# Japanese Plays and Playfellows/Chapter 3

POPULAR PLAYS
I
Between the sacred opera of Tōkyō and the comic opera of London the difference is so stupendous, that one shudders to reflect on the unfortunate fact that English playgoers, until quite lately, derived most of their ideas about Japan from "The Mikado" of Mr. W. S. Gilbert and "The Geisha" of Mr. Owen Hall. In 1885 so little was known about Japanese customs and characteristics, that the Bab Balladist ran no risk of insulting the intelligence of his auditors when he introduced his puppets with the words:
"We are gentlemen of Japan, Our attitude's queer and quaint; You're wrong, if you think it ain't."
There was no one to tell him that his "gentlemen of Japan" were not Japanese at all, but Chinamen without pigtails. The very names—Pish-Tush, Nanki-Poo, Pitti-Sing were redolent of China, while Pooh-Bah, with his insatiable appetite for bribes, was a typical mandarin. However, the author had picked up a real war-song, tune and all ("Miyasama, miyasama"), and the Three Little Maids from School giggled very prettily in their novel costumes. ​subsequent information throws a curious light on the misleading characteristics of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, enabling me to acquit the producers of ignorance, but not of mystification. I learn that the Japanese representative accredited to the Court of St. James's very naturally objected to the slight implied in attaching the name of his imperial master to a frivolous and ridiculous extravaganza. One would have thought that the most obvious obligations of courtesy dictated a change of title and of rank in the leading character. Instead, pains were taken to make the action and demeanour of the performers so exaggerated that no Japanese would recognise in them his fellow-countrymen, while the British public, not being in the secret, was encouraged to suppose the local colour as correct as was compatible with the exigencies of such a piece.
Eleven years later came "The Geisha." By this time Mr. Arthur Diósy had founded the Japan Society, and gladly brought special knowledge to the help of the management. The result was a very charming and realistic picture, so far as externals were concerned. The rickshaw-man and dapper policeman, the wistaria and chrysanthemum, the frolicsome teahouse girls, might have been imported from Yokohama. This author, too, had picked up a real native song ("Jon kina, jon kina"), of which the associations were fortunately not explained to the audience. But the plot of "The Geisha" was as farcically untrue to life as that of "The Mikado." And this time some one was found to say so. An indignant Tōkyō journalist, who happened to see the opera, thus commented on its import:
"Happy Japan, Garden of glitter! Flower and fan, Flutter and flitter; Lord of Bamboo, (Juvenile whacker!) Porcelain too, Tea-tray and lacquer!"
"Light-hearted friends of Japan find in these lines the most happy features of the country, and overlook the gross injustice done in the play to the Japanese nation. A Japanese chief of police is made to proclaim publicly that superior authority exists in order to satisfy the personal desires of its holder. Human souls are sold by public auction, and a person may be found guilty, according to law, after trial or before! I would not complain of these imputations, or rather results of ignorance, creeping into a comic piece if it were not patronised by those who think themselves good friends of Japan, and if it were not illustrative of the way in which they look at our country."
At last, in September 1899, a serious romantic play, purporting to represent Japanese life, was produced under the title of "The Moonlight Blossom." It was even more faithfully staged than the comic operas. We now saw for the first time a Shintō priest, a blind shampooer, and a temple with wooden torii and stone lanterns. The plot was compounded of Adelphi elements, familiar enough, in spite of their flavouring from Liberty's. You had the good and bad brothers, the misunderstood heroine, the intriguing widow, forged documents, secret meetings, attempted murder. You had even the "comic relief" and cockney humour of a duel on stilts. But Adelphi incidents would not ​have mattered so much (the Tōkyō drama is mostly melodrama) if the author had avoided Adelphi psychology. No Japanese woman indulges in the independence or the invective of Naniwa. "What stupid owls men are!" might pass for a maidenly jest in this country; never in that. If Arumo were truly a Nagasaki priest, he would never condescend to solicit the advice and affection of the other sex. The fatal substitution of Occidental for Oriental particulars in "the way of a man with a maid" vitiated Mr. Fernald's claim to interpret Japanese romance. His men and women lacked the dignity and severity of Eastern etiquette.
In adapting "Madame Butterfly," a popular American story, for the Anglo-Saxon stage, Mr. David Belasco was on far safer ground. Since M. Pierre Loti set the fashion, many romancers have exploited the pathos of temporary marriage between the faithless Westerner and the trustful Oriental girl, but hitherto, in spite of the obvious opportunities for scenic effect, the theme had not been handled by a serious dramatist. Now, Mr. Belasco relies greatly, as all who saw his version of "Zaza" will remember, on the electrician and the limelight man. To them belongs the credit of the most exquisite and typical episode in "Madame Butterfly." As poor little O Chō San sat patiently at her window, with her baby asleep beside her and her face turned towards the harbour where lay the newly arrived ship of her fickle lieutenant, for full twenty minutes there was silence behind the footlights, while through the paper panes of the shōji could be seen the transition of dusk to darkness, of darkness to twilight, of dawn to day. All the poetry of the play was in those twenty minutes, and a great deal of its truth. ​Devotion and dumb endurance are more characteristic, I think, of such a woman than the melodramatic suicide which touched so many of her audience to tears. If a competent musician had co-operated with the stage-manager to give us a play without words in the manner of "L' Enfant Prodigue," I should have been better pleased, for the strange "broken American" jargon and the silly monotonous song which Miss Evelyn Millard had to say and sing, though legitimate enough, were tiresomely out of harmony with the grace and beauty of her movements, her looks, her costume. An extraordinary lapse of taste was that which permitted the dying heroine to wave the star-spangled banner in her child's face. But most of all I doubt the verisimilitude of the alleged motive for self-destruction. Sometimes Madame Chrysanthème counts her money and feels rather relieved when her foreign lover sails away; sometimes she regrets him with genuine sorrow, and might conceivably put an end to her life if confronted with the alternative of an odious match. But what she would not do is what Madame Butterfly does—namely, consider that she had suffered a dishonour expiable only by death. The Western sentiment of honour is out of place in such a connection, for she had been party with open eyes to a legal, extra-marital contract, sanctioned by usage and arranged by her relations. The infidelity of her partner might wound her heart; it could not strike her conscience.
