusses phonetic rules and interpretation of the words in the first line of the inscriptions and reveals its metrical property.