of question and answer from concise English into more elaborate
Japanese, and _vice versâ_, was a rather slow process. I therefore
begged the invaluable Kishimoto to say that I could not think of
trespassing any longer on Mr. Danjuro’s leisure, and would spare
him one or two other interrogations which had suggested themselves.
Thanking him in my best Japanese, I was rising to go, but our
unwearied host would not hear of it, and insisted on my continuing
to the bitter end.
“Well, since you are so kind, I should much like to hear your
opinion of the _sōshi shibai_.”
Knowing that the _sōshi_-theatre must appear to a conservative
actor as red a rag as the Independent Theatre to Mr. Clement Scott
or the Théâtre de l’Œuvre to the late M. Sarcey, I awaited the
reply with interest. But the gallant attempt to destroy feudal
spectacular drama with ammunition drawn from French and English
arsenals had failed so miserably, that the patriot could afford to
be generous. His eyes twinkled as he answered: “Certainly some of
the _sōshi_ had great talent, but it was all of the theoretic kind.
They had splendid theories about reforming the stage and bringing
it into harmony with progress, with the spirit of the age, and
other fine things. But, when they had to translate their theories
into practice, the result fell very far short of their aims.
Their writers were amateurs, their actors were amateurs; they knew
nothing of stage-craft. The public, excited by the promises, were
willing enough to give them a trial, but, as they did not know how
to interest the public----”
“Then you gave them no assistance, Mr. Danjuro?”
“None at all.”
“Are you blessed with a censor of plays?”
“There is a censorship, but it falls under the head of ordinary
police duties, and is not specially limited to the theatre.
Political and licentious passages are carefully excised before
performance, and I doubt if the authority of the censor has been
exercised in the Meiji era (since the Restoration).”
“How is it that foreign plays fail to interest your playgoers?”
It is my honest belief that Kishimoto, from a mistaken idea of
sparing my feelings, abridged considerably the answer to this
question. Both he and Mr. Danjuro chuckled a great deal, and seemed
to be exchanging sympathetic affirmations. Then came the crushing
rejoinder: “Because in all your plays the attitude of men to women
seems to us not only irrational but ridiculous.”
I changed the subject. “Which classes go most to the theatre?”
“The middle and lower classes. Since the Emperor witnessed a
performance in Count Inonyé’s house in 1886 it has become more
fashionable for men of rank to go occasionally, but it cannot be
said that the aristocracy, as a class, patronise the stage.”
“Can Mr. Danjuro tell me if the _mawari-butai_, or revolving stage,
resembling what the Greeks used to call _eccyclema_, is native or
imported? Some Japanese have told me that it was probably adopted
from a foreign source.” Mr. Danjuro held the opposite opinion.
“And how far is your stage controlled by guilds?”
“The old system has entirely broken down. Formerly some six or
seven families had complete control of the theatre. A novice could
only enter the profession through adoption by one or other of
these. He received an elaborate education; he adopted the name
and a modified form of the crest of his patron. The right to play
certain parts was vested in certain actors, who transmitted the
privilege. But now all that is changed. Any one can go on the stage
and play any part he likes. There is no restriction and no training
either.”
“And is the special tax on actors now abolished, giving place to an
income-tax?”
“No; that is an error. We still pay a heavy tax, irrespective of
income.”
“One more question. Have you any association corresponding to that
which in England is known by the name of the Actors’ Benevolent
Fund?”
“Yes; we have a large guild, which undertakes to help members
overtaken by misfortune and to expel others whose actions bring
discredit on the stage. For we love our art, and are rewarded by
its growing popularity with all classes of the community.”
On this patriotic note I thought it well to close. I urged
Kishimoto to exhaust his stock of honorifics in a suitable vote
of thanks, and, as I took leave of the patient, archiepiscopal
veteran, I wondered how a mosquito feels when it has been stinging
with impertinent curiosity, hour after hour, some grave, immemorial
image of Buddha.
THE SCARLET LADY
THE SCARLET LADY
I
--“La dame en noir des carrefours
Qu’attendre après de si longs jours?