After many more or less accurate adumbrations of Japanese life on the boards of London theatres, at last, in the spring of 1900, came "The celebrated Japanese Court Company from Tōkyō," of which the leading stars, Mr. Otojiro Kawakami and Madame Sada ​Yacco, were freely described as the Henry Irving and Ellen Terry of the Far East. Most of the critics, expecting too much and understanding too little, went empty away, or if they derived any pleasure from the entertainment, derived it from purely æsthetic and undramatic qualities. For a week the stars shone on empty benches; but then the fashionable and artistic public, which has a habit of ignoring the professional critic, became aware of the fact that a miniature comedy and tragedy of rare delicacy and charm, as naïf as they were beautiful, could be seen, and seen only for a few afternoons, in the prosaic neighbourhood of Netting Hill. Success was assured, and we are promised a return visit in the autumn. But the critics were partly justified in their cold reception of alien art. They had come for drama and been put off with pantomime. "If this be Japanese drama," they said, "a little of it goes a long way. We have had enough." Had they been given drama as it is played in Tōkyō, with long, irrelevant scenes and a plot requiring four hours to unravel, how much more discontented they would have been!
It is a pity that the advertising note was pitched too high. Good wine needed less bush. There is no "Japanese Court Company," but his Majesty the Emperor was once present at a performance by Mr. Kawakami during a garden-party in the grounds of the Marquis Kuroda. Mr. Kawakami is certainly not the "Henry Irving of Japan," for that title, whatever be its precise meaning, belongs rather to Ichikawa Danjuro, associated for more than half a century with the impersonation of historical and mythical heroes. But he holds a high and honourable position among actors of the sōshi school, as they are called—a school ​
| MR. DANJURO AS "LADY OF KASUGA" (p. 87) | MR. DANJURO AS "JIRAIYA" (p. 262) |
| MADAME SADA YACCO (p. 67) | MR. OBOJIRO KAWAKAMI (p. 67) |
FAMOUS JAPANESE PLAYERS
​which bears some resemblance to the Théâtre Libre or the Théâtre de l'Œuvre. The sōshi were students, desirous of reforming and modernising the conservative traditions of their stage, and Mr. Kawakami's contributions to the movement consisted of two plays: a realistic piece, founded on the war with China, which brought him great profit and renown, and an adaptation of "Round the World in Eighty Days." As an actor he is certainly free from the painful mannerisms of the older generation: his elocution is more even, his action more quiet and sudden, his facial expression less exaggerated. As for Sada Yacco, who braved the public opinion of her countrywomen by being the first of her sex to act in company with masculine comrades, her presence would be an acquisition to any stage. Until three years ago she was a geisha, and thus combines with much physical attraction of voice and face the secret of supremely graceful movement. Her dances were revelations of the witchery of Salome's art. Her histrionic powers are not less remarkable.
The pieces selected for representation were of course wholly Japanese in subject and sentiment, but, being greatly modified to suit the supposed infirmities of foreign playgoers, they scarcely gave a correct impression of the average Japanese play. To begin with, that the sound of a strange language might not grow wearisome, the dialogue was ruthlessly cut and curtailed; next, as much dancing as possible was introduced, so that the damari, or pantomimic scene, which in Tōkyō is more or less of the nature of "comic relief," sandwiched between exciting incidents, almost became the staple of the play. Finally, the coincidental music, which strikes so oddly on European ears, was kept within wise limits. But, so far from ​blaming Mr. Kawakami for these alterations, it is evident that he erred on the right side, and that we should thank him for lopping away several excrescences which disfigure the drama of his native land.
"Zingoro, an Earnest Statue Carver," narrates the pretty legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, with the addition of a jealous wife. Galatea is a famous geisha, of whom Zingoro carves a statue and falls in love with his own handiwork. The transformation from wood to womanhood is familiar; one has seen it in "Niobe," in "La Poupée," in "Pygmalion and Galatea," but here it is accomplished by a fanciful piece of satire. "Mirror is the spirit of woman," says the proverb, and the sculptor has merely to slip a kagami into the bosom of his feminine figure, whom vanity at once stirs to life. Zingoro's delighted astonishment and the doll's awakening consciousness are vividly portrayed, culminating in a mimetic dance, in which Galatea copies all her maker's movements. But the climax is reached when the jealous wife enters, and, seeking to reach her rival, is arrested by the simultaneous animation of the God of Thunder, the Carpenter, the Spearman, and the Dwarf, who had up to that moment remained so motionless that most of the audience believed them to be lay-figures. I fancy none but Oriental actors could have achieved this coup de théatre, involving the strain of prolonged muscular tension in attitudes of fantastic violence.
Muscular feats were also prominent, too prominent, in "Kojima Takanori" or "The Loyalist." This historical drama, which should have occupied three hours, and was compressed into half-an-hour, is founded on a famous instance of feudal loyalty. In the beginning of the thirteenth century Yoshitoki, the ​chief of the Hojo family, acquired supreme power under the title of Shikken (minister of the Shogun or commander-in-chief), and banished three emperors to the little island of Oki. One of these, the Emperor Godaigo, was passing through Inosha on his way to exile, when Takanori, a faithful knight, learned of his arrival, and, having adopted the disguise of a straw rain-coat and hat, taken by force from two peasants, hid himself in the royal garden. There, since even his prodigious valour was unequal to the task of rescuing his sovereign from Yoshitoki's guards, he resolved at least to furnish consolation by an act of graceful chivalry. Planing the bark of a cherry-tree with his sword, he painted on it with his writing-brush the well-known words of an ancient poem, signifying "While I live, you reign." The soldiers of the Shikken discovered and attacked him, but suffered an inglorious repulse. Then, as a supreme reward, the bamboo blind of the adjoining villa being lifted for a moment, the Mikado smiled gratefully on his brave adherent, who, touched to the heart, succumbed to happy tears.
