MUSIC OF SHIBAI
Just as the impulse back of shibai had been the need of the people to
possess their own theatre, so the rise and development of Joruri during
the Tokugawa period was but the spirit of the common people seeking
expression in music.
Dignity, tranquillity, and refinement characterised the ancient Court
music and the complicated measures of the flute and drum of the Nō
stage. Something more cheerful, more stirring and gay, was necessary as
refreshment for the people. The instrument that caused a revolution in
the musical world of Japan was the samisen (lit., three strings), which
opened the floodgates for the inundation of the three towns by the
greatest variety of fushi, or tunes.
The samisen was not indigenous, and most accounts agree that it came
to Japan from the Loo Choo Islands. Some authors seek a Western origin
for the samisen, and think it was brought in by the Portuguese. One old
writer believed it to be an instrument used by the savages of Loo Choo
Islands, made from the skin of sea snakes. The ancestor of the samisen
is to-day carried by strolling minstrels in all the odd corners of
China, and must have been introduced into Japan by way of the southern
islands where the inhabitants were largely Chinese. The difference
that exists at present between the two guitar-like instruments of
the Asiatic continent and the Island Empire lies in the bodies,—that
of China covered with snake-skin in the natural colours, while white
tanned cat-skin serves the same purpose in Japan. The performer in both
cases uses a plectrum to strike the three strings and thereby
produces a whole world of rhythms unfamiliar to the ears of the
Occidental.
The Chinese instrument came to Japan by an indirect route, and was not
accompanied by musicians skilled in its mysteries. When it reached the
hands of the blind biwa players they were unacquainted with the deep
experience behind it, and were obliged to grope for a way themselves.
The samisen led to a period of the greatest musical creativeness the
country had ever witnessed, and the wonder grows that this innocent
little instrument produced in some remote time as a necessity of
the Chinese soul should have been discovered by the people of the
three towns and adapted to suit their musical requirements with such
astonishing results. Perhaps the magic measures of the samisen may yet
meet some need of the people in Western lands, and so in the fullness
of time please the ear of the whole world.
The samisen was not in use when O-Kuni and Nagoya Sansaburo began their
collaboration, for their musicians borrowed the flute and drum of the
Nō. Towards the end of the O-Kuni Kabuki, the samisen player had taken
up his position behind the dancers, and a new and livelier element had
become apparent in the performances.
Up to the advent of the samisen which brought about a complete
change in the music in vogue among the people, the musical forms of
the country had come to be the monopoly of the higher classes. The
gagaku, or music of the Imperial Court, could not be heard on ordinary
occasions, but was reserved for the highest functions. Transplanted
from China in the early days of intercourse between the two countries,
it was so far removed from affairs of everyday life as to belong to
some celestial land. After a thousand years this ancient music is still
heard at entertainments at Court, or in connection with Buddhist or
Shinto ceremonies, and its slow and stately cadences produce a serenity
in the minds of moderns that carries them back into an age when hurry
was unknown.
This music was too lofty, and beyond the grasp or enjoyment of
the people, even if it had been accessible to them. Entertainment was
afforded by the blind minstrels who played the biwa—an instrument not
unlike a lute in shape. They sang and recited the melancholy adventures
of the Heike, who were exterminated in their struggle with the Genji
clan, in sad and tragic tones—sounding the very depths of negation.
There was but little inspiration in this minstrelsy for the good people
of the three towns hungering for romance.
Likewise the Nō was reserved for the intellectuals, whose inner life
had been sufficiently cultivated to appreciate its rarefied atmosphere
of the unreal. Inseparable from the words and movements of the Nō were
the rhythms of drum and flute, full of mystery, Buddhism, asceticism,
its warriors and ghosts far removed from the world and its ways.
Before the samisen’s supremacy, the minstrels who went about relating
their stories scratched the ribs of their fans to form the beats
necessary to their recitals, and priests who sang songs to popularise
their scriptures beat their rhythms on the same metal gong as that
employed by O-Kuni. So necessary was rhythm as an accompaniment to
these ballads that the early minstrels shook a bundle of sticks, or
waved a metal rod like a baton.
With the greatly improved rhythms of the samisen at their command,
minstrels sprang up in all directions, the new style of music being
called Joruri, since the first ballad to be composed to the strains of
the samisen concerned the love adventures of Joruri-hime, or Princess
Joruri. Abundant materials were at hand, and the minstrels competed
with each other in depicting the life of the time. The songs sung
at festivals, by sailors, horsemen, farmers, vendors, were eagerly
seized,—stories of battles and love, even religious propaganda formed
the theme set to the ripple of the samisen.