* * * * *
--Je suis la mordeuse, entre mes bras,
De toute force exaspérée
Vers les toujours mêmes hélas;
Ou dévorante--ou dévorée.
Mes dents, comme des pierres d’or,
Mettent en moi leur étincelle:
Je suis belle comme la mort
Et suis publique aussi comme elle.
Aux douloureux traceurs d’éclairs
Et de désirs sur mes murailles,
J’offre le catafalque de mes chairs
Et les cierges des funérailles.
Je leur donne tout mon remords
Pour les soûler au seuil du porche
Et le blasphème de mon corps
Brandi vers Dieu comme une torche.
* * * * *
--La dame en noir des carrefours
Qu’attendre après de si longs jours
Qu’attendre?
--J’attends cet homme au couteau rouge.”
EMILE VERHAEREN.
In Europe she wears black. That colour is better suited to the
ignoble tragedy of which she is both heroine and victim. At night
you may see her hovering furtively about the edge of a square,
where shadows hang darkest, or plucking at passers-by with words
of vulgar endearment. All she has to offer is momentary pasture
for the teeth of desire, since love and confidence, the lanterns
of happy wedlock, shed no light on her outcast bed. Society damns,
but cannot destroy, her. Shame and solitude are the wages which
corrode her soul even more rapidly than her body, though that has
become in Christian eyes, as the poet so finely says, “a blasphemy,
brandished like a torch before God”; but man, denying her the
status of any but an unconvicted criminal, forces her to drop lower
and lower through remorse and infamy to the hospital-pallet or the
assassin’s knife.
How different is her fortune in Japan! There she wears scarlet,
garish and bright as the five years’ revelry to which, as they
might sell a platter or a cup, her parents have sold her; but she
is not doomed to the black degradation which robs her Western
sister of self-respect. Though the loss of freedom be irksome and
submission to buyers disagreeable, yet she is a member of “the
oldest profession in the world,” in a country where it is not
without honour. She is surrounded by companions, well fed and well
housed, protected from robbery or murder by the Government and the
goddess Inari; above all, she does not live ashamed and boycotted,
but plays her part in an active round of duties and ceremonies.
If remembered precepts of religious teaching ever visit her,
they come, not to threaten, but to console. So far from slipping
hell-wards, she is earning the approbation which Heaven accords
to filial self-sacrifice. Happy she is not, though she may one day
become so, for, when her contract shall have expired, marriage will
be no impossibility. But she is much less unhappy than if she wore
black.
It might be thought that the operation of natural laws, regulating
supply and demand, would sufficiently account for her existence.
But those who prefer fancy to fact are given the choice between
two legends. According to one, the Emperor Komatsu Tenno sent
forth his eight daughters to be women of pleasure and set the
fashion in seven provinces; from them the courtesans of Settsu,
Hiogo, and Eguchi were said to be descended. Though one may doubt
the authenticity of this imperial origin, the incongruity between
rank and the exercise of the scarlet profession did not affect the
Eastern mind, as it does our minds, with a sense of repulsion. On
the contrary, it is no uncommon thing in the old romances to find a
heroine of noble birth resorting, reluctantly indeed, but without
any feeling of irremediable guilt, to the sale of her charms,
until she should find a chance of regaining liberty and her lover.
In fact, one of the classes into which courtesans were divided,
that of _tsubone-jōro_, was so called from the word _tsubone_,
signifying the ladies’ apartments in a Daimyō’s house, because the
daughter of Ichinomiya, a Daimyō, being driven by stress of weather
to Hiroshima and by want of money to sell her favours, became
prototype and founder of aristocratic demireps. The country-folk,
respecting her station, would not reckon her among common _jōro_,
but prefixed the substantive _tsubone_ rather than blur their nice
appreciation of class distinction. The second legend sounds less
apocryphal. After the great sea-fight of Dan-no-ura in 1185, the
widows and daughters of the defeated Taira clan “were forced for
daily bread to sell their bodies in the streets of Shimonoseki.”
But at least four centuries before that date the Hetaira had begun
to set her mark on history and literature.