This poetic and passionate loyalty, so strangely transported to Netting Hill, was admirably embodied by Mr. Kawakami. Alternately fierce and pensive, agile and immobile, he played the part of Takanori with such force and feeling, that yamato-damashii, the fervent temper of Japanese chivalry, lived and moved before us, a visibly realised ideal. I fear, however, that for most of us the serious side of the play was marred by terrific, perpetual fighting. It cannot be doubted that, in days when bows and arrows, swords and spears, were the only weapons, men were capable of extraordinary, acrobatic, hand-to-hand encounters. ​An American critic, who studied this feature of the acting from the point of view of a professional pugilist, was astounded by the number of throws, lifts, and twists employed, in addition to those tricks peculiar to jūjutsu, which other races have yet to learn. But the clash of sparkling swords and the thud of falling bodies were so incessant, that one was apt to lose sight of the ferocious realism, and notice only the comic surprises of this partly historical, partly conventional mêlée. To one irreverent lady it suggested the idea of furious grasshoppers battling on the slopes of Fuji.
The last play, written by Mr. Kawakami himself about ten years ago—"The Geisha and the Knight"—is dramatically the best as well as the most picturesque. It furnishes Madame Sada Yacco with a part which affords full scope for her talents. It proves her not only an ethereal dancer, but a tragic actress of real power. When the curtain rises we are in the Yoshiwara of Yedo (euphemistically termed the geisha-quarter), with its line of cherry-trees in full blossom between the fifty tea-houses, with the bustling crowd of domestics, minstrels, dancing-girls, and samurai, conventionally disguised, as a knight was bound to be, by amigasa, or large braided hats. Katsuragi, the famous courtesan, attended by her little bevy of servants, passes in gorgeous apparel on those high, black-lacquered sabots which only the taiyu might wear. Soon a quarrel bursts out between her rival suitors, and Banza, determined to provoke a duel, inflicts on Nagoya the disgraceful insult of sayâte, a blow on the sword from a sword's hilt. But scarcely has the fight begun when the girl throws herself between and compels her lover to desist.
​The second act passes in a Buddhist temple, where Nagoya, flying with his fiancée, Orikime, from the jealous and abandoned beauty, has taken refuge. But Katsuragi, well knowing that no woman may enter there alone, yet tries to cajole the genial priests by the pretence of dancing in honour of Buddha. Permission is given. First she treads a solemn temple-dance, a no-mai, wearing the golden mitre of a mediaeval geisha; then, as the jocular monks relent and even mimic her, she performs dance after dance. A child, she trips through the ball-dance (maru-odori), chasing and tossing an imaginary ball with nimble gaiety; a woman, she personates the cherry-blossom, and, crowned with a floral emblem, while red flames of flowers unroll from her hands, she stoops and sways like a bough in May; a priestess of Inari, the rice-goddess, with upturned hands and conical drum she depicts the terror of the goblin-fox in a pas de fascination woven of strange swift rushes and sudden turns. But all her wiles are useless. The monks roughly repulse her when she attempts to enter the temple itself. But Katsuragi is not to be baulked. Suddenly she flies through the gate and as suddenly reappears, driving before her the hapless Orikime, whom she batters down with the huge striker of the temple-bell. At this moment, with bare arms and dishevelled hair, she thrills and dominates the audience: the fairy has become a fury; the comedy is at once attuned by this tragic figure to ghastly seriousness. A priest aims a blow at her, but Nagoya arrives in time to ward it off, and, panting, frenzied by conflicting passions, she sinks dying in her lover's arms.
A fourth play was subsequently added, which I had not the good fortune to see; but from the foregoing ​descriptions it will be evident that Mr. Kawakami brought us, if not entire plays, at any rate authentic glimpses of the unfamiliar world in which Japanese playgoers delight. It is an ingenious, palpitating world, richly stored with action and sentiment and lit with many cross-lights of allusive fancy. There is so much naïf and childish joy in it, so many pretty and grotesque details, that one easily is diverted by these from the consideration of its deeper aspects. Both are better comprehended by a retrospective glance at theatrical history.
It is rather interesting to observe that national drama began its career in England and Japan at about the same time. In 1575 Okuni, the pretty priestess who ran away from the Kizukt temple in Izumo with Nagoya Sanzaburo, and made her peace with the god Ōnamuji by devoting part of the receipts to repairing his shrine, gave her first theatrical performance at Kyōto. In 1576 "the Earl of Leicester's servants" erected the first public theatre in Blackfriars. The times were dramatic, and the excitement of foreign adventure quickened the impulse of the masses towards a more turbulent form of art than religious plays. The Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, and in 1592 Hideyoshi's armada set sail for the conquest of Corea. The dramatists were men of similar stamp. Just as Greene and Marlowe were reckless rebels against tradition and convention, so Chikamatsu was a rōnin, or disgraced samurai, too headstrong to endure feudal discipline. Small wonder, then, that their plays were full of "coarse horrors and vulgar blood-shedding." Independence of Christian "Mysteries" and Buddhist Nō was a marked characteristic of the secular humanistic drama, but whereas England had not long ​to wait for a Shakespeare, the fifty odd five-act pieces of Chikamatsu were written between 1690 and 1724.
Moreover, they were written for marionettes. This fact explains many surviving customs, which hamper theatrical representation to the present day. Although the thread of poetical narrative, on which spectacular episodes were strung, is much attenuated, the chorus, charged with reciting it to musical accompaniment, is not yet banished from a cage or stage-box behind the footlights to the right of the audience. Many actors retain the stiff, jerky motions of the wire-pulled dolls which they were formerly taught to imitate, and whereas the words through artificial declamation are often difficult to follow, more persistent appeal is made to the eye than the ear by pose and gesture. Why the dramatist should have preferred wooden to human puppets is hard to say, unless it be that they were capable of more amazing contortions, for acrobatic activity plays a large part in legitimate drama, which would seem incomplete without damari, or pantomimic scenes.
Chikamatsu was followed by Takeda Izumo, who reduced the function of the chorus, and thus lessened the opportunity for literary display. In both writers you find sensational plots, surcharged with incident and developed in daring disregard of probability. While the marionettes' theatre at Ōsaka was thus served, the men's theatre at Yedo was provided with pieces of a similar character with regard to substance, though the style was colloquial and the dialogue largely invented by the actors. Since the eighteenth century it may be said without injustice that the kabuki-shibai (popular theatre) has remained stationary. Certain improvements in histrionic and scenic matters have ​been introduced, but no development in construction and character-drawing, as we understand those terms, no change in the peculiar ethical and feudal teachings of the Yedo period, has supervened. Enter a Tōkyō theatre to-day, and you will find yourself in old Japan, among resplendent monsters, whose actions violate our moral sense, yet exhibit a high and stern morality by no means out-moded through the advent of modern ideas.
