T A r» a x tv- . The published price of this book is the price at which it is sold to the public. The terms on which it is supplied to the bookseller precludes him from allowing any dis- count. Iff JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS BY OSMAN EDWARDS WITH TWELVE COLOURED PLATES BY JAPANESE ARTISTS JOHN LANE 251 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 1901 i TO YAKUMO KOIZUMI ' AND LAFCADIO HEARN POET AND FRIEND WITH ADMIRING GRATITUDE PREFACE / do not pretend to compete in the crowded field of Japanese sociology with those who have lived more than six months or less than six weeks in the country. My own stay was limited to half a year. I had, of course, studied the langtiage with native teachers and devoured the records of foreign travellers. I concluded that theatrical matters had been less fully described than any other: to them, accordingly, I devoted most attention. But there were other themes on which I had been insufficiently informed. Impersonal essays are, therefore, supplemented by personal reminiscences, for which I claim indulgence. If the first now seem to me too short, the second may seem to others too long. Yet I have tried only to select incidents and character- istics which differ strikingly froin Western ways. Austere critics will assuredly resent the excess of incense btcrned in these pages in honour of the musume. But, whether she and they like it or not, she continues to summarise in her dainty little person much of her country's magic : its picturesqueness, its kindness, its politeness. On certain syjnptoms of anti-foreign feeling I have dwelt at some length, because the obvious witchery of Japan so often results in the suppression of unpleasant viii PREFACE testimony by those whose own souvenirs are pleasantness itself. There is certainly no reason why the Japanese should exhibit more altruism to other nations than is ex- hibited in the reverse case. The apprehensions expressed by such an admirer of the race as Mr. A. B. Mitford, in a recent letter to the Times as to the expediency of giving them too free a hand in the solution of the Chinese problem, however unwelcome to advocates of an Anglo- Japanese alliance, deserve to be well weighed. Neither pro Japanese tourist nor anti-Japanese resident can re- fuse admiration to the courage and cleverness of those Happy Islanders, whose foreign policy is better left to impartial pens for judgment. A partial spectator, I can only render appreciative thanks for what I have seen and loved. I desire to acknowledge indebtedness to Mr. B. H. Chamberlain and Mr. G. W. Aston for much infor- mation as to lore and literature ; to the anonymous author of a pamphlet entitled " Notes on the History of the Yoshiwara of Yedo " ; to Mr. Fenollosa, Mr. Fukuchi, Mr. Fukai, Mr. K. Hirata, and Mr. Isoh Yamagata for opportunities and courtesies ; to the editors of the Hansei Zasshi, The Sketch, and The Studio for permission to make use of material con- tributed to their columns. WESTENDE-LES-BA INS. CONTENTS I. Behind the Scenes (Note to foregoing) Cassandra Justified II. Religious Plays .... III. Popular Plays .... IV. Geisha and Cherry-Blossom . V. Vulgar Songs .... VI. Taking the Waters VII. Playing with Fire VIII. Afternoon Calls . IX. The Scarlet Lady Index ...... 3 32 39 61 101 121 147 209 237 275 303 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Benkei at Sea ....... Frontispiece Page Shinto Temple at Miyajima 14 Shunkwan in Exile 46 Kintaro fights the Earth- Spider 56 Portrait of Mdme. Sada Yacco 66 Portrait of Mr. Kawakami 66 Mr. Danjuro as the Lady-in-waiting of Kasnga ... 66 Mr. Danjuro as Jiraiya 66 The Heroine of a Problem-play 96 Jealousy exorcised from Aoi-no-V ye (No) .... 142 Personators of Jizo (Kiogen) 162 Dancers at the Feast of Lanterns 180 Kmtaikyd Bridge 198 The Lion-Dance on New Year's Day 248 A Professional Story-teller 260 The Taiyu waves her Sake-cup 300 V' BEHIND THE SCENES BEHIND THE SCENES A foreign country for most travellers is very like a theatre. They arrive in holiday mood, resolving to be pleased, since otherwise their judgment in choosing that country rather than another, their faculty of appreciating what so many have proclaimed delect- able, might seem at fault. Should their choice have fallen on Japan, be sure that eulogistic notices from the pens of Sir Edwin Arnold and M. Pierre Loti have prepared them to enjoy the daintiest of come- diettas. They reach the enchanted shore. They pass swiftly from one aspect of fairyland to another. Nothing happens to shake their preconceived convic- tion that in the Land of the Rising Sun Nature began and Art completed a yellow paradise. They do not heed the jeremiads of resident aliens, nor the bitter cry of outcast professors, who gather thorns where the tourist is dazzled by cherry-blossom. The pic- turesque unreality of common things abets illusion. Surely these dolls' houses of wood and paper, these canopies of rosy bloom and curtains of purple wistaria, the gigantic cryptomeria, the tentacular pines, the azure inland sea and snow-streaked Fuji itself — surely all these compose a superb tnise en scene for poetic 4 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS comedy! And when "the crowd" enters, a smiling crowd of straw-sandalled rickshaw-runners, of kneeling" tea-house girls, and shaven babies, arrayed like bright-winged butterflies, churlish indeed were the spectator who should refuse to smile back and cheer with the best. Then consider the privileges which he may enjoy in that admirably arranged theatre. Were he in his own country, the footlights divide him for a few hours at most from actors whose privacy, however coveted, he may seldom hope to invade. But on Japanese soil he may" often obtain, by fee or favour, like the stage-struck noble of Moliere's and Shake- speare's time, familiar acquaintance with performance and performers. The latter are, on the stage, his puppets ; off the stage, his friends. Indeed, he con- founds the two, and ends by treating them with affectionate condescension. This attitude, which he half-involuntarily assumes from an ever-present con- sciousness of superior civilisation (as he considers it), deceives only himself. The polite but thoughtful patriot, perceiving that his temples are regarded as bric-a-brac, his race as a race of ingenious marionettes, protests in vain against the unwelcome flattery of surprised admirers. " To this kind of people," wrote Mr. Fukai, one of the ablest journalists in Tokyo, " our country is simply a play-ground for globe-trotters, our people a band of cheerful, merry playfellows. Painstaking inquiries are made about Japanese curios and objects of art — sometimes im- portant, no doubt, but sometimes ridiculously trivial — while the investigation of such subjects as the ethical life, the social and political institutions, are far too much neglected. The history of the nation is ignored, and our recent progress is supposed to be BEHIND THE SCENES 5 wholly owing to a miraculous touch of Western civilisation." But who is to remedy this unfort inate susceptibility on the part of foreigners ? The foreign employ^ has his work to do — diplomatic, professional, or commercial ; the native is in no particular hurry to court the esteem of outsiders, being quite contented with his own high estimate of himself. Must it always be an officer " on short leave," or a journalist in a hurry, who undertakes to record superficial impres- sions of a passing spectacle ? At least, it is no use reporting from the stalls what the casual playgoer imagines he has seen, unless his report be confirmed and controlled by those who move in the mysterious world "behind the scenes," where the drama of popular existence is more adequately observed and to a great extent directed. Happily, the judicious inquirer has only to choose between competent guides, whose eyes are no longer confused by the glimmer of dancing lanterns. Let us pass behind the scenes, and discover, if we can, what sort of piece is being re- hearsed — what mode of action the performers affect. If we lose some illusions, we may gain a profitable glimpse of decorously veiled truths. The foreign resident is rarely cast for an important part, never for a permanent one. It is notorious that he lacks aesthetic charm. His wife and children, his club and counting-house, his racecourse and cricket- field, are standing tokens of unassimilative exile. In England he would be a good citizen and an excellent fellow, sure of his seat on the School Board or County Council, if not in Parliament, supposing that his am- bitions included that of service to the community. But in Kobe or Yokohama he lives as isolated from the fascinating " native-born " as any Jew in a JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS mediaeval ghetto. And he does not feel the spell which takes the bookmaker captive. It will not do to dismiss him as a Philistine, a coarse barbarian, whose only aim is to exploit the country for his own benefit, since, on closer acquaintance, you find him, more often than not, cultured, kindly, and just. What, then, can be the cause of his extraordinary antipathy to the land, ideally perfect as it appears to us, in which his lines are cast ? For every blessing you pronounce he replies with a malediction, and, since his life behind the scenes is at least nearer actuality than your own, you borrow his eyes, with which the better to contem- plate a Japanese Janus, whose smiling visage fills you with delight, though at him is levelled a forbidding frown. The root of his discomfort and your enchantment is a profoundly narrow patriotism. Viewed from with- out, this brave and alert nation, courteous to strangers and glad to excite admiration, retaining so much that is picturesque and unique, yet capable of appropriating the external panoply of Western civilisation, might seem more companionable than any other ; viewed from within, it is evidently a close corporation, in- tolerant of rivalry, diligent to protect itself, and deter- mined to restrict at all costs " Japan to the Japanese." It is futile to blame this trait, which springs inevitably from the forced seclusion of two centuries, during which period the barbarian was rigorously excluded until he obtained readmission at the cannons mouth. Nor is such hostile feeling confined to the ignorant. On the contrary, the farther you go from the great centres, where the mixture of races might be expected to produce a better mutual understanding, the more amiable is your reception. The mercantile classes BEHIND THE SCENES 7 dread and dislike the invading trader, while imitating his methods, so far as they can grasp them, with the intention of ousting him as much as possible from their markets. Even the intellectual classes, quick to appreciate the value of Western science, arms, and government, are none the nearer spiritually through their acquisition. Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, whose pas- sionate devotion to his adopted country has inspired many paeans of tender praise, yet writes : " Between the most elevated class of thoroughly modernised Japanese and the Western thinker anything akin to intellectual sympathy is non-existent : it is replaced on the native side by a cold and faultless politeness. Finally, a Tokyo critic, whose language is as vigorous as his disillusion is genuine, complains thus bitterly in The Orient (April 1899) of "The Rest of the World": " From first to last our foreign records have shown almost insatiable greed on the part of our treaty-allies. We have, it is true, asked for no favours ; and it is equally certain that we hav& not received any. There never has been any real feeling of fraternal amity between us and our allies ; and this not because we were not willing, indeed eager, to take the initiative, but because our treaty-allies have held superciliously aloof and grudged us an entrance into the comity of nations. All things considered, we do not find the debt of gratitude we owe to foreign lands beyond power of bearing. Civilisation ? We had that before ever Commodore Perry came to Uraga and Mississippi Bay. Schools ? Well, text-books are to be bought in the open market, and our students have always paid their way at Western universities. Railways ? Yes, but look at the absurd price we had to pay for 8 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS the first line between Tokyo and Yokohama ! And so on with the whole list. We have paid the highest market price for our experience, with a thumping big commission for the privilege of buying it even at that rate. Yes, we have profited, but largely lost our own self-respect in the profiting." Innocently unaware of storms in the beautiful Satsuma tea-pot, the globe-trotter goes his way, play- ing and paying to the satisfaction of all. But the business man, whose presence is an affront and not a compliment, has to bear the brunt of them. The diffi- culties which beset his calling are not to be paralleled elsewhere. There was a time when the native mer- chant would try to intimidate his rival into concluding a bargain by employing soshi, importunate bravoes, to lay siege at all hours to the private and official door of their victim, until he capitulated or demanded police protection. But this somewhat naif procedure did not command general approval. More easy and more usual is the device of ordering goods and refusing to take delivery except at a much reduced rate. The perpetually quoted case of Cornes v. Kimura (Yoko- hama, 1894), which the reader will find described at length in Mr. Chamberlain's " Things Japanese " (under the heading " Trade "), is more eloquent than pages of second-hand rhetoric. Briefly, the British importer, in spite of a verdict given in his favour by a Japanese judge, was compelled to retain some of the ordered goods, at a loss of 2500 yen, on pain of being boycotted by the Yarn Traders' Guild. If this case stood alone, one would be loath to revive recollection of it, but there remains so many a slip between the signing of similar contracts and their fulfilments, that the warehouses at the treaty-ports are never without BEHIND THE SCENES 9 incriminating bales, which lower Japanese credit and testify to the slow growth of commercial honesty. To eliminate the foreign importer altogether is, of course, better than to boycott him, and this, with Government aid, is gradually being accomplished. First, a law was passed that Government contracts for plant and material were to be given only to Japanese subjects. Then, when it was found that a foreign firm would try to evade this by employing a Japanese man of straw, an enactment was issued for the re-inspec- tion of all plant on arrival in Japan. Mr. Stafford Ransome, in an article contributed to The Engineer on the subject of this official re-inspection, quotes the case of 16,000 tons of cast-iron pipes supplied by one Belgian and two British firms for the Tokyo water- works. Of the 10,000 tons of Belgian pipes only 2700 were accepted, and of the English 4000 out of 6000 tons. Yet in his opinion the rejected pipes were perfectly good for the purpose. That experi- ence will correct short-sighted dishonesty, that the native merchant will gradually master the principles of international trade and become as respected as he was in feudal days despised, nobody doubts ; and if for the moment the stranger within his gates must suffer, the gates are not yet stripped of all their gold. Already the Chambers of Commerce have realised that capital is cosmopolitan, and that excess of chauvinism spells bankruptcy for local enterprise. So long as the laws forbid the foreigner to own land, to hold shares in native companies or to assist in their management, he is naturally shy of responding to invitations to invest. But at first such invitations were not frequent. Ten years ago the craze for joint- stock companies, though widespread, was yet hedged io JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS in by patriotic precaution. The promoters had no desire to share with outsiders the golden fruit which seemed to beckon from speculative boughs. More- over, the Government, always paternal from sentiment and tradition, would often pledge its support in liberal subsidies. The defeat of China redoubled the victor's confidence in his capacity to develop his own posses- sions with his own resources. But events have not kept pace with his hopes. The greater portion of the indemnity was diverted, after all, into British pockets in return for unproductive ironclads : prices went up, dividends went down ; the shining fruit was turned to ashes through inexpert gardening, for the art of industrial horticulture is not to be learned in a day, especially by amateurs, who sometimes drew an erratic line between private and public consumption of the crop. Whatever the causes, those very Chambers of Commerce, which had strongly opposed the introduction of foreign capital, passed in 1898-99 one resolution after another to the effect that aliens be permitted and solicited to contribute where the funds of indigenous subscribers required to be supplemented. It does not, however, seem probable that foreign investors will be in any hurry to unloose their purse- strings, unless and until the over-cautious patriot can be persuaded to modify the laws in such a way as will give his coadjutor the right to share in the manage- ment and responsibility of any scheme towards the success of which his money may be largely, even pre- ponderantly, instrumental. It must not be supposed that apprehension and mistrust are monopolised by one party to this sub- terranean war. For five years it has been impossible to open an English journal published in the treaty- BEHIND THE SCENES ii ports without finding in it some dismal prophecy of the time (it began on June 18, 1899) when the treaties concluded by Lord Rosebery's Government should be put into operation, when the walls of the ghetto should be razed, when the British lion and the Japanese lamb must lie down together in unity. The right to travel in the interior without passports, and to reside in any district whatsoever without special permission, are the only advantages conferred by the treaties on resident aliens — advantages which he would enjoy as a matter of course in any civilised country. The disadvantages, of which he fears the inconvenience, to use no stronger term, are numerous. Extra-territoriality being abolished, he becomes sub- ject to Japanese law, which is incompletely codified and must be administered by men whose patriotic bias and sense of justice may be subjected at times to a severe strain. Still, the right to exercise jurisdiction on all within her borders cannot be refused, without insult, to a civilised Power. The right to impose duty on imports (hitherto limited to five per cent.) up to thirty or forty per cent, is not only undeniable, but absolutely desirable in the interests of Japanese trade. It is suggested, however, that such high duties might be levied on objects which are indispensable to* foreigners and of little utility to natives, as to form a lever for the gradual ejection of aliens. There is no guarantee that the freedom of the Press and the free- dom of public meeting will be exempt from those restrictions, which are daily and legally imposed on the Japanese themselves. The coasting trade, the right of doctors and lawyers to practise without a Japanese diploma, the conditions of holding and selling leases — on these most vital points the utmost uncertainty exists. 12 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS No wonder that Mr. B. H. Chamberlain asked, €i Could any one imagine such terms having ever been agreed to except as the result of a disastrous war ? " Happily, between the discontented British and the ultra-patriotic Japanese lies a barrier of prudent states- manship, which has proved itself equal to solving harder problems than any with which the Western world is confronted. No other Eastern nation has known how to transform its polity in accordance with Occidental ideas without provoking internal disruption or external conquest. It is not yet realised that the credit of the achievement is due to a very small band of men — to the Marquess I to and his associates on the one hand and the foreign instructors on the other, whose names are too soon forgotten, while their works live after them. Though all their com- patriots now reap in advancing prestige and pros- perity the benefits of the work performed by the ^'Clan Statesmen," it must not be forgotten that much of that work was accomplished in the face of ^very obstacle which prejudice and short-sightedness -could interpose. Popular dissatisfaction was adroitly diverted by declaring war on China at the moment when factious opposition was bringing discredit on the four- years-old parliamentary Government, and Ministers were strong enough to hold an indignant nation in hand when the fruits of war were so unscrupulously torn from their grasp by Muscovite intrigue. Indi- cations are not wanting that the spirit of tactful sense which has steered Japan through so many tempests is competent to allay those prognosticated by the Cassandras of Kobe and Yokohama. Those jour- nalistic beldames, who predicted sickness and death for the European inmate of a Japanese prison unless BEHIND THE SCENES 13 he should be granted a special diet and a particular rdgime, have been already conciliated by the con- struction of an expensive gaol, which it is hoped they will never be called upon to occupy. This building, situated at Sugamo, covers an area of about 28,000 square yards. It is provided with tables and chairs, and the cells will be lighted with electricity. Thus the grievance is redressed before it can even occur ; murder is averted ; ab uno disce omnes. Before dismissing from consideration the prevalent hostility to foreign residents, more noticeable in the ports than elsewhere, and most pronounced in relation to mercantile rivals, a word should be said as to its effects on mission work. Between 1878 and 1888 Christianity appeared to be carrying all before it. The land was honeycombed with evangelists of every sect, from the resplendent deacons of the Orthodox Russian cathedral, which so insolently dominates the capital from the summit of Suruga-dai, to the dingy crowd of Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, Univer- salists, and others, none of whom were without a hopeful following of more or less sincere converts. In fact, so fashionable did the once-persecuted faith become that Mr. Fukuzawa, " the Jowett of Japan," the intellectual father of her most progressive pioneers, advocated for a time that it should be adopted as the national religion, by no means on account of its intrinsic merits, but rather as a certificate of spiritual respectability and a passport to more intimate relation- ship with the Powers which call themselves Christian. This success is easily explained. Not only were many of the missionaries men of high principle and attractive personality, but they had the wisdom to minimise doctrinal differences