This great activity culminated in the Joruri of Takemoto Gidayu
who, gathering up all the existing materials, concentrated them in
his little doll-theatre, the Takemoto-za of Osaka. Here Chikamatsu
Monzaemon collaborated with him, by writing the plays for the
marionettes that moved to the voice of minstrel and samisen
accompaniment. Gidayu Joruri, or the balladry of Takemoto Gidayu, in
turn had an overwhelming influence upon Kabuki.
It was Kineya Kisaburo who first introduced the samisen into the
orchestra of Yedo Kabuki. Kisaburo was the grandson of Kineya Kangoro,
a younger brother of Saruwaka Kansaburo, the founder of Yedo Kabuki.
Kangoro was an expert in the O-Kuni Kabuki, and when young was attached
to the Saruwaka-za as an actor. He had two actor sons, Kisaburo and
Rokuzaemon. Later on Kisaburo gave up acting, and took up the samisen
as his specialty. The name Kineya, or rice pounder, came from the crest
chosen by Nakamura Kangoro. Thus it came about that this family of
Kabuki musicians and singers were firmly established and have continued
until the present day.
The Kineya genealogy is extremely complicated, but the headship of
the house has been handed down from father to son. When there was a
failure in blood relation, the best pupil succeeded. The present Kineya
Rokuzaemon is the fourteenth in descent, a young man in the twenties.
He is at the head of the Kineya musicians attached to the Imperial
Theatre of Tokyo, possesses a good voice, and has appeared since he was
a lad, growing up, as it were, in the service of the stage.
At the time of the fifth Kineya, the theatre music in which the family
specialised became known as Nagauta (long poem or song). Before this,
the Kineya singers had entertained with short pieces, but their art
developed into something more important, for they furnished the
accompaniment of drum, flute, and samisen, also the singing to which
the actors danced in the music-posture dramas, or shosagoto, the most
characteristic productions of Kabuki.
This style of theatre music originating in Yedo, it has always
been distinguished as Yedo Nagauta. The music is reminiscent of the Nō,
from which it has taken much of its technique. The large number of Nō
dramas that have been popularised in order to suit Kabuki requirements
have received special treatment at the hands of different members of
the Kineya family, who possess some two hundred compositions.
There are several branches to Kineya—offshoots of the main line a
hundred or more years ago—such as Yoshizumi, Fujita, and Yoshimura. The
last two companies of musicians are chiefly attached to the Kabuki-za
of Tokyo, although they occasionally appear at other theatres. Tokyo
critics consider Yoshizumi Kosaburo to possess the best voice, but
it is not strong, and his activities are confined to entertainments
given in small halls or private residences. He is a ronin among the
musicians, and is not a regular member of a theatre company. The
two most popular Kineya singers at present are Yoshimura Ejuro, of
the Imperial Theatre, and Fujita Utazo, of the Kabuki-za. Kineya
Rokuzaemon, although young, has proved himself worthy to assume the
responsibilities as head of this old family.
After Nagauta, the most popular theatre music is Tokiwazu. It belongs
to Joruri, or balladry set to the samisen, one of the innumerable
streams of this music of the people. The minstrel who founded this
line was Miyakoji Bungojo, and his tune was styled Bungo-bushi.
This became all the rage in Yedo, for the words that went with the
new airs were highly sentimental, treating of love adventures,
elopements, and kindred subjects. It had an unwholesome effect upon
society, however, the Bungo-bushi inducing men and women to step out
of the prescribed paths of virtue. The authorities did everything
in their power to suppress it, but without success. It was but a
reaction against the Puritanic rule in force, and the themes of
Bungo-bushi—adultery, elopement, suicide, and gambling—were but an
expression of dissatisfaction on account of the rigid feudal laws
which continually interfered with the people, and caused them to break
loose by way of protest.
Miyakoji Bungojo lived the life of which he sang, for he was the victim
of an unhappy love affair and committed shinju, or double suicide, with
a young woman. His adopted son, Mojidayu, succeeded to and completed
his father’s work. When Bungo-bushi was forbidden, Mojidayu founded his
own school. He was afraid that his new style of music might suffer the
same fate as Bungo-bushi and made great changes. In order that it might
survive he took all the life and sensation out of it, so that it now
gives an impression of stiffness and repression.
When Mojidayu looked about for a name for his music, he hit upon one
that offended the authorities. It was considered much too assuming
and high-sounding, and was taken away from him in consequence. As
Mojidayu lived near one of Yedo’s bridges, the Tokiwa-bashi, or
Evergreen-Bridge, not far from the modern Bank of Japan, he selected
Tokiwazu, and by this name his music has been known ever since. The
present Mojidayu is the seventh in succession. Kiyomoto, another branch
of Gidayu, is closely allied to Tokiwazu, and a great variety of these
tunes may be heard among the people.
Shibai has faithfully preserved the most characteristic musical
elements, and it is within the theatre that Japanese music is best
represented. Gidayu Joruri, Yedo Nagauta, Tokiwazu, and Kiyomoto,
with a variety of minor styles, form the musical settings for Kabuki
productions.