The poetry of the Nara period, which reflects the elegant
court-culture of the eighth century and is represented by Manyōshiu
(“The Collection of One Thousand Leaves”), was largely written by
women, and contains at least one song by a “jūgyōjōfu,” or “woman
who goes about for pleasure.” The _kugutsu_, who were summoned
by innkeepers for the convenience of guests and were of much
lower status, composed many famous little songs, whose memory has
survived that of their authors. But the first light-o’-love whose
orb burns brightly on the stormy darkness of the twelfth century,
when Taira and Minamoto deluged the rice-fields with blood, was
Tora Gozen. The most beautiful courtesan in Oiso, she became the
mistress of the elder Soga, who slew his father’s murderer in the
hunting camp of the Shōgun Yoritomo at the foot of Fuji. Their tale
is told in an historical novel, “Soga Monogatari,” and the tourist
who descends from the sulphur-springs of Ashinoyu to Lake Hakone
will still pass on his way three monuments of stone, the smallest
being commemorative of Tora. More striking still is the tribute
paid to Takao, another type of immortal frailty, who refused with
scorn the Lord of Sendai’s offer to become his property. Endowed
with every accomplishment, she enjoyed a higher social position
than the geisha of those days, and regaining her freedom, was
faithful (so far as professional exigencies would allow) to a
lover of humble rank. Not only has her native hamlet of Shiogama
erected a memorial-stone to honour her dishonour, but the priests
of the little Myō-onji temple jealously guard a faded fragment of
her wardrobe. There was never great hostility in Japan between the
goddess of love and more ascetic deities. In more than one locality
you will find a row of temples fronted by a row of pleasure-houses,
that the pilgrims may impartially indulge body and soul.
When the Ashikaga Shōguns made Kyōto a centre of nobler art and
more delicate refinement, the Scarlet Lady lost ground. The curse
of Confucius, stigmatising her sex, had crossed the Yellow Sea.
Painters preferred the beauty of snow and tree and bird to her
fatal beauty; poets, imbued with Buddhism, wrote passion-plays on
other passions than hers. Neither in the serious _Nō_ nor comical
_Kiōgen_ does she cut any figure at all. It would almost seem
that for two centuries men found ceremonial tea-drinking and the
excitements of civil war more congenial than her society.
At last the queen came by her own. When the feudal nobles went
down before Iyeyasu and took his iron yoke upon their necks,
the military despot was seen to be a popular liberator. Art and
literature ceased to be the precious playthings of an æsthetic
aristocracy. Novelists, playwrights, painters rose from the masses
and worked for the masses. Rejecting in scorn the moony fetters
of Chinese convention, they painted in broad colours and aimed at
broad effects. Yedo, the new capital, without culture and without
traditions, became their home and their hunting-ground. Of these
turbulent subjects Venus Pandemos was naturally queen, and since
her accession in the seventeenth century to the present day many
measures of restraint, more or less fruitless, have been adopted
by scandalised authority to curb her sovereignty.
As for the novelists, three great names in Japanese fiction may
be cited at once. Saikaku, who died at Osaka in 1693, wrote an
enormous number of amusing stories and sketches of contemporary
life. The rollicking life of the gay lupanars was his favourite
theme. Mr. Aston assures us that “the very titles are too gross
for quotation.” Even his contemporaries were shocked, and a
virulent criticism, entitled “Saikaku in Hell,” brought about
the suppression of his works by the Government. A new edition
has lately been permitted to appear. In the next century his
example was followed and bettered by Jishō, whose name signifies
“Spontaneous Laughter.” He was a Kyōto publisher, and his place
of business, the Hachimoniji-ya, or Figure Eight House, was as
popular in its day with lovers of sex-novels as the Bodley Head
itself. He had a collaborator, called Kesiki; and whether he
supplied the humour and Kesiki the psychology I cannot say, but
their joint productions aimed at something higher than Rabelaisian
mirth. They aspired to the laurels of Theophrastus, delineating
“Types of Elderly Men,” “Types of Merchants’ Assistants,” “Types
of Girlhood,” and the like. But whatever the type selected, the
reader was sure to pass most of his time with it in fast society.