and the opportunity of i 4 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS conferring no small material benefit on their disciples by teaching them the English tongue. The com- mercial value of an English education stood high, and the army of native Christians had a better chance than most of obtaining posts in governmental or other offices. I may mention in passing that the first pro- fessed Christian to hold ministerial rank was the Minister of Education in the short-lived Okuma- Itagaki Government of 1898. Of course, I would not insinuate that cases of genuine conversion were not numerous and productive of moral regeneration, or that the creed of Christen- dom has failed to strike root among the simple and warm-hearted peasantry. But it is certain that among the educated classes it is now viewed with rationalistic indifference. Mr. G. W. Aston, towards the close of his " His- tory of Japanese Literature," makes a very significant admission : "The process of absorbing new ideas, which has mainly occupied the Japanese nation during the last thirty years, is incomplete in one very important par- ticular. Although much in European thought which is inseparable from Christianity has been freely adopted by Japan, the Christian religion itself has made comparatively little progress. The writings of the Kamakura and two subsequent periods are pene- trated with Buddhism, and those of the Yedo age with moral and religious ideas derived from China. Christianity has still to put its stamp on the literature of the Tokyo period." Whether this apathy towards Christian teaching should be attributed, as some aver, to an incapacity for abstract speculation, or, as others assert, to the Shinto Temple at Miyajima, BEHIND THE SCENES 15 revolution which its adoption would entail in the position of women, need not be discussed at present. Let the following facts speak for themselves. The latest available statistics show that the number of converts is decreasing. Even within the ranks of Japanese Christianity is a strongly marked tendency to replace foreign by native teachers, and to nationalise that religion by robbing it of many dogmas which are elsewhere regarded as essential. The case of the Doshisha, which has been of late years a burning question among Japanese and American Christians, is one with which all who ' take an interest in mission work should certainly be well acquainted, for it fur- nishes a striking illustration of the appropriative and, to our ideas, somewhat unscrupulous proclivities of Nipponean patriots. The Doshisha is a Christian university founded at Kyoto in 1875 under the auspices of the American Board Mission. So liberal were the contributions of foreign believers to this very flourishing institution, that at last it came to include, besides a special theological department, a girls' school, a science school, a hospital, and a nurses' training school. Needless to say, the Presbyterian donors inserted a clause in the constitution to the effect that their form of faith should be perpetually and obligatorily taught. Religious schools, however, cannot claim the same privileges as civil schools from the Home Department, which, on the plea of neu- trality, only grants to undenominational ones special concessions with regard to military conscription. Realising that this disability acted unfavourably on the number of pupils and retarded the expansion of their work, the governing body of the Doshisha pro- ceeded to increase the number of native subscribers, 1 6 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS and with their connivance to dechristianise the college, in order to escape the disadvantage already mentioned. That is, the Christian instruction was made optional instead of obligatory, but the buildings and appliances, bought with American money, were of course retained. The Board, representing the original subscribers, pro- tested against what they did not hesitate to charac- terise as a flagrant breach of faith : the governing body pleaded expediency, and were prepared to re- define Christianity in accordance with their own con- ceptions of an undeniably vague term. There the matter rests. It might seem unfair to lay stress on this matter, were it not that this action of the Doshisha authorities is typical of the attitude of native educa- tionalists at the present time to foreign teaching : it forms, in fact, part of the patriotic movement, which I desire to indicate without praise or blame, more espe- cially as that movement is so little known outside Japan. Of course, there has been for years a very natural and proper tendency to replace foreign by native officials as soon as the latter seemed capable of discharging the functions primarily entrusted to the former. But this is very different from denying to foreigners the right of founding schools at their own risk — a right which they would enjoy as a matter of course in any but reactionary States. Such, how- ever, is the policy urged on the Government by the Higher Educational Council (composed of professors in the chief schools and colleges), which on April 17, 1899, passed the following resolution : " Foreigners who are not conversant with Japanese shall not be allowed to become teachers in other courses than those of foreign languages or special courses in special schools and of schools exclusively intended for BEHIND THE SCENES 17 foreigners. Foreigners who are licensed as teachers in the above-mentioned capacities shall not be allowed to found schools other than those exclusively intended for foreigners!' As the founder of a school should legally be a licensed teacher, the foregoing clauses practically pro- hibit foreigners from establishing schools for Japanese. Besides, there is a clause prohibiting religious educa- tion and ceremonies in privileged schools. In other words, the nationalists wish education to be not only in their own hands, but also entirely secular ; and those who desire to introduce from abroad theological tenets may no longer do so, if the Government should follow this advice, except from the pulpit or as private in- dividuals. Whether such a restriction be or be not in violation of existing treaties with foreign Powers, I cannot say. Sufficient proof has perhaps been already adduced of anti-foreign feeling to convince an impartial reader that an Anglo-Saxon exile has some reason for feeling ill at ease in the tourists' paradise. It might be added, however, that even the victim of patriotic manoeuvres is hardly ever exposed to personal malevolence. The politest nation in the world would certainly not be guilty of any overt discourtesy. The accident of foreign birth may place you outside the pale of those secure and intimate relations which you might form with colleagues in other lands (the divergence of social and domestic habits by itself almost necessitates this), but, if the collision of financial interests should result in your ejection from a post of vantage, you cannot justly blame an individual, only those centripetal forces that give solidarity and cohesion to a race which remains, the more it changes, the more indissolubly B 1 8 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS the same. And though the patriot might think, he would never say to your face, " L'etranger, voila l'ennemi." On the contrary, if he had not the racial interest to consider, if he were not born in a maze of reciprocal duties which to us are inconceivable, so charming is his natural disposition that I am not a all sure that he would not, now and then, sacrifice himself to oblige an alien ! I have used the phrase " charming natural disposi- tion " deliberately, though it may seem incongruous, or even incompatible with dislike of strangers. What traveller has not felt and described this charm ? Will Adams in the beginning of the seventeenth century found " the people of this Hand good of nature, cur- teous aboue measure," and Sir Rutherford Alcock in the middle of the nineteenth reports them " as kindly and well-disposed people as any in the world." Has their nature, then, suffered any deterioration ? Has contact with Europeans and Americans brought mate- rial gain at the cost of ethical loss ? Many observers, both native and foreign, declare this to be the case : a little reflection will show that it cannot, for the present, be otherwise. " Old Japan," in the opinion of Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, " was quite as much in advance of the nineteenth cen- tury morally as she was behind materially. She had made morality instinctive." This verdict is not yet of purely historic interest ; it may be tested by all who care to travel beyond the radius of photographs and railways. In remote districts, where the innkeeper charges a minimum price, relying for profit on the generosity of his guest, whose present is acknowledged by the bestowal of a fan or an embroidered towel, even such fugitive relations rest on a benevolent rather than BEHIND THE SCENES 19 a wholly commercial basis. Patriarchal manners — contented submission, fidelity, courtesy — yield a rich return of domestic happiness. The struggle for life and for wealth is tempered by self-sacrificing customs and amenities. If the apprentice be willing to work for no other wage than his masters approval and satisfaction through long probationary years, the master, on his side, will resign his charge into the hands of a younger generation before decrepitude has come to rob "honourable retirement" of its grace. If the young wife devote tier summer to unquestion- ing service of her husband and his parents, she has her reward when her sons' wives repay her with the same filial homage. Similar ties, imposing restraint on egoism and sanctified by public esteem, have had their full share in developing those amiable qualities which every observer has acknowledged. But the break-up of feudal society cannot fail to react on the manners which reflected feudal discipline. The Western ideals of liberty, equality, and self-assertion, the decay of religious belief, the necessity of fighting on even terms in the great competitive milde to the tune of "The devil take the hindmost, oh!" and, it must be added, the example set by the rest of the world, which does not practise altruism, whatever its representatives may preach, all these factors tend to harden and sharpen the modernised Japanese. A curious sign of the independent spirit, nourished on new ideas and strangely at variance with the old, is the organised indiscipline of schoolboys. During the six months which the writer spent in the country two flagrant cases occurred of defiance of authority, by no means unusual, it would appear, in scholastic experience, if one might judge by the comments of the local Press. 