Beauty and duty are the hall-marks that stamp authentic die plays which delight and instruct the Japanese. A race of artists, they expect and obtain such stage-pictures as no other stage affords. To watch act after act of their spectacular tragedies is like looking through a portfolio of their best colour-prints. One revels in the rich series of glowing hues, flowing lines, majestic contours. And, whereas in a play by Shakespeare or Molière, however sumptuously mounted, the European actor often spoils the picture by inability to wear the garb and adopt the gait of more ceremonious ages, becoming a vociferous fashion-plate, a strenuous caricature, the Oriental actor never does so. He has not been forced to acquire having never lost, the dignified movements proper to more deliberate dress. His pictorial charm is enhanced by his faculty of sublime repose. Fidgety "supers" are unknown. Moreover, visible beauty, of which the credit may be stared between costumier and stage-manager, is supplemented by the invisible beauty of ideas. The author can give free rein to fancy. Dragons and demons, ogres and magicians, will not be wasted on prosaic pittites, who starve their imagination by feeding it once a year on vulgarised pantomime, because to them music-hall ditties are more congenial ​than a midsummer-night's dream. His audience would just as soon hear a fairy-story as a love-story. When "The Tongue-cut Sparrow" or "The Fisher-Boy of Urashima" is presented, the adults are quite as appreciative as the children. Perhaps this imaginative audience is too complaisant. It ignores the cloaked attendants, who creep about the stage to remove "properties" or in other ways assist the actors, because it knows that their black garments denote invisibility and is much too polite to perceive them. The same readiness to meet illusion half-way is shown by the retention of the hana-michi or flower-walks, two inclined platforms which slope from the stage to the back of the auditorium, trisecting the pit and enabling the actors to make their entry or exit through the midst of the spectators. On the other hand, they facilitate the execution of processional and recessional effects.
After all, the aim of Eastern art is not illusion, but edification. However clear the call of beauty, duty's voice is louder still—duty, not as we Westerns conceive it, a half-hearted compromise between our own interests and those of others, but complete moral and mental suicide. No lesson was more impressively preached to the people by the dramatists in hundreds of historical plays than the duty of obedience at any price. Iyeyasu had established a pax japonica, a golden age, in which there was no war, but a rigid system of caste upon caste: obedience was the cement which held the whole together. The cultivated samurai were not allowed to enter the theatre, but the masses were melted to tears and heated to transports of patriotic subservience by the representation of heroic self-sacrifice. As a political instrument the Greek Church is not more useful to the ​Czar for indoctrinating docile peasants than the Yedo drama was of service to the Shōgun.
One of the most admired examples of unscrupulous virtue is Nakamitsu, applauded in 1898 as in 1598, for the same hero holds the stage for centuries. This is the story of Nakamitsu. His feudal lord, Manju, had confided a reprobate son, named Bijomaru, to his care, in the hope that a samurai's control would prove more efficacious than a priest's; but, as Bijomaru continued to "indulge in all sorts of wild sports, sometimes going so far as to kill innocent common people," Nakamitsu was ordered to put him to death. Instead of doing so, he beheaded his own son, Kojumaru, and took the head to his master, who, believing in his fidelity, refused to inspect it. Years afterwards, when Bijomaru has become an irreproachable priest, he is restored to his father, who forgives Nakamitsu for disobeying him and rewards his self-sacrifice with the gift of an adopted son and an extensive tract of land. Now, the moral of this story to us appears atrocious, that a father may murder his son to oblige his general, but a little reflection will show that the Jewish legend of the interrupted sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, though similar, is less heroic. For Nakamitsu's act was voluntary, and his son, eager to be sacrificed on the altar of duty, welcomed death, while Manju had not demanded such cruel fidelity.
A typical instance of the teaching and technique of popular plays is furnished by "Ichi-no-tani Futaba-gunki" ("The Tale of the Sapling of Ichi-no-tani"), produced with exceptional splendour and a first-rate cast both Danjuro and Kikugoro, leading Japanese actors, were included at the chief Tōkyō theatre in the autumn of 1898. The incident, more or less ​historical, on which it is founded, is simple enough. During the great civil war between the Taira and Minamoto clans in the twelfth century, a Minamoto general, Kumagaya, is said to have been so touched by the likeness to his own son of a youthful adversary, named Atsumori, that he spared his life and connived at his escape from the battle of Ichi-no-tani, a famous valley near Kobe. This theme had to be embroidered with improbable episodes and extravagant actions to satisfy public taste. Accordingly, Kumagaya saves Atsumori's life in a supremely sensational manner. In obedience to secret orders from his feudal lord, Yoshitsune, he induces his son Kojiro to enter Atsumori's castle by cutting down a score of guards single-handed, to change clothes with Atsumori, to personate Atsumori so as to deceive both friend and foe, and finally to be killed by his own father in single combat, that the world may be absolutely convinced of Atsumori's death. While the plot requires that most of the characters in the piece should be mystified, it is important that the audience should not be mystified, and this twofold object is secured by the ingenious cooperation of stage and cage. While father and son, mounted on terrific black and white chargers, interchange threats and insults so as to blind their fellow-actors, the chorus expresses their real feelings of anguish and affection in such pathetic strains that the audience cannot fail to grasp the situation. But concealment of the truth from the other characters leads to more entanglements. Atsumori's mother, the Lady Wistaria, believing her son to be dead, pays a visit to the murderer's wife, and discovering in her a feudal dependent, insinuates that her obvious duty is to assist in her husband's assassination when he shall return. ​When Kumagaya comes home, his position, between the woman who thinks he has killed her son and the woman whose son he has really killed, is made more embarrassing by the fact that Kajiwara, an enemy who suspects the truth, is listening at the door. His fluent and inconsistent explanations would be superfluous if he might show the dead man's head, which he carries with him in a box; but that must, of course, only be revealed at the last moment to Yoshitsune as a proof of his loyal obedience, when he will be praised for his loyal devotion and retire to a Buddhist monastery, muttering "Life is a hollow dream." The piece is a great deal more complicated than might be supposed from the foregoing analysis. Subsidiary peasants, beggars, and woodcutters turn out at opportune moments to be Taira or Minamoto warriors and court-ladies in disguise. The first three acts are occupied with a kind of prologue, which has only two points of contact with the main Atsumori motif: first, the characters, though entirely different, belong to the same historic period; and, secondly, their business is also to glorify parental murder.