Well, Spontaneous Laughter died, but his firm continued to publish
_sharebon_, or witty books, until the end of the eighteenth
century, when once more the authorities swooped down and made an
end. The fame of both these novelists is eclipsed by that of Kiōden
(1761-1861), the father of the romantic novel. His predecessors had
made men titter, but he bade them shudder or weep, at the harlot’s
fate. He proved the sincerity of his sympathy with women of that
class by marrying two of them in succession. They are said to have
been excellent wives. At the age of thirty he was “condemned to
fifty days’ handcuffs (in his own house),” for circulating what he
called an “Edifying Story-book.” His subsequent stories were mostly
founded on less dangerous themes.
If any should suppose that the writers of stories and plays on this
subject had no other purpose than to supply unwholesome food for
unclean appetites, he would be egregiously mistaken. The author of
a witty book might indeed be liable to this imputation, though the
_naïf_ attitude of his fellow-countrymen to physical facts which
it is our habit to ignore robs the pat epithet “pornographic” of
much opprobrium. Still there were limits of propriety, which, in
his zeal to amuse, he frequently left behind. But the dramatist
had every justification for dramatising the Unfortunate Lady, who
appealed most strongly to his imagination and his heart. To begin
with, his audience loved a spectacle, and what spectacular setting
could dazzle them more than the spacious Kuruwa with its balconied
palaces, divided by cherry-trees and hung with showy lanterns?
What other section of society could provide such a feast of colour
for beauty-loving eyes as these priestesses of pleasure, when they
moved in procession through thronging suitors in their gorgeous
sweeping robes, or sat superbly immobile, like painted idols, their
high _coiffures_ haloed with radiating pins of pearl and silver and
tortoise-shell? And beneath all that picturesque elegance throbbed
a tragic, adventurous existence. Other women passed silently from
father to husband, from mother to mother-in-law, their lives
arranged for them on lines of tranquil duty. But the Unfortunate
Lady, transferred in girlhood, a chattel or a heroine, from village
poverty to urban splendour, becoming half a queen and half a slave,
was both free and not free to follow the voice of passion, which
her secluded sisters had often never heard. They slept peacefully,
with nothing to greatly hope or fear from the hand of destiny, but
to her at any moment might come a Perseus, cleaving the dragon’s
mail with golden sword and delivering Andromeda from deadly
servitude. Out of the hundreds of plays devoted to Andromeda, I
will recall one, which has sunk most deeply into popular favour,
and which I saw enacted before a weeping audience at the Kabuki-za
theatre.
His name was not Perseus, but Gompachi, and he is supposed to have
lived no more than two hundred and fifty years ago--the hero of
this typical romance. He had the misfortune at the age of sixteen
to kill one of his relations in a quarrel about a dog, and was
obliged to flee for refuge to the capital. On his way to Yedo he
was roused at midnight from his bed at a wayside inn by a beautiful
girl, who warned him that a band of robbers, having stolen her
from her parents, intended to slay him and steal his sword before
daybreak. This was not Andromeda, but Komurasaki. As in duty bound,
the gallant _samurai_ cut down the whole band and restored their
captive to her father, a wealthy merchant, who, for his part, asked
nothing better than to marry his daughter to so dashing a youth.
But this would have been against all precedent. For Andromeda
to rescue Perseus and bestow on him the hand of a prospective
heiress would have been to reverse the _rôles_ in a most unbecoming
manner. Gompachi, therefore, setting ambition before love, pursued
his way to Yedo. There he fell into dissolute habits, and, some
years after, hearing much talk of a new beauty in Yoshiwara,
discovered her to be no other than Komurasaki. Her family had
fallen into dire poverty, and, to alleviate their sufferings, she
had become an inmate of the huge metropolitan pleasure-house. This
time Andromeda was in her proper place, the helpless victim of a
ruthless monster, but to strike off her manacles a golden sword
was needed, and this Perseus found it difficult to obtain. He
took to robbery, which again involved murder, for his own fortune
was far too meagre to allow of frequent meetings, far less of
redeeming his sweetheart. At last he was caught and beheaded as
a common malefactor, before he could compass his mission, and
Komurasaki, accomplishing her own salvation, stabbed herself to
death upon his tomb. If you should visit Meguro, about four miles
west of Tōkyō, when the peonies are in bloom, you will have no
trouble in ascertaining the position of their grave. It is called
_Hiyoku-zuka_ after the Hiyoku, “a fabulous double bird, which is
an emblem of constancy in love.”