20 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS In one case the majority of the scholars absented themselves for a fortnight as a protest against the alleged incapacity of the teacher, and maltreated a more docile minority who endeavoured to resume their lessons. In another the upper forms refused to recognise the authority of a headmaster appointed by the Government, on the ground that his talents and attainments fell below the standard which they deemed desirable in the director of their studies. In consequence, the unfortunate nominee of the Minister of Education was completely boycotted ; his class-room was deserted, his suggestions ignored ; and, on the occasion of the annual prize-giving, he was publicly insulted, for, whereas the whole school rose and remained standing as a mark of respect during the speeches of distinguished visitors, when their un- fortunate chief began his address they resumed their seats and engaged in loud conversation, after the manner of our own House of Commons when the suppression of an unwelcome orator is desired. The most surprising feature in both these instances was that a section of the Japanese Press, instead of regarding the incidents as deplorable, indeed, but as domestic matters, which it concerned only the govern- ing body to regulate, made them the subject of a long polemic, sided with or against the malcontents, and, in short, exalted the revolting schoolboys into fellow- citizens " rightly struggling to be free." The college Hampden does not shrink from his role, and is prepared in the interests of curiosity and " the higher education " to cross-examine a newly-appointed professor, insuffi- ciently protected by a Harvard or Oxford reputation, on his knowledge of Shakespeare, his theological beliefs, his preference for "the open door" or the BEHIND THE SCENES 21 gradual partition of China. If this precocious inde- pendence conflict with our old-fashioned notions of modesty and reverence on the part of adolescence towards its seniors, it should make life more amusing for the professor, who, after all, is better off with inquisitive than with incurious pupils. I am confirmed in my supposition that the autonomous schoolboy is not at all abnormal by a schoolmaster of nearly ten years' standing, who writes : "In the Occident the master expels the pupil. In Japan it happens quite as often that the pupil expels the master. Each public school is an earnest, spirited little republic." One thing is certain. The taught are as eager to absorb knowledge as the teacher to impart it ; idleness is rare ; without extraordinary application but little progress can be made. For it should not be forgotten that four or five years must be devoted to the sole acquisition of a working stock of Chinese ideographs, the scholar's needlessly complicated alphabet, before he attacks Western science, law, language, or medicine, themselves supplementary to subjects of native growth. Demands so various can only be met by the most systematic precision, and in effect no country has more carefully organised popular education. To organise comes naturally to the Japanese, and this capacity explains the apparent contradiction of co-existent order and revolt. The revolt is always corporate, one organisa- tion within another. Whether the disaffected body consist of waiters, or workmen, or schoolboys, it has to be treated as a collective unit. The objects pursued — higher wages, more liberty, more privileges— may bear the impress of democratic ambition, but the spirit in which they are fought for is that of feudal obedience to a common call. 22 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS It cannot be said that the Japanese Press has de- generated through contact with foreigners, since it is a plant, imported from abroad nearly thirty years ago, which has thriven and multiplied exceedingly on favourable soil. As might have been expected, no modern novelty is more popular than the newspaper in a land where gossip and laughter and criticism are as the breath of life to a sharp-witted, good-tempered race. More than a thousand newspapers — several illustrated, some wholly or partly in English — cater at very low prices to the public appetite. It is natural that the right to speak and print freely should be liable to abuse when first exercised. Nor could the wary group of reformers, whose task of nursing demo- cratic institutions among hereditary partisans of a rigid caste system was no less delicate than difficult, be blamed for setting legal limits to editorial indiscre- tion. In India and in Egypt the British authorities are often compelled for reasons of State to quench the sacred torch of incendiary invective. But as public opinion grows better educated, it is less liable to be led astray by journalistic tirades. Moreover, the journalist soon acquires a hold, direct or indirect, on the Legislature, wherever Parliament and Press be- come interdependent. The Press laws of Japan have, in consequence, lost much of their severity, and trie "prison-editor" (whose position corresponds to that of the Sitz-Redaktor in Prussia) finds his fate of vicarious imprisonment, when the actual editor sins, grow daily less onerous. It was, indeed, urged as a reproach by opposition sheets against the Okuma- Itagaki Ministry of 1898 that five or six of the Ministers had been at some time or other inmates of his Imperial Majesty's gaols; but the gravity of BEHIND THE SCENES 23 the reproach is much diminished by the explanation that in nearly every case incarceration had been inflicted for unguarded liberty of expression in the Press or on the platform. Political offences, all the world over, are merely political offences. For the Irish Nationalist Kilmainham is more sacred than Westminster. Such prisoners are no more than naughty children, locked in a dark room by a paternal Government But, in truth, it is not the political columns which have most influence on the circulation of Tokyo journals. If the typical leading article seem to English taste wanting in force and directness, abounding in vague sonorities, that is a fault shared by European editors, who are bound to veil an oracle with traditional obscurity. This trait is, of course, intensified by the impersonal periphrases of the language. Where the director of the journal is most to blame is in allow- ing his organ to become the medium of worse than American personalities. The newspaper which enjoys the largest circulation among the middle and lower classes of the capital devotes much attention to main- taining the prestige of its chronique scandaleuse. The Prime Minister, the foreign merchant or professor, the Buddhist high-priest, will discover that his amours, embellished with corroborative detail and treated with more regard to artistic effect than the facts warrant, command the most flattering and embarrassing popu- larity. What would be thought of a London newspaper which should record so minutely the movements of a visiting prince as to chronicle the names of profes- sional beauties visited by him, as well as the price paid for their transitory favours ? The aggrieved hero or villain has no doubt legal remedy, should he choose 24 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS to prosecute the offending reporter; but the remedy would be worse than the disease, since not only is it dilatory and expensive, but the protracted advertise- ment would tend to circulate rather than to kill the slander. Besides, in the eyes of an indulgent public gallantry, as our French neighbours call it, excites more amusement then reprobation. At any rate, libellous paragraphs, with their inevitable accompani- ment of blackmail, are at present sufficiently numerous to detract from the high reputation deservedly enjoyed by more scrupulous journals such as the Nikon, the Nichi Nichi, and the Jiji Shimpo, The feuilleton flourishes. When illustrated by woodcuts, repre- senting a Japanese woman tied naked to a tree and assaulted by Russian sailors, it makes good fuel for chauvinistic flame; but such outrages on taste are rare, and in general the reader prefers adventurous romance, with a spice of unreality, in the vein of Jules Verne or the elder Dumas. Proximity to the continent where manners count for less than dollars has, in the opinion of many, made the present generation less polite and more mercenary than its predecessors. One certainly misses the exquisite courtesy still in vogue in outlying districts, when one has occasion to remark the rudeness or familiarity of certain classes in or near Tokyo. But this declining courtesy, which cannot be called general, is not to be attributed solely to ignorant dislike of strangers. As soon as the sensitive native discovers that ceremonious attention is apt to be mistaken for obsequiousness, his pride intervenes and his bearing becomes less affable. The example of ill-mannered tourists has, it is true, demoralised the service of certain hotels, where the visitor persists in regarding BEHIND THE SCENES 25 the attendant musumd as a plaything, but the incivility of the rickshaw-man when his invariable attempt to overcharge is frustrated rests on no other basis than the presumption, not confined to one country, that since the traveller has arrived to spend money, he should be encouraged to spend it as freely as possible. Sometimes, too, an amusing reciprocal patronage is to be observed. If the tourist be inclined to regard the peasant as a living toy invented for his diversion, the peasant not infrequently will see in the tourist a help- less, rather childish creature, pleased by infantile things and unable to speak a word of Japanese. He therefore pities, protects, and fleeces him. None but the incap- able rich, whom vanity or idleness compels to become dependent on inferiors, should dream of employing a professional guide. He probably is less well informed than u Murray " ; he seeks on every pretext to prolong his services ; he exacts a commission on every purchase made, both from his employer and the shopkeeper, for if the latter refuse he will conduct the customer else- where. Notwithstanding these peculiarities, he is perhaps worth his price to hurried visitors. How far materialism has gone in replacing dutiolatry by worship of the golden calf, to what extent the old high ideals have ceased to affect the relations of the Japanese to one another — such a question is difficult, perhaps impossible, to answer satisfactorily. Mr. B. H. Chamberlain declares roundly that " patriotism is the only ideal left," but on such a nice point it is better to let the native speak for himself. From The Orient, a monthly magazine, Buddhistic in sympathy and of modern tendency, is quoted the following unequivocal indictment : " Spiritually there is very undeniable decadence. 