The Gidayu Joruri in vogue in shibai is taken bodily from the
Doll-theatre, and is used whenever a drama written originally for
the marionettes is produced. In these masterpieces the actors are
responsible for the dialogue, while the minstrel sings the descriptions
to the accompanying rhythms of the samisen, giving the players an
opportunity to posture and gesture to their hearts’ content. The Gidayu
minstrel and samisen player kneel on cushions on a raised rostrum to
the right of the stage, a silver or gold screen behind them. In
front of the minstrel is a lacquered book-rest, where lies the ballad
book (joruri-bon) in which the passages of the play are written by
hand in large, bold characters. Sometimes the minstrel enters into the
conversation, when he scolds or weeps, laughs or pleads, according to
the emotion of the moment.
The difference between Gidayu and Nagauta is that the first is balladry
and requires both recitation and song, conversation and description,
while Nagauta is but a series of songs, solo or chorus, interspersed
with sustained orchestral effects of samisen, drum, and flute in
complicated rhythms. A full Nagauta corps, composed of many singers and
samisen players, all in ceremonial stage costume, kneeling in a row on
a red-covered dais across the stage, with the drummers grouped below,
forming a background for the gorgeous characters of the music-drama, is
an unforgettable and truly representative Kabuki picture.
In Nagauta the singers commit the words to memory, or have a small
book close beside them. Like the chorus of the Nō stage, they carry a
closed fan which is taken up in one hand as they sing, and placed in
front of them at the end of their song. Tokiwazu and Kiyomoto partaking
of the nature of Gidayu, the singers kneel behind the lacquered stands
supporting their books, and are generally stationed on a high platform
to left or back of the stage, the only instrument being the samisen.
The movable platforms on which the musicians and singers sit are pushed
on and pulled off as the exigencies of the descriptive dance require.
Sometimes a curtain is held up in order that they may make good their
escape from the stage.
As Nagauta had an affinity with the Nō, and treated of poetic and
mystical subjects, the upper classes patronised the Kineya family, and
it has therefore always enjoyed a superior position. These singers
and musicians were regarded in the theatre as guests of honour, who
had condescended to accept the hospitality of shibai. They were
never classed so low in the social strata as the yakusha, but had
a recognised rank and place.
With the members of the Gidayu, Tokiwazu, and Kiyomoto companies
it was different. Their patrons were the wealthy merchants and
tradespeople. And because Tokiwazu and Kiyomoto were so closely related
to shibai, they came to be considered as something low class and
vulgar. In addition, as the whole world of popular songs and short
dances that formed the accomplishment of the geisha were associated
with the samisen, this instrument was never heard in the homes of
persons of taste and breeding, or those who valued their position of
respectability.
One of the greatest defects of the samisen music is that it is divided
into so many schools, each guarding jealously its traditions. When
some new expression of the people’s will is necessary these separate
elements may be concentrated to form a new musical force, just as
Takemoto Gidayu recognised the value of the Joruri of his day and,
combining them, established the balladry of the Doll-theatre on a firm
foundation. Moreover, however much criticism may be levelled at the
samisen for the trivial and superficial matter with which it is often
related, it remains none the less the national music.
The samisen differs so largely from Western instruments that
comparisons are useless. This is because samisen music depends almost
completely on rhythm, rather than melody, to interpret emotion. Sound
is inexhaustible, and by groupings of sounds in changing rhythms
the samisen musicians gain the effects they desire. Western ears
are so accustomed to harmony, that a departure from its stereotyped
combinations causes bewilderment and irritation. Any other use of sound
and rhythm than that to which their ears have grown familiar fails to
affect them. The music of shibai presents a whole world of uncharted
music material.
Ripple-clang-bang; smoothness, roughness, villainy, tranquillity;
falling snow, a flight of birds, wind in the tree-tops; skirmish
and fray, the peace of moonlight, the sorrow of parting, the rapture
of spring; the infirmity of age, the gladness of lovers,—all these and
much more the samisen expresses to those who are able to look beyond
the curtain that shuts this musical world away from Western ears
because of its baffling conventions of sound rather than melody.
Symbol of the despised yakusha, and in use in the
none-too-irreproachable geisha world, the samisen has been held in
disfavour by the upper classes. Left to their own devices, the people
created their own theatre, music, and art. There was no impetus from
the aristocracy, who held themselves aloof from the mass of the people.
The samurai had little to do with the creative spirit, the scholars
steeped in Chinese philosophy and literature looked backward to the
glorious past of Japan’s great continental neighbour,—it was the people
of the three towns, unaided, without guide or inspiration from their
betters, who produced the music of shibai, the plebeian legacy of the
Tokugawa age.
[Illustration: Crest of Nakamura Jakuemon (Two sparrows, face to face).]