Casuists have urged that to sacrifice another's life, even though that other be one's own child, is less heroic than to sacrifice oneself. But that, too, is common in the jidaimono or historical plays, which far outnumber the rest in popularity. Not to speak of the forty-seven rōnin, whose simultaneous suicide is the subject of more than fifty dramas, and whose venerated tombs at Sengakuji are yet covered with poems and visiting-cards every New Year's Day, I suppose one drama in ten contains a case of hara-kiri, or "happy dispatch." The actor writes a letter, generally in blood, to explain why his honour requires self​slaughter, and then with great deliberation draws a knife across his stomach, until his admirably twitching limbs are covered with gore. At this point the squeamish foreigner is apt to leave the theatre, but the Japanese babies do not blench at blood, and are taught by such sights from their earliest years that superb indifference to death, that supreme attachment to honour, which no other nation displays to the same degree. Hara-kiri cannot be approved by utilitarians, but it implies a higher pitch of heroism than you find in a British melodrama, where the hero and villain are probably engaged in selfish rivalry for the hand of the same young woman, and merely differ in the choice of means to gratify the same desire. I find an exquisite instance of Japanese subtlety in the mingled ferocity and devotion of their popular plays, which please at once the devil and the angel cohabiting the human heart. If the devil gloat over blood-shedding, the angel exults in death for an ideal. The devil holds the knife and the angel rams it in. Nor must you suppose that the playgoers who revel in such incidents regard them as part and parcel of an effete morality. Every few years the partisans of Western ethics are startled by similar tragedies. The assassins or would-be assassins of Viscount Mori in 1887, of Count Okuma in 1889, of the Czarevitch in 1891, of Li Hung Chang in 1895, were prepared to pay with their own lives for what they deemed dishonourable concessions to foreigners. The young girl, Yuko Hatakeyama, who cut her throat in expiation of the outrage offered to the Czarevitch; the young wife of Lieutenant Asada, who, learning of his death on the battlefield, slew herself before his portrait, that she might follow him; the forty soldiers, who took their own lives because the ​Government gave up Liaotung at the bidding of Russia, France, and Germany—all these were as widely praised and honoured by their fellow-countrymen as Kumagaya or Nakamitsu.
Next in popularity to the historical are the social plays (sewamono), of which the main topic is love. This love, however, has nothing in common with the well-regulated affections which dominate our middle-class comedy from "Our Boys" to "Sweet Lavender," and culminate in the addition of two or three conventional couples to suburban villadom. Domestic happiness having been arranged for most young folk by their elders, neither courtship nor marriage (if the former could be said to exist) presented material for dramatic treatment. The heroine is either a geisha or a courtesan, exposed by her profession to the worst caprice of passion and of fortune. In neither case is she necessarily repulsive or even reprehensible. On the contrary, she is often held up to sympathy as a model of filial devotion, having sold her virtue for a certain period to save her parents from beggary. Public opinion is still so much more Confucian than Christian among Japanese peasants, that not only does a father incur no odium for selling his daughter, but she would be regarded in many districts as wickedly unfilial if she objected to be sold. It is true that by decrees added to Japanese law in 1875 and 1896 such sale is forbidden: girls are no longer bought; they are hired. But during the Yedo period, whose morals are mostly reflected in such pieces, the famous oiran sama or lady-courtesan was a very dazzling figure, while the humble jōro was at least regarded with pity. If we put aside for the moment Western feeling on this subject, it is clear that no romance could be more ​deeply pathetic than that of a duteous heart fluttering behind the gilded bars of self-imposed shame and responding to the generous affection of a liberating lover. The entourage of spies and gaolers made escape no easy thing: thus plenty of dangerous adventure would diversify the plot. The nimble-witted theatre-goer loves intrigue, and follows hero and heroine through an imbroglio of ruses and disguises and machinations which it would be tedious to describe. Again let me pay tribute to the ingenuity of the didactic dramatist, who illustrates a lesson in filial unselfishness with pictures of attractive wickedness. Few scenes could surpass in beauty the luxurious lupanar, with its troop of richly robed Delilahs. Drury Lane has produced nothing more spectacular or more sensational than the meretricious, murderous dramas of this class.
Less numerous, but of great interest to the student, are Oikemono, or plays "connected with the private troubles of some illustrious family." These would obviously strengthen feudal ties, and some have considerable merit. The first piece I saw in a Japanese theatre was founded on the legend (told at length in Mr. Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan") of the Nabeshima cat. One of the lords of Nabeshima had the misfortune to marry a species of vampire-cat, or rather his wife was possessed by one. While the daimyō and his friends keep watch, the wife retires to bed, and soon the shadow of a cat's head is silhouetted on the paper lantern near her couch. Caterwauling is heard: the watchers, armed with swords, rush in and stab the cat-wife, whose death ends the play. Life in the court of a feudal lord during the Tokugawa shogunate is most vividly portrayed in "Kagamiyama-kokyo-no-nishiki," which may be regarded as the Japanese ​counterpart of Scribe's "Bataille de Femmes," except that the ruling passion is not love, but loyalty. It deals with a feud between two court ladies. Iwafugi, old and ugly, is jealous of the favour extended to Onoye by the daimyō's daughter, who has entrusted to her care a consecrated statue of Buddha and a box of precious perfume. Having caused these to be stolen and concealed with a straw-sandal of her own, Iwafugi accuses her young rival of trying to fasten the theft upon her, strikes her in the face with the sandal, and leaves the mortified Onoye no remedy for insult but suicide. But Ohatsu, a devoted maid of the latter, avenges her mistress by stabbing Iwafugi to death, and is rewarded with promotion to high rank. Thus the supreme merit of loyalty at any cost is once more vindicated. This piece is interesting, because it furnishes the veteran actor, Danjuro, with a striking female part—that of Iwafugi—and proves that the subjection of women in domestic matters by no means robbed them of spirit and individuality. The rash inference that Confucian domesticity must reduce women to the level of a slave or a doll is disproved by the heroic figures which are so frequent in historical, social, and court-family drama.