26 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS Open ports, huge fleets of steamers, thousands of miles of rails, telephone and telegraph wires, a navy ranking at least seventh in the worlds list, a consolidated postal system, flourishing banks, and all else of like nature, are nothing more than signs of material pro- gress. Like our allies, we have grown worldly wise, and have come to view the almighty dollar with a feeling akin to veneration. People point, and with justice, to the tremendous social revolution of the Restoration days ; but where we have got rid of daimyo and shomyo, of hatamoto and samurai^ have we not plutocrats and bureaucrats as potent and unconscion- able as the most tyrannical of the one-time feudal barons? The outcast pariahs — the eta — no longer exist in law or name ; but they exist in fact. The operatives of the Osaka mills, the wretched human shambles of the prostitute quarters, the sick and suffer- ing poor — are these not social pariahs and even worse ? We miss the sternly martial virtue of the days of yore ; the unbending dignity of the true, the real Yamato- damashii (the spirit of Japanese chivalry). . . . Never were bribery and corruption more rife : the whole machinery of the State is suffering from this dry-rot ; and even those who are called upon to set the country an example have their price. Nepotism is taking the place of clannish interdependence. One's fortunes are easily made if one happens to be a 'forty-second cousin ' of a favourite courtesan, a popular geisha> or a spoiled mistress." " Irresponsible rhetoric," the reader may think, and indulged in the more freely because the writer chose to employ the English tongue, which is yet unknown to the majority of his countrymen. But these con- siderations do not apply to the official utterances of an BEHIND THE SCENES 27 ex-Premier (Count Okuma) and his Minister of Educa- tion. The former, who is not chary of autobiography, in a speech which created some sensation confessed that as a young man he had been too dazzled by the splendour of Western civilisation to appreciate the seamy side of material progress, but recent experience of popular movements and public affairs had convinced him that the supreme need of all classes, if their prosperity were to continue, was a return to the higher morality of the past. Mr. Hayashi, who may be thought to have interpreted his duty of directing national education too literally, put the matter in a nut- shell. " Let us suppose," said he to a popular audience, 4 'that Japan in the course of a thousand years or so were to become a republic. If the same Mammon- worship should exist then as exists now, it is certain that the Vanderbilt or Jay Gould of the day would be elected President." Few nations care to be lectured in this way, even by Ministers of Education. The result was a violent agitation, fomented in the patriotic Press, which demanded the resignation of one who could be so disloyal to his sovereign as to hint at a possible republic ten centuries ahead. The rash moralist found it expedient to resign. Assuming, how- ever, as one is perhaps entitled to assume, that the speaker had chiefly in mind the venality of politicians, I doubt very much either the extent or the heinousness of the evil denounced. Reduced to detail, the charges amount to this : that electors and deputies have been known to sell their votes and to advocate measures from which they have made preparations to derive financial benefit. Such evils are inseparable from the infancy of representative government, and persist in veiled form in its maturity. The Unionist member of 28 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS the Salisbury-Chamberlain party who has been called upon to vote successive bounties or remission of taxes to landed proprietors and clerical tithe-payers is guilty of somewhat similar acts, with this trifling difference : that instead of rewarding his supporters with money from his own purse, he draws upon the State treasury. It would not be surprising if Japanese politicians were more openly corrupt than our own, for most of them take American politics as the nearest and most friendly school of democracy — a school where self-seeking is avowedly the first duty of a public man, and where the prizes fall to the cleverest manipulator or servitor of plutocratic trusts. But, as a matter of fact, neither Tammany nor Panama is yet transplanted to the banks of Sumida-gawa. The laws aimed at electoral bribery are stringent and frequently enforced. Accusations of corruption are invariably followed by official inquiry. It is evident, then, that if the offender be sometimes clever enough to evade discovery, at least public opinion is neither cynical nor depraved. A stronger negative argument is furnished by the fact that the Liberals and Progressives (as the two anti-ministerial parties were called until the fusion in 1898), who had been excluded until that year from office, though con- stituting on more than one occasion a majority in the Lower House of the Diet, did not accuse the Ministers who launched Japan on the sea of parliamentary government of either misgovernment or dishonest finance. Nepotism was the sum and substance of their complaint. The Choshi men monopolised the chief posts in the railway department, the Satsuma men held control of army and navy : in a word, the ascendency of the pre-revolutionary clans survived the revolution. But, when their own turn came in the summer of 1898 BEHIND THE SCENES 29 to divide the spoils of office, to which they had been summoned by the astuteness of Marquess I to, prompt to cover personal chagrin at his own defeat by advocacy of his opponents* claims to Imperial recognition, the followers of Counts Okuma and Itagaki found it impos- sible to reconcile the claims of contending office-seekers. Indeed, so bitter did the dissensions become, that the alliance was dissolved, and the first Ministry based on a majority in the Lower House disbanded before the Diet met. Power has since reverted to the same men, whose sagacity has made Japan triumph alike over armed foes and treaty-allies. Seeing that no more than eight per cent, of the population have votes, participation in home politics is confined to a compara- tively small circle ; and not to all of them, since most of the merchants with whom I conversed on the subject were content to leave their interests in the hands of the authorities, and expressed great resentment at the action of the soshi or professional agitators employed by politicians to cajole or threaten a constituency. It is inevitable at present that place and power should be the goal of all parties, and that politics should present the aspect of a scramble for office. There is no dividing-line between political parties, as elsewhere. No one desires to return to the feudal rdgime, or to tamper with the Constitution, or to limit the royal prerogative. In the face of national danger it is easy for all parties to unite, since nothing divides them but such questions as the incidence of taxation and the dis- tribution of posts. In the course of time, should the last vestige of acquiescent docility on the part of the toilers be swept away, the industrial sphinx will pose its question to the Japanese as to all other modern communities ; the rich will be ranged against the poor, 30 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS the socialist against the conservative. But, as things are now, even the loss of diplomatic prestige occasioned by the triumph of Russia in Manchuria, of which the blame cannot justly be assigned to isolated Japan, is counterbalanced by the careful development of military and commercial resources which would seem the crown- ing duty of the Emperor's advisers. The increasing prosperity of the country is the best answer to malevo- lent critics, and, if the charge of spiritual decadence in politics is to be sustained, weightier evidence must be produced than the writer has been able to discover. Well, I have taken a bird's-eye view of the Japanese as they appear to the resident alien, because his protesting voice is generally drowned in the joyful ejaculations of passing travellers. I have put aside for the moment my own prepossessions, which were only strengthened by intercourse with natives of every class, in order that the dark side of the shield might not be veiled. Dishonest traders aided by tortuous enactments, and mistrustful teachers suspicious of Western propaganda, insubordinate inferiors and in- competent officials — all these constitute grave stum- bling-blocks to happiness. But it would not be fair to ignore the facts which promise a brighter future. There are many firms whose integrity is unques- tioned, many journalists who try to stem the current of national misunderstanding by sagacious counsel. Experience and fuller knowledge are sure to prove wholesome correctives. The anti-foreign bias, though real and formidable, is based on the fear of half-under- stood eventualities. Closer intercourse and wider edu- cation will cause wisdom to spread down from the rulers to the ruled, who are not yet on familiar terms with our conceptions of trade and government. BEHIND THE SCENES 31 It is to be hoped, when the nation feels thoroughly at home in its new house, equipped from garret to cellar with the latest improvements and occupied by a tenant-proprietor whom no conceivable machination of jealous neighbours can dislodge, that even the foreign lodger will be permitted to exercise his calling without the slightest hindrance or disability. So much for the world behind the scenes, of which a glimpse has been vouchsafed to the reader. It will be seen that those who sustain roles in the daintiest of comediettas are also cast for a problem-play ; that they are no more exempt from envy, hatred, and vanity than other sensitive artists ; that their profes- sional dislike to alien amateurs, who add insult to injury by expecting the deference due to higher national status while competing for the pence and plaudits of the same public, is very human and not without excuse ; that, in spite of these infirmities, they may be industrious bread-winners and excellent per- formers. After all, the proper place for sightseers is the front of the house. Let us go there, and forget the intrigues of the green-room, in which we have happily no concern. We have come many miles to witness the play ; let us give it undivided attention. NOTE TO " BEHIND THE SCENES." CASSANDRA JUSTIFIED? Though time and space had so muffled the protesting shrieks of Cassandra that I could no longer hear her whirling prophecies or follow her sorry fortunes from day to day in the chivalrous Press of the treaty-ports, I never lost interest or sympathy in her loudly predicted future. I would picture her borne with streaming eyes and hair from her extra-territorial temple ; I would ask myself whether she had yet been borne off into bondage unspeakable by some Japanese Agamemnon. News travels slowly, and I was forced to content myself with the most meagre reports, when one day came a letter with the Yokohama postmark, in which the writer took excep- tion to some statements made by me in a lecture to the Playgoers' Club on the subject of Japanese theatres, and improved the occasion by despatching much irrelevant information on the subject of Japanese iniquity. I owe a heavy debt of gratitude to Mr. F. Schroeder, the editor and proprietor of The Eastern World, for those letters and pamphlets. They assure me of the welcome fact that Cassandra is alive and free, and protesting more loudly than ever. I gladly give publicity to the incidents and speculations recorded in them, for, while they seem to justify honest apprehension on the part of Cassandra's friends, they also contain indications that Agamemnon is by no means so subject to Thersites as the foes of Far Eastern democracy would have us believe. The question which raises most speculation, on account of the un- certainty of the law to be applied, is also the most important. It concerns leasehold. Hitherto foreigners had supposed themselves to hold land under a perpetual lease on payment of a lump sum to the vendor and of annual ground-rent to the Government. But, when a recent application was made to the local court in Yokohama for the registration of the transfer of property so held from one British subject to another, the Court replied that it had no power to register such a transfer, offering instead to describe the property as a perpetual superficies. The offer was refused and the point sub- mitted to the British Minister. If it should be decided that the foreign owner is no more than a superficiary, the ground at a distance of more than thirty feet below the surface tacitly reverts to the Government, which of course would have the right to sell it for BEHIND THE SCENES 33 mining purposes, for the construction of tunnels or reservoirs or what not, provided that the surface were neither entered nor broken. A change so radical in the conditions of holding land, which the pur- chaser may thus have acquired under a misapprehension, is serious