Tragedies of this romantic character were very frequent in the Yedo
period, though they generally ended in _shinju_, the simultaneous
suicide of girl and guest, who thus hoped to enter on new life
together. In fact, so frequent were they in the Genroku and Shōtoku
eras (1688-1715), that the authorities tried to rob this death
of attraction by cruel indignities to the dead. The bodies were
exposed to view for three days on Nihon-bashi, hands and feet being
tied together. Then the _Eta_, social pariahs, wrapped them in
straw matting and cast them into a pit. It was thought that after
such a dog’s burial their ghosts would not return to haunt the
living, but it was customary to make their story into a song, which
would become a nine days’ pathos in Asakusa.
Not pathos but majesty is the dominating note of the Ukiyoye
painters’ homage to their Madonna. Easy to recognise by her
distinctive garb--the tall _coiffure_, transfixed with branching
pins, the reversed sash with satchel-like bow in front, the
high clogs of black lacquer--she is by far the most familiar
figure to Western eyes through the medium of plebeian art. Cheap
colour-prints, disseminated her image from Boston to Paris;
enthusiasts gave eager eye to her hieratic grace. Utamaro, who
openly lived in Yoshiwara, which he served with purse and brush,
was the first to win French homage through De Goncourt’s advocacy
for his stately mistresses of preternatural height. Daintier
and more human, but not less divine, the monochromatic ladies
of Moronobu, the green-and-rose ladies of Kiyonobu, the sirens
beloved of Kiyonaga, of Toyokuni, of Kunisada, followed one another
round the world, encircling it with a Circean spell. Banish their
portraits from the collector’s gallery, and you leave it bare of
three or four of the greatest names on the roll of Tōkyō artists.
On the other hand, you will more easily defend the Japanolater’s
thesis, that part of the superiority of Japanese over Occidental
art lies in its contempt for the “eternal feminine.”
It was Iyeyasu, the great organiser, who made it part of the
State’s business to centralise and control sporadic vice in the
capital. Before his time the “social evil,” as it is called, was
free to spread its virus where it might, to the hurt of private
and public weal. But one day, as the conqueror was returning from
the battle of Sekigahara and taking his lease in the tea-house of
Shoji Jinyemon, at Shinagawa, the proprietor, whose efforts to
please were seconded by eight red-aproned waitresses of unusual
beauty, so impressed the Shōgun with his talent for that kind of
management, that he was appointed _nanushi_, or director-in-chief,
of the Moto-Yoshiwara, founded in response to many petitions in
1618. Into this quarter, which either took its name from Yoshiwara,
a town on the Tokaido famed for the prettiness of its daughters,
or from its literal import, the “place of reeds,” being situated
in a marsh on the outskirts of Yedo, all the courtesans who had
infested various portions of the city were gathered, licensed,
and supervised. It at once became a little city in itself, wisely
and usefully administered, and, being burnt down fifty years
later, was replaced by the new or Shin-Yoshiwara, which remains
in most essentials to this day a copy of its predecessor. It was
divided into eight wards, each of which had responsible recorders,
whose duty was to keep order, to guard against fires, and report
suspicious characters to the police. Policemen stood at the gates,
and every guest was required to enter his name in a register,
though he might disguise it by changing the characters, if it were
phonetically correct. At one time Christians and gamblers were
forbidden to enter, while the _samurai_, or military retainer,
whose Roman discipline excluded visits to Capua, was provided
by the Amigasa tea-houses with a large braid hat to conceal his
features. Espionage, as always under the Tokugawa _régime_, was a
pronounced feature of this autonomous system, which was, and still
is, of immense service in the detection of crime, since ill-gotten
gains were generally disbursed in that locality, affording clues
to the identity of their possessor.