Such, then, is the popular play, dear to both actors and public, who value Western imports of a material kind, but prefer their own moral and social ideals to those of foreigners. Railways and ironclads may be readily adopted, but not the New Testament or the New Woman. Yet, setting such vexed questions aside, and taking the neutral ground of art, it is clear that the pieces which I have described are inferior even to the archaic Nō. Let them be as imaginative, as patriotic, as lofty as you like, they remain stirring ​spectacles, without cohesion, depth, or unity. They are fascinating pictures of a deeply loved and daily vanishing past, but drama of a high sort they are not. Is there no movement, it will be asked, among the more educated classes to raise the standard of art, to create a drama which shall appeal less to the eye and more to the intelligence?
Yes; there are two forces at work which deserve credit for their energy in what is almost an impossible task until the conditions of theatrical representation shall be radically altered. How is the action to be compressed within reasonable limits when the audience demand a whole day's entertainment? How is closer realism to be achieved by the actor when the never silent orchestra compels him to pitch his voice in a falsetto key? How are women's parts to be adequately rendered so long as men monopolise the stage? How are women to take their places when the size of the theatre and the length of the performance put a prohibitive strain on their physical powers? And how is the author to complete a masterpiece when manager, actor, and musician claim the right to interpolate scenes, business, and melody for the irrelevant amusement of the uncritical? These questions must be answered before reform can make headway. In the meantime, a glance at what reformers have tried to accomplish is only due to their laudable endeavour.
Rather more than ten years ago, when enthusiasm for Western things was at its height, a species of independent theatre, calling itself the Sōshi-Shibai, was started with a loud flourish of trumpets in Tōkyō. The promoters were sōshi (ex-students), who, as actors or authors, or both, proclaimed their intention of revolutionising the stage and informing it with ​nineteenth-century culture. They began, as such societies generally begin, with translations, and by dramatising the romances of the elder Dumas succeeded for a time in attracting. "The Three Musketeers" and "Monte Cristo" were spectacular enough to please. But when it came to producing original work, their will was found to exceed their capacity. Without enough money or experience to make a sustained effort, they kindled a flame which soon flickered out. Mr. Kawakami, as I have already stated, won a great success by dramatising the more striking incidents of the war with China. He visited Port Arthur and supplied himself with photographs of many varieties, so that, at any rate, his play was realistically mounted. How far its structure was in advance of less up-to-date pieces I cannot say. If it at all resembled his adaptation of "Round the World in Eighty Days," I fear it was no more than a series of tableaux. But no production on strictly European lines could command an intelligent, much less a sympathetic, reception from playgoers unacquainted with European life. In the summer of 1898 Mr. Osada, whose models are Parisian, presented his compatriots with a version of "Le monde où l'on s'ennuie." It will be remembered that the climax of that amusing comedy is reached when a young diplomat is discovered kissing his wife in a dark conservatory by the scandalised guests at a French chateau. Now, the Tōkyō tradesman has never kissed anybody, and would not incommode his wife with sentimental attention. He was merely mystified by this queer illustration of barbarian habit, and returned with relief to the contemplation of his politely blood-stained ancestors.
The most promising path of improvement would ​seem to be that pursued by Mr. Tsuboüchi and Mr. Fukuchi, who continue to write plays on episodes in their own history, but strive to avoid the extravagance and unreality of their predecessors. Mr. Tsuboüchi, who was well known as a critic and novelist before he turned playwright, invented the term mugengekki or "dream-play "in ridicule of such wildly improbable incidents as disfigure "The Tale of the Sapling of Ichi-no-tani." I have not seen his own drama, the "Maki no Kati" (1897), which deals with the turbulent thirteenth century, but Mr. Aston discerns in it "careful workmanship and gratifying freedom from extravagance," in spite of "several murders and two hara-kiri by women." Of Mr. Fukuchi's work I can write with some confidence, having been privileged on many occasions to discuss it with him. He is recognised as the leading Japanese playwright, and has produced about thirty plays during the last ten years. He has been engaged for some time on translations of "Hamlet" and "Othello," but has no idea of staging them, for reasons which will be presently explained. Though anxious to modernise the drama by introducing less bloodshed and more careful study of character, he finds modern Japan unsuited to dramatic treatment. The typical advocate of progress, who dresses and talks like a foreigner, takes little interest in his own arts and antiquities, being absorbed in politics or money-making. He has neither the picturesque nor heroic qualities which a dramatist postulates, and is therefore rejected by Mr. Fukuchi in his search for material. A serious obstacle to reform lies in the ignorance of actors and the indifference of the upper classes. While the former too often lack the erudition to appreciate and ​interpret a scholarly reproduction of antique habit and speech, the latter are only beginning to discard their aristocratic prejudice against the theatre, compelling the author to write down to the level of his middle and lower class audience. But better education and more democratic ideals are beginning to tell. The reception of "Kasuga-no-Tsubone" ("The Lady-in-Waiting of Kasuga")—one of Mr. Fukuchi's finest plays—marked a most creditable advance in public judgment.