enough, but more serious still will be its effect on future purchasers. By the newly codified law authorisation is refused to leases of longer than twenty years' duration. What foreign firm, desirous of a per- manent footing on Japanese soil, would erect buildings and establish itself on land liable to be resumed by the owner at the end of so short a period ? How easy for native traders under such circum- stances to strangle or arrest the business of alien competitors ! Should a score of years demonstrate the growth of too successful rivalry, they have merely to bririg such pressure to bear on the lessor as would prevent renewal of the lease. The Tamba Maru case, which originated in a somewhat ignoble squabble between the English third officer and the Japanese quarter- master of a Nippon Yusen Kwaisha steamer, assumes quite Homeric proportions in the pages of an Eastern World brochure. It certainly affords food for reflection on the methods of Oriental justice when racial prejudice intervenes, but the sequel shows that in Japan at any rate an appeal lies from prejudiced judges and partial witnesses to substantial wisdom and common-sense in high places. The facts are few and stirring. Horace Robert Kent had reported Umeseko Toyomatsu for smoking while on duty. His inexperienced eye had mistaken the glow of a jewel in the latter's ring for the glint of a cigarette. Fearful of losing his captain's good opinion and his place on board, the injured innocent invaded the mate's cabin with his cap on and flashed the exculpating jewel in that officer's face. Hand-to-hand scuffling ensued, of which contradictory accounts are naturally given, with the result that Toyomatsu received a black eye, was put in irons, and released at once to mollify his comrades, while Mr. Kent was bitten five or six times in the thigh and hidden by his prudent skipper from the vengeance of the crew. Each brought a charge of assault against the other. At the trial the evidence of eye-witnesses seems to have been entirely eclipsed by the opinions of medical gentlemen, who deserve the honours of the verdict. Dr. Sagara opined that a black eye (the organ not even being closed up) would prevent a sailor from work for more than twenty days, and would take from three to four weeks to heal completely ; Dr. Fujise compared the wounds in the thigh of the third mate with the shape of the quartermaster's teeth, and found that they almost completely C 34 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS coincided, but was still unable to assert that they were caused by biting. Sentences : six months' rigorous imprisonment for the Englishman, five days' detention for the Japanese. The inequality of the punishments was quickly remedied. The Tokyo Court of Appeal quashed the decision of the original tribunal, and reduced the sentence from six months' imprisonment to ten days' detention. I dwell at some length on this trivial case of common assault for two reasons. First, it is satisfactory to remark how promptly an excess of partial severity was corrected; secondly, I feel sure that Mr. Kent is the only foreigner on whom the evil foretold by Cassandra has fallen within six months of the coming into operation of the treaties. Otherwise I should have received other and more in- dignant pamphlet-homilies on the baneful fulfilment of prophecy. Finally, my informant calls attention to recent cases of official bribery and corruption. He cites the name of Mr. Koyama Konosuke, M.P., who was charged in Parliament with receiving a bribe of 2000 yen from the Government of the day (1899), and who, so far from denying it, sued in a court of law for the remainder of the money due to him. Being called upon by his constituents to resign, he replied with a threat of exposing implicated colleagues, and apparently retained his seat. Both Houses of the Legislature would seem to be tainted by similar practices, for The Japan Mail (of April 10, 1900) has a paragraph, headed " The Peers Scandal," to the following efTect : " It is now alleged that no less than twenty-four members of the House of Peers are implicated in the bribery scandal connected with the Religious Bill affair. Some of them are alleged to be desirous of hushing up the matter, but their fellow-members insist that some- thing must be done to clear the reputation of the House. It is im- possible to tell how much truth there may be in these rumours." It is obviously " impossible " for a foreigner to collect such proofs of corruption as would be good evidence in a court of law, nor, if possible, would it be worth his while. The cry of vendu is so freely bandied by a factionist Press, that, remembering the famous legend of a Dreyfus syndicate, one hesitates to pin faith on vague para- graphs. Moreover, whatever foundation of fact underlie the charges, it should be borne in mind that parliamentary government has only existed for ten years, and it would not be reasonable to expect in a decade those virtues which were of very slow growth in our own Mother of Parliaments. Corruption at Pretoria or St. Petersburg is no bar to " the sympathies of the civilised world " (outside Anglo- BEHIND THE SCENES 35 Saxondom), and in any case these evils may safely be left for correc- tion to those whom they most immediately concern. The Japanese Press is conscious of them, anxious to deal with them ; the laws are stringent enough, if difficult to enforce. One notes them as a factor in Japanese politics to be neither exaggerated nor ignored, and turns to consider less purely domestic matters. Indirect confirmation of my impression that Christianity was losing ground in the country is furnished by the elaborate report of the American Board of Foreign Missions, of which the rose-coloured conclusions at first sight suggest the contrary. Stress is laid, for instance, on the fact that a prominent Christian was elected to the present Diet by a majority of five to one in Buddhist Kyoto ; but there is nothing to show that the election turned on doctrinal issues. One Japanese Christian was appointed "moral teacher" in the Sugamo penitentiary, with the result that all the rest, Buddhists by faith, resigned. Political reasons probably caused this appointment, for Sugamo is the prison to which all foreign delinquents will be sent under the new regime. The Board complains of strong opposition to the teaching of the elements of the Christian religion, not only in public but also in private schools, centred in the Education Depart- ment, and attributes it to widespread agnosticism, which, so far as it desires to conserve Buddhist influence, does so for ulterior social and intellectual ends. But I find the clearest proof of simultaneous success and failure in the admission that Christianity maintains its hold by practical philanthropy. Schools for neglected and criminal children, schemes for relieving discharged prisoners, benevolent works of all kinds, are promoted and carried out by Christians. Of good- ness of this sort the kind-hearted Japanese are thoroughly apprecia- tive, but it is the works, not the faith, which they admire. Holders of all creeds, or of none, must sympathise with this aspect of mis- sionary effort ; but it results, and perhaps happily, in a closer union of hearts than of minds. I conclude with a quotation from the/i/i, one of the most influential Tokyo papers — a quotation which speaks for itself and accords with the sorrowful vaticinations of Cassandra : " Decrease in the Number of Foreign Residents. — Quite contrary to expectations, there seems to be a gradual reduction in the number of foreigners residing in Yokohama, where they are more numerous than in any other part of the country. It is anticipated that the statistics will perhaps show some reduction for two or three years. The reason is supposed to be : (1) foreigners prefer Hongkong or 36 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS Shanghai to Japan, owing to the difficulty of finding opportunities for gaining as large profits as formerly; and (2) their unfamiliarity with the Japanese law, which imposes undue restraint upon their movements. As a matter of fact, they have been surprised by the imposition of heavy taxes of various kinds, never dreamt of pre- viously. Moreover, in consequence of the coming into operation of the new tariff, they have been deprived of their profits on certain kinds of goods, such as liquors, cigars, &c. This is shown by the circumstance that the foreign merchants who have given up or are going to give up business are mostly dealers in these goods. In future foreigners who may be induced to come to this part of the world can only be, in consequence of the operation of the new treaties, those who have other objects than business and who will take the place of the present residents, who will certainly leave in the near future." RELIGIOUS PLAYS RELIGIOUS PLAYS The traveller who witnesses a " No Dance," hastily improvised for his amusement at the Maple Club of Tokyo, or who chances upon a pantomimic duologue in grotesque costume, rendered on a rough platform to divert the crowd before a temple at the matsuri — half fair, half festival — can really form no idea of the ex- quisite little dramas which for more than five cen- turies have been performed privately in the houses of Japanese nobles and are still enacted at rare intervals to an invited audience. The common term "No Dance " is rather misleading, since it only suggests the rhythmic posturing of the characters — very graceful, it is true, and pregnant with meaning for the initiated — but ignores other factors, such as the words, the story, and the music, which contribute quite as memorably to the total effect. Operetta will not do, since the choric strains, which stimulate attention and intensify emotion with their staccato accompaniment, are sub- ordinate throughout. If, then, that may be styled a play which revolves on a single episode and relates to no more than three or four persons, a very close parallel lies between these and the religious plays of Europe. In both you find the same reverence for the 4 o JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS past, dictating the devout demeanour of actors and audience ; in both a minute traditional interpretation, governing the diction, the action, and the dress ; in both a perpetual association of the scenes depicted with sacred legends and the spirit world. But whereas Christianity yields one and the same drama, once in a decade, to the peasants of Oberammergau, the Shintoist Pantheon, sanctifying national history and full of deified heroes, appeals to both patriotic and religious instincts through the medium of an art sometimes immature but always refined. The roots of this musical pantomime reach far back into mythological times. The figure of the Terrible Female of Heaven, stamping on an inverted tub to startle the Sun Goddess from her cave, is generally invoked on the threshold of inquiries into the origin of Kagura, or temple-dancing. Grotesque and vener- able, it is not illuminating. More startling to me is the statement of a modern authority that "in the eighth century, in the later period of the Nara dynasty and at the beginning of the Heian period, combining the Korean and the Chinese music with the native, a certain perfect form of Japanese music came to exist." To comprehend this " perfect music," as rendered on drum, fife, and flute, esoteric education is required. But it may be admitted that certain Wagnerian effects of terror and suspense and tumultuous agitation are thumped and wailed into the