the fruit of a religious revival on the part of archæologists and
patriots. They are a curious instance of wisely arrested growth.
Had they never passed the border-line of archaic dancing, their
interpreters would be a dwindling band of Shintō priestesses
to gaping peasants. Had they followed in the track of popular
drama, they might have been expanded to those loosely-knit and
blood-curdling tableaux which delight the shopkeeper. But, being
compressed within severe limits and addressed to none but educated
audiences, they present in exquisite epitome the literature, the
history, the musical and choregraphic art of mediæval Japan.
The foreigner derives from them an impression of the beliefs and
customs, the manners of speech and dress, the heroism and the
dignity, of feudal times. But to a native they convey far more than
this. “The _Nō_ poetry,” writes an enthusiast, “is like a great
store of the treasures of Eastern culture. It is full of allusions
to the classical stories of ‘Manyōshū’ and ‘Kokinshu,’ Chinese
poetry and Buddhist scriptures. Its chief characteristic is
colour. The words are gorgeous, splendid, and even magnificent,
as are the costumes.” But of their literary value, and how far
that value is enhanced or impaired by flying puns and prismatic
pillow-words, I cannot judge. The Buddhist authorship is very
obvious in the case of “Aoi no Uye,” for it will be noticed that,
where the _miko_, or Shintō priestess, failed to exorcise the Demon
of Jealousy, the priest of Buddha succeeded. But perhaps, in art of
this kind, so innocent of construction, so dependent on allusion,
it matters very little that the author should efface himself behind
the ideals advocated in his work. The _Nō_ are frankly didactic.
Piety, reverence, martial virtues are openly inculcated, though
never in such a way as to shock artistic sensibilities. Beauty and
taste go far to disguise all structural deficiencies.
But let us not apply to these the standard by which we judge mature
drama, demanding situation, character, plot, movement. Rather
compare them with the miracle-plays and mysteries of the Chester
or Coventry collection, which hover between scriptural tableaux
and Gothic farce of a peculiarly gross kind. There is no beauty
in those rhymed versions of “The Descent into Hell,” “Adam and
Eve,” or “The Temptation in the Wilderness.” The authors had such
small sense of decency and congruity, that after a serious attempt
to handle a solemn vision in “Pilate’s Wife’s Dream,” you are
confronted with this stage-direction: (“_Here shall the Devil go to
Pilate’s wife and draw the curtain, as she lieth in bed, but she,
soon after that he is come in, shall make a rueful noise, running
on the scaffold with her skirt and her kirtle in her hand, and she
shall come before Pilate like a mad woman._”) Imagine the wildest
of _kiōgen_ incidents invading a _Nō_! How shocked a Japanese
audience would have been! If the _Nō_ seem occasionally _naïf_ and
puerile, the gross _enfantillage_ of European miracle-plays none
but readers of them can believe. And, when we reach the tedious
“Moralities,” which coincided in this country with the advent of
the Protestant Tudors, and were therefore written a century later
than the best of the _Nō_, the palm of sacred drama for beauty,
interest, and pathos must still be awarded to the disciples of
Buddha. Could anything less human or less dramatic be imagined
than a cast of personified abstractions, bearing such names as
Good Counsel, Knowledge, Abominable Living, and God’s Merciful
Promises? We must console ourselves with the reflection that, when
once the stage had freed itself from ecclesiastical fetters, the
popular drama in England shot far ahead of popular drama in Japan.
No student of dramatic art could think for a moment of bracketing
Chikamatsu with Shakespeare.
POPULAR PLAYS
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 Diosy
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 tea-house 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:
“The idea of Japan prevalent in foreign countries is thus
reflected:
“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 Notting 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!
[Illustration:
MADAME SADA YACCO (_p. 67_)
MR. OBOJIRO KAWAKAMI (_p. 67_)]
[Illustration:
MR. DANJURO AS “LADY OF KASUGA” (_p. 87_)
MR. DANJURO AS “JIRAIYA” (_p. 262_)
FAMOUS JAPANESE PLAYERS]
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 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 co-incidental
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 théâtre_, 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 Hôjô family,
acquired supreme power under the title of Shikken (minister of
the Shōgun 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
Notting 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 mediæval 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 Kizuki temple
in Izumo with Nagoya Sanzaburō, 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.