Here was a piece entirely devoid of sensational incident, depending on neither love nor death nor abnormal sacrifice for its appeal, but narrating the discharge of public duty by a high-spirited woman in the face of ceaseless intrigue and danger. It brings out the noblest side of Japanese statesmanship, the farseeing wisdom and patience of the ruler, together with the perseverance and devotion of the ruled. The political and personal strands of interest are so cleverly combined, that for once the grey fabric of governmental policy is sufficiently embroidered with a pattern in gold of intersecting character: the scarlet thread is scarcely missed. Briefly this is the tale. Iyeyasu, having completed his work of equipping Japan with a durable constitution, retired to Suruga, and, leaving the shogunate in Hidetada's hands, continued to take private measures for the future welfare of the State. One of these was the education of his grandson, Taketiyo (better known as Iyemitsu), whom he wished to be trained in the severest school of military discipline. For this purpose he chose the Lady of Kasuga, whose husband, Inaba Sado-no-Kami, was a rōnin, having been dispossessed of title and estates by Hideyoshi. The task was beset with difficulty. First the wife of Hidetada, and then that Shōgun himself, lost no ​occasion of thwarting her efforts and of putting forward Kunityo, a younger prince, whose gentler and more refined manner gained him many partisans at Court. In despair of winning her cause, the Lady of Kasuga fled to Suruga in the garb of a pilgrim and begged Iyeyasu to decide between the rival candidates. The old man thereupon returned to Yedo and subjected the brothers to searching tests of both intellectual and physical capacity. In all these the more Spartan pupil of the samurai's wife proved victorious. Up to this point the plot does not differ very materially from ordinary histories of disputed succession, but the last act is peculiarly illustrative of woman's status during the Tokugawa régime. Asked to choose her own reward for service so admirably rendered, the preceptress of Iyemitsu solicits the restoration to her husband of his rank and estates; but he, regarding such a proposal as wounding to his honour, proceeds to divorce her. Iyeyasu then offers to make the wife a daimyō, but she refuses, on the ground that to accept would be to still further dishonour her husband. In the end Inaba is reinstated for having exhibited a proper spirit of pride and independence, while the Lady of Kasuga resumes her place at his side.
On the lines of this play, in which conflict of scheming interests is substituted for hand-to-hand fighting, while a clearly developed story replaces the old olla podrida of loosely connected scenes, there is great hope of raising popular drama from a somewhat crude condition to the level of serious art. It has never aimed at merely amusing the populace; it has always professed to instruct them. In the hands of Mr. Fukuchi and men of his stamp its patriotic bias need not be weakened, while its artistic worth will be ​much increased. But it is by no means likely that European drama will affect its substance, however largely it may influence the form. On this point Mr. Fukuchi is as emphatic as Mr. Danjuro. Shakespeare is impossible. His teaching would be at least as pernicious in its effect on feminine morals and the structure of society as that of Ibsen is considered by conservative moralists in this country. We have seen that the restriction of woman's sphere to loving and serving does not necessarily rob her of courage or resolution. Many foreigners resident in Japan have not hesitated to declare their conviction that the "childish, confiding, sweet Japanese girl" is superior to the "calculating, penetrating, diamond-hard American woman," the consequence and nemesis of masculine idolatry. A little reflection will show how shocking the heroines of Shakespeare must seem to admirers of the former type. You have Rosalind, swaggering shamelessly in male attire; Beatrice, cutting such coarse quips as Benedick himself would scarcely venture upon to-day in a London club; Portia, masquerading in cap and gown, and exposing her lover to dishonour by snatching his betrothal-ring; Juliet and Jessica, selfishly disregardful of their parents' wishes; and Katherine the shrew, whose violent vulgarity fortunately could not be translated into so polite a language as Japanese. As for "The Merry Wives of Windsor," should the Sōshi-Shibai ever dare to present it, I feel sure that the Tōkyō counterpart of Mr. Clement Scott would denounce their action in such terms as these:
This disgusting representation of the most loathsome of all Shakespeare's plays was unutterably offensive. So foul a concoction ought never to have been ​allowed to disgrace the boards of a Japanese theatre. The lewd maunderings of Sir John Falstaff, the licentious jesting of Mistress Ford, Mistress Page, and Mistress Quickly must excite reprobation in all but those lovers of prurience and dabblers in impropriety who are eager to gratify their illicit tastes under the pretence of art. Ninety-seven per cent. of the people who laughed to see the fat knight smothered in a basket of dirty linen are nasty-minded people. Outside a silly clique there is not the slightest interest in the Elizabethan humbug or all his works."
II
Many foreigners, unable to catch the meaning of what is to them a rather tedious dumb-show, pay short and perfunctory visits to the theatre. But this is not wise, for, even should the play lie outside their comprehension, the native playgoers are both affable to accost and interesting to study. They are seated in lidless boxes lined with matting, in parties of four and five, on the ground, on slightly elevated seats at the side, or in a long gallery surrounding the house. A box in the first position will cost about eight shillings, in the second about nine, in the last eleven. The higher you climb the more you pay, except in the Oikomi ("driven-in-place"), where the "gods" are crowded together in a grated pen, from which little can be seen or heard; but then the price is no more than sixpence, or a penny an act if they cannot afford to witness the whole performance. This will consist of two long plays lasting about four hours each, with an intermediary tableau, which is generally the most beautifully mounted of all. During the day every one eats and drinks and smokes. The women take tea, the men saké, while the babies loudly and numerously imbibe milk. Between the acts, when the handsome ​curtains (often gifts from admiring associations to a popular artist) descend, the audience strolls about the undoba, a large enclosure surrounding the theatre, in which the stall-keepers sell refreshments, photographs, toys, and all kinds of ornamental knick-knacks. You escape the headache engendered by the gas and close atmosphere of a Western play-house, for the sliding shutters that form the outer walls of the upper storey can be opened at will to admit currents of cool air. The best day to go is Monday, for that is the pay-day of the geisha, whom you will see in almost as many costumes as the actor, since she loves to return to an adjacent tea-house at frequent intervals for the purpose of renewing her charms of apparel and complexion.
Tea-houses surround a theatre as jackals a lion; their co-operation is indispensable to the success of an indoor picnic. Besides, it is not considered genteel to apply for seats at the door. Your only chance of a good place is to secure the kind offices of a tea-house proprietor, who will provide attendance and refreshments, besides taking charge of your watch, purse, and any other article of value. The Tōkyō pickpocket is very adroit, and a constant patron of dramatic art. Formerly the entertainment began at dawn, but the Government, which exercises paternal supervision over popular amusements, has now limited its length to eight or nine hours, so that, if you arrive at half-past ten, you may be sure of seeing the programme played out until seven or eight in the evening. Having left your shoes at the tea-house in exchange for a wooden check and sandals, you will be conducted to a box and presented by a polite attendant with cushion, programme, tobacco-box, tea, and sweet ​cakes, with luncheon to follow. Now, at last, you are at liberty to observe the antics of the actors.