auditor, while his ocular attention is absorbed by deliberate phantoms. Very deliberate are the phantom dancers, whether their theme be simple or complex. On the dancing stages at the Shinto temples of Ise and of Omi, on the four platforms of the Kasuga Temple at Nara, the subject was naturally mythological or had relation to the RELIGIOUS PLAYS 41 temple's own history. Such songs as went with the dance were simple, short, and primitive. They would be heard at Court ceremonies, too, for the union of Church and State was close. They were sung by members of privileged families, who guarded and trans- mitted from father to son the professional secrets of their "perfect music." However, the beginning of the Ashikaga period in the fourteenth century saw the corruption and develop- ment of a perfect germ into complex variety. Both sacred and secular rivalry contributed to this result. The Biwa-hoshi, blind priests and lute-players, who went from castle to castle of the Daimyos, singing Hez&e- monogatari, historical romances of warlike quality in prose and verse, opened new vistas of subject-matter, while Skirabyoski, the refined and cultivated precursor of the comparatively modern geisha, extended both the scope and the significance of posture-dancing. The Kioku-mai, or memory- dance, came into vogue, being characterised by closer co-ordination of music and movement, while the accompanying song would often celebrate a romantic episode or a famous land- scape. Many of these songs survive, embedded in the chorus of No texts ; in fact, they may be regarded as the nucleus of No drama. The Muromachi Shogunate witnessed the final tran- sition from dance to drama, recitative and singing speeches and dramatis persona being superadded to the chorus. Kiyotsugu (w T ho died in 1406) and his son Motokiyo (who died in 1455) are generally credited with this development. They belonged to the Yusaki family — one of the four families who exercised here- ditary management of the Nara stage. They held a small estate, and succeeded in winning the Shogun's 42 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS patronage for their Sartigaku or No, which became extremely popular at Court. Naturally enough, the choric songs became panegyrics of the reigning Shogun, and helped to embellish his Court pageants. It is not believed that the actor-manager did more than prepare and conduct the No, in which music and dancing were still the chief features. The author was contented to remain anonymous, and that for good reasons. Intellectual light shone mostly in the mon- asteries during that dark age of feudal fighting. If the Buddhist monk could make of this aristocratic amusement a vehicle for Buddhist teaching, individual obscurity was a small price to pay for corporate influence. Therefore, while it cannot be stated as a fact that the famous priests Ikkiu and Shiuran wrote the finest No poetry, it is certain that yurei or ghosts and Buddhist exorcisers became very common cha- racters on the No boards, while the chorus betrayed (as I am told) " many deep conceptions of mystic religion." What higher compliment has ever been paid to art, dramatic or pictorial, than the struggles of priests and politicians to wield its influence ? There is something pathetic in this aspect of the rivalry for Terpsichore's hand. At first she wore the red trousers of a Shinto priestess and was wooed by the Mikado. Then the Shogun came, a strong man armed, and with him she danced into the Buddhist camp. The sixteenth century gave the final touch to this musical drama, which approximated more and more to secular plays without ever entirely losing its official character. The ghosts faded out, the Buddhist in- fluence grew less marked, for it had to traverse the tyranny of Nobunaga, who patronised Christianity and destroyed the monasteries of Hiei-zan. But hence- RELIGIOUS PLAYS 43 forward, as an aristocratic institution, the No was to retain its popularity, though since the sixteenth century none have been written. A programme is still extant on which the two greatest names in Japanese his- tory, those of Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, star the list of performers. The actors were treated as samurai, military retainers, though the performers in popular shibai (theatres) were held in contempt In the latest specimens knighthood is the invariable theme, set to more various music and illustrated by more violent posturing. Throughout the Tokugawa era (1 602-1 868) every Daimyo who could afford it maintained a troupe of No players to reproduce for his edification the thoughts and habits of mediaeval art. Old costumes, old masks, old music were faithfully preserved ; no innovation of text or interpretation was allowed by the hereditary custodians and directors. And since the shock of the Restoration a reaction has set in, favouring their revival. At present there are in Tokyo six troupes of No players, with a repertoire of from two to three hundred plays. These retain so firm a hold on cultured con- servatives — the younger generation finds them slow — that Mr. Matsumoto Keichi, one of the leading publishers, is now issuing a series of one hundred and eighty-three illustrative colour prints — No no ye — whose fine drawing and delicately blent hues are as superior to the flamboyant aniline horror by which the Nihon-bashi print-seller advertises the newest blood- and-thunder melodrama as that itself is inferior to the aristocratically-nurtured No. Reproduced as faith- fully as may be, the pictures of Mr. Kogyo will, I hope, impress the reader with the archaic simplicity and beauty of the original design, provided that he 44 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS have the gift of sympathetic intuition, so as to divine what tale of terror, what burden of grief, obscure to him, is yet manifest enough behind quaint mask and rigid gesture to the heirs of national hagiology. The solemnity and pathos of each dramatised incident in the life of hero or saint is emphasised by the time- honoured locutions of mediaeval Japanese, which of course convey by mere association, as Elizabethan English to us, the tone and atmosphere of dead cen- turies. Yet, independently of the musical old speech, so cumbrous and so courteous, it is impossible to miss the meaning of these tiny tragedies, enacted as they are by instinctive masters of gesticular eloquence. The writer was particularly fortunate in gaining admis- sion to a series of No produced by the Umewaka company or society, which has this advantage over the other five organisations, diverging on points of textual accuracy and stage ritual, that it traces unbroken descent through its chief from the Kanza school of music appertaining to the Yusaki family of Nara. When Commodore Perry forced open the door of the East in 1854, hitherto closed for more than two hundred years to Western barbarians, Mr. Umewaka captained a little band of No players attached to the then all-powerful household of Keiki, the last of the Tokugawa Shoguns. Then followed bloody civil war, the bombardment of Kago-shima and Shimonoseki, and the restoration of the Emperor to supreme power. The ex-Shogun immured himself, a private gentleman, in strict seclu- sion. His company of players was of course dis- banded, but little by little, from rare representations in the houses of friends to more frequent revivals, consequent on growing fame, their erudite and RELIGIOUS PLAYS 45 enthusiastic chief was able to found his present very flourishing society. One gentleman, an ex-Daimyo, presented the troupe with a large stage of polished pine from his dismantled castle ; a second contributed a priceless store of plays in manuscript ; Mr. Umewaka himself brought the best gift of all, profound and practical knowledge of the stage technique, which is curiously elaborate in spite of seeming simplicity, and bristles with professional secrets. The orchestra consisted on this occasion of a flute and two taiko, drums shaped like a sand-glass and rapped smartly with the open palm. At irregular intervals, timed no doubt by the exigencies of the text, the musicians emitted a series of staccato cries or wailing notes, which seemed to punctuate the passion of the player and insensibly tightened the tension of the auditor's nerves. In two rows of three on the right of the stage sat the chorus, six most " reverend signiors " in the stiff costume of Samurai, who intervened now and again with voice and fan, the manipulation of the latter varying with the quality of the strains assigned to the singers. In placid moments the fan would sway gently to and fro, rocked on the waves of quasi- Gregorian chanting, but, when blows fell or apparitions rose, it was planted, menacing and erect, like a danger- signal before the choralist's cushion. The musicians were seated on low stools at the back of the stage before a long screen of conventional design, in which green pines trailed across a gold ground, harmonising admirably with the sober blues and browns of their kimono. A glance at the programme gave assurance of prolonged and varied entertainment, since no less than five religious plays and three kiogen (lit. mad words), 46 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS or farcical interludes, were announced in the following order : i. Shunkwan, the High-Priest in Exile. 2. Koi no Omone y the Burden of Love. 3. Aoi no Uye, the Sick Wife. 4. Funa Benkei, Benkei at Sea. 5. TsuchiguniOy the Earth-Spider. Kiogen. 1. Kitsune-Tsuki, Possession by Foxes. 2. Roku Jizo, the Six Jizo. 3. Fukuro Yamabusshi, the Owl-Priest. By an hour before noon the audience, seated on cushions in little pews holding four or six persons, had composed itself to that air of thoughtful anticipa- tion which I had hitherto associated with devotees of Ibsen or Wagner. Manyj peered through gold spectacles at the copies of the antique text, whose phraseology was not without difficulties even for the scholars and artists present ; the women's faces were far graver and more thoughtful than one usually sees in the land of laughing musum,6 ; the prevailing grey and black worn by women and men suffered sporadic invasions of bright colour wherever you saw children settling, like human butterflies. For these, though their ears availed them little, could follow with won- dering eyes the strange succession of gorgeous or terrible figures — warriors and spectres and court-ladies — evoked for their delight. The story of Shunkwan, however, was quite devoid of spectacular appeal. Exiled in 1177 with other rebellious priests by Kiyomori, the ruthless Taira chief, to Devil's Island (Kikai-gashima), he is dis- covered celebrating with his companions an oblation to Kumano Gongen and praying for speedy restitution m 4*¥ 1 ** $§*»»»* .Ad RELIGIOUS PLAYS 47 to his fatherland. Pitiful indeed is the case of these banished suppliants, who wear the blue-and-white hempen skirts of fishermen and whose penury is such that they are obliged to bring the god water instead of sakd, sand instead of rice, and hempen fetters instead of white prayer - cord. Kumano Gongen hears and answers their petition. An imperial mes- senger arrives from Kyoto with a letter from the daughter of Shunkwan, announcing that the Son of Heaven, Lord of the Land of the Rising Sun, has been graciously pleased to recall his erring subjects, pardoning their offences -and inviting their prayers for an expected heir to the throne. Beaming with grateful joy, the old man now scans the imperial man- date more closely, only to find that his own name is omitted