As you cannot understand what they say, you notice more particularly how they say it. At first their elocution will seem both painful and artificial: the tones are too shrill or too gruff, equally removed from the diapason of natural speech. But that is because the traditional samisen, a three-stringed guitar, follows the performer like a curse from start to finish. Unless he pitched his voice above or below its notes, he could not be heard. Even so, the author complains that his words receive inadequate attention from either player or playgoer, for the former relies chiefly on pose and facial expression to score his points, while the latter obediently admires the methods of acting to which he has always been accustomed. It cannot be denied that these methods are effective. I have seen the feminine part of the audience infected with such violent emotion by the agonised play of mobile features as to rush for relief to the "Tear-Room," where they can cry to heart's content without inconveniencing more stoical neighbours.
Though the actor's tone is disagreeably unnatural, his articulation is both clean-cut and sonorous. The syllables crack on the ear like pistol-shots, sharply distinct. I imagine that he is seldom inaudible. It is a great pity that convention, if not law, still forbids the appearance of men and women on the same stage, since the mimicry of one sex by the other, triumphantly deceptive in other particulars, breaks down at the point of vocal imitation. The eye is tricked, but not the ear. Yet peculiar attention is given to the training and discipline of onnagata, or impersonators of female parts. Formerly they were not only given the ​outward semblance of women by every contrivance which the costumier and coiffeur could supply, but were required to spend their lives from childhood in feminine costume and society, that their masculine proclivities might be as far as possible obliterated. Even now their names stand first on the programme, their dressing-rooms are locked on the inside, their influence is paramount in the Actors' Guild. The supremacy of Mr. Danjuro is due in no small degree to his ability to play both male and female characters with equal éclat. Notwithstanding every precaution and privilege, the actor cannot acquire the intonation of an actress. His reedy falsetto is a poor parody of the musical tones in which Japanese women converse, and the loss to a public which has never been caressed by Sara Bernhardt's golden voice or thrilled by Mrs. Patrick Campbell's may be sympathetically imagined. But, though Tōkyō has no actresses, the Women's Theatre in Kyōto, in which are no actors, might seem a partial set-off to this deficiency. In fact, however, though the women are extremely clever in simulating the gait and gestures of men—if I had not been taken behind the scenes, I should have believed myself in the wrong theatre—they are hopelessly handicapped by physical weakness. The stage is so enormous, and the performance so long, that an artist may reckon on walking ten miles in the course of the day, while the voice is severely taxed by the prolonged stridency of declamation.
While the stage-woman, adroitly personated, is often tolerable, the stage-child is an intolerable infliction. Convention has decreed that it shall shriek all its lines on one high monotonous note, and shriek it does. There is no attempt at variety of tone ​or naturalness of expression. When a steam-launch emits similar sounds, we condone in a machine what we resent in a human being. It is simply an earsplitting automaton. One turns with relief to watch the children in the audience, who are evidently the spoiled darlings of their relations. But, indeed, the child seems never snubbed or thwarted in Japan. At the termination of every act, while the curtains fall or are drawn together, there is a scurry of tiny feet up and down the parallel hana-michi (the flower-walks which divide the auditorium), and, if some audacious little intruders rush upon the stage itself, they are greeted with indulgent laughter.
Perhaps the chief obstacle to illusion, and the one most easily remedied as regards scenic accessories, is the enormous area of the stage. It is far too large to be enclosed between "wings" and "flies," while the custom of exit and entry along the flower-walks transgresses our cardinal principle of separating those who act from those who look on. As a rule, the supposed locality of the piece, be it palace or temple or battle-field, is a wood-and-cardboard island in a sea of bare boards, of which the circumference nearly corresponds with that of a revolving section of the stage, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, which turns on lignum-vitæ wheels. While one scene is being enacted, a second is being prepared behind, and at a given signal the eccyclema is whirled round, carrying away one set of actors and bringing on their successors. Do not suppose, however, that realistic effects are outside the range of the Meiji-za or Kabuki-za management. I remember a melodrama, written by a lieutenant in the Japanese navy, in which the hero, though encumbered by a heavy piece of ​ordinance hoisted on his shoulders, cut down eight assailants in turn in spite of a terrific storm, which drenched the company with real rain and blew down real trees, planted that afternoon!
The actor is a more important personage than the author in most people's eyes. Until this relation shall be reversed, the Thespian cart is not likely to leave the rut in which it moves. Meanwhile, a glance at their respective positions may fitly conclude this essay. Before Meiji, the present era of enlightenment, the mummer was treated as a rogue and vagabond. He was regarded with contempt as a koyamono, or "occupant of a hut," and placed on a par with mendicants. In public places he was obliged to wear a mebakari-zukin or hood, which covered head and face all but the eyes, and was only allowed to frequent particular restaurants. Unless he belonged to one of the half-dozen theatrical families who ruled the stage with oligarchic exclusiveness, monopolising the secrets of the profession, the power to admit novices, and the right to play particular parts, his progress was slow. Beginning with the horse's leg (uma no ashi), a limb of the pantomimic charger, which was indispensable to historic drama, he was obliged to buy or insinuate his way by adoption to more important parts before he could earn either fame or fortune. Nowadays all that is changed. Free competition rules. The public is his only patron. Without training or payment of fees to the Ichikawa, the Onoye, or the Nakamura, a successful débutant can march by his own merits into wealth and popularity. As he treads the flower-walks, fans, purses, embroidered pouches will be showered at his feet; to his dressing-room will come love-letters innumerable, for the Japanese "matinée girl" is very ​susceptible; in public he will be pointed out, the idol of the masses; his crest will be on the tortoise-shell or ivory pin, which adorns the high coiffure of the stagestruck musumé ; finally, should he ever reach the head of his profession, he may hope to make as much as £5000 in four weeks, far surpassing the modest income of a prime minister or an archbishop.
The Heroine of a Problem-play.
​eyes and ears on a sensational pageant, in which to them the actor is king. They do not bestow a thought on the power behind the throne, chained there by ignorance and convention. Plays are sometimes published, but their sale is insignificant. The aristocracy, both of birth and intellect, hold too much aloof from a plebeian amusement, which under higher conditions might become a fruitful and immortal art. When I think of Mr. Fukuchi, fettered by public taste, that stupidest of Jupiters, to the Caucasus of picturesque melodrama, while vulturine actors peck at his brains, I wish that a chorus of Oceanides, winged ideas and ideals from Paris, from London, and Christiania—could cross the seas to Tōkyō and liberate Prometheus.