from the list of those forgiven. Yasugori and Moritsune will be taken, but he, Shunkwan, must be left. In vain do his fellow-exiles lament and protest; all know that the Son of Heavens decree must be obeyed to the letter. Accordingly, the others embark, while their disappointed chief falls, speech- less and hopeless, on the shore. A simple, poignant story ! So touchingly interpreted, that the primitive and even ludicrous makeshifts of the mounting seemed hardly incongruous ! The mooring and unmooring of the boat, for which the crudest parody in outline of rope and wood did duty, and the final embarkation (as represented in the picture) were gravely accom- plished in complete immunity from ill-timed laughter ; the messenger's grotesque hakama, elongated trousers, trailing a good yard behind the feet, that the wearer might seem to walk on his knees while about his master's business, provoked no smile ; in fact, any trivial details and defects were swallowed up in the 48 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS prodigious earnestness of the actors. The part of Shunkwan was played by Mr. Umewaka himself with much pathos, depending entirely on tone, carriage, and gesture, since all facial expression is barred by the strict convention of playing the No in masks. While the presentation of spectres and supernatural beings must be facilitated by this custom, since many of the masks are masterpieces of imaginative skill, yet, where the interest is purely human, that illusion at which all drama aims is proportionately diminished. Now came the children's turn to laugh at the first of the kiogen, entitled Kitsune Tsuki, " Possession by foxes." Most of the comical interludes deal with rustic stupidity or cunning, and all refer in some way to religious belief or practice. If one may judge by the ubiquity of his images, the fox is the most sacred animal in Japan. No shrines are so numerous as those of Inari, the rice-goddess, and before each stand two white foxes, with snarling lips and teeth clenched on a mysterious golden object, which completely baffled the curiosity of M. Loti, though later writers declare it to be no more than a key, symbolising the portal of wealth unlocked by divine favour. But Inari herself is completely eclipsed in popular awe by her attendant foxes. It is they who, if not propitiated, ruin the rice crop ; they who have the power, like the weir-wolf, of assuming human shape and of " possessing " unfortu- nate beings, whose only chance of delivery lies in exorcism by a priest. In the case of the kiogen now presented this superstition had been turned to comical use. We learned that Farmer Tanaka had sent two of his men into the fields with rattles to scare away birds, laying on them many injunctions to beware of the daemonic fox, Kitsune, whose exploits had lately RELIGIOUS PLAYS 49 made him the terror of that neighbourhood. The warning is but too effectual. So full are the watchers' minds of the dread of fox-possession, that, when their master appears with a jug of sakt in his hand as a reward and refreshment after labour, they believe him to be Kitsune, the tempter, and thrash him soundly out of his own rice-field ! Some have asserted that love, the romantic and chivalrous love of Western literature, is absent alike from the art and letters of Japan. Nevertheless, what could be more romantic than the title and plot of the play, attributed to the, Emperor Gohanazono though signed by Motokiyo — " Koi no Omoni," "The Burden of Love " ? The lover is Yamashina Shoji, an old man of high birth, but miserably poor, to whom out of charity has been entrusted the tending of the Emperor's chrysanthemums. A court-lady, seen by chance one day as he raised his head from the flowers, inspires a passion which he feels to be beyond hope or cure. He confides his unhappiness to one of the courtiers, who counsels him to carry a burden round and round the garden many times, until, haply, the lady "seeing, may relent." This he does. At first the burden seems light as air, being buoyantly borne, but gradually it grows heavier and heavier, until at last he staggers to the ground, crushed to death by unavailing love. Soon after his ghost appears, a melancholy spectre with long white hair and gown of silver-grey, with wattled staff and eyes of hollow gold. At this point all chivalry certainly vanishes, for the angry apparition stamps and glares, and, shaking locks and staff, stoutly chides the beauty for her callous cruelty. The lady does not once intervene, but throughout the piece sits motionless, a figure rather than a person, her eyes fixed on the burden D 50 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS. itself, as it lies, concrete and symbolic, wrapped in apple-green brocade, near the front-centre of the stage. This inclusion of a significant silent object among the dramatis persons is curiously effective. The sight of Yamashina tottering beneath a physical weight would have made clumsy prose of a beautiful poetic truth. His feelings are better conveyed by the dirge-like song and lugubrious posturing, which poverty of lan- guage compels one to miscall a " dance." Full of dignity and fine gesture is the ghost's rebuke. Slowly revolving on his heels, or tossing back his streaming, silvery hair, now dashing his staff upon the ground, now raising his kimono sleeve slowly to hide his face, one felt that this weird figure was expressing elemental passion in a language more elemental than speech. I cannot say as much for the lady, whose coronet of thin gold with silver crescent in front and pendent pagoda- bells on either side, surmounting a mask of singular ugliness, seemed the fantastic headpiece of a crude idol very foolishly idealised. But it served to illustrate, with an irony which the imperial author had not intended, the so grievous "burden of love." Kyoto court-life of the twelfth century, painted for posterity in the famous, interminable pages of " Genji Monogatari," one of the oldest achievements of the lady-novelist, has found less tedious and equally faithful presentment in such dramatic miniatures as "Aoi no Uye," Prince Genji's long-suffering wife. Jealousy is the keynote of this lyrical play — that insatiable, self- torturing jealousy which is the hardest of demons to expel. Again I noticed a piece of curious, silent symbolism. The poor, demoniac wife, who gives her name to the play, does not appear, either as person or figure : in her stead a long strip of folded brocade, RELIGIOUS PLAYS 51 suggesting a bed of sickness, lies immediately behind the footlights. Thus, though sub-conscious of her entity, the spectator is compelled to focus all attention on the apparition, which takes double form. First comes the spirit of the Princess Rokijo, who takes vengeance on her false lover (Genji is the Don Juan of Japan) by haunting the helpless Aoi in the shape of a pale wailing woman. A miko, or Shinto priestess, is summoned to exorcise the intruder. In vain she rubs her green rosary, muttering fervid prayers : the spirit wails more loudly, more intolerably, and only yields at last to the fiercer 4 spells and rougher wrestling of soul with soul on the part of a mountain-priest. But his victory is short-lived, for a terrible phantom, the Devil of Jealousy, wearing the famous Hanja mask, replaces Rokujo. Inch by inch the priest falls back, as the grinning demon with gilt horns and pointed ears slowly unveiled from a shroudlike hood glides forward to smite him with menacing crutch. To and fro the battle rages beside the prostrate Aoi no Uye : neither holy man nor devil will give way ; the scream- ing and shrill fifing of the musicians rise to frenzied pitch ; adjuration succeeds adjuration, until the evil spirit is finally driven away. Nothing can exceed the realism of this scene, so masterfully played that the hardiest agnostic must be indeed fancy -proof if he cannot feel something of the awe inspired into believers by this terrific duel. Moreover, this is exactly the sort of incident which exhibits to the full extent of their potency the peculiar characteristics of No drama. What human face, however disguised and distorted, could rival the malignant horror of a Japanese mask ? What mincing and gibing Mephistopheles could com- pare for a moment with the devilish ingenuity and 52 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS suspense of this posture-pantomime, with its endless feints and threats and sallies and retreats ? And how the anguish of battle is enhanced by the "barbaric yawp " and sharp, intermittent drum-taps, which excite without distracting the spell-bound audience ! So abrupt and discreet is the interjected cry of the im- mobile musicians that one might easily take it for the defiant or hortative outburst of an invisible spirit attracted to the ghostly combat. Indeed, all that is wild and primitive in these enfants sauvages of Mel- pomene is chastened into harmony by the innate sobriety of Japanese art. The creative instinct works within small limits by small means, but with these means it contrives to project on its tiny stage a vital suggestion of the largest issues. The gods become marionettes for an hour, without wholly losing their godhead. Good-humoured drollery, of which the gods come in for a fair share, is no more alien to the Japanese than it was to the Greek temperament. And if one had to guess which divinity or divinities are regarded with more affection than awe by such light-hearted wor- shippers, one would certainly name the Rokujizo, or six Jizo. While Buddha and Kwannon, Tenjin and Inari, dwell in small or stately temples, augustly apart, the six Jizo sit sociably in a row by the road- side or on the outskirts of a shrine, protected (if protected at all) from the weather by a plain wooden shed. For they belong to the class of open-air minor deities familiarly known as " wet gods." Yet they play a large part in the emotional life of the people. Patrons of travellers, women, and children, they bear the semblance of a shaven priest with benevolent countenance, whose neck is generally encircled with a RELIGIOUS PLAYS 53 child's bib of coloured wool, while his hand holds an emblematic jewel, a lotus, a pilgrim's staff, an incense- box, a rosary, or sometimes an infant. In most villages and near many schools will you find the six Jizo, for the country people, loving their children, cherish the children's patron-saint with particular attachment. The amusing kiogen named " Rokujizo" seemed to please the younger members of our audience infinitely more than the romantic and spectral dramas which preceded it. A pious farmer, anxious to attest his gratitude for a good harvest, resolves to put up six Jizo effigies in his fields, and, seeking a sculptor to carry out his design, falls in with a knavish fellow who boasts that he can carve statues more quickly than any one else in the world, and promises that the six shall be finished by the following day. The bargain is concluded. Then the pseudo-sculptor persuades three confederates to personate Jizo, entrusting them with the jewel, the staff, and the other symbols. As soon as they are well posed as living statuary, he brings the farmer to admire them, and, pretending that the other three are at the opposite end of the field, sends the extemporised gods by a short cut to anticipate the buyer's arrival. He, however, though duly impressed, desires to see the first three again, and then again the second three, until the imper- sonators, tired with running backwards and forwards, forget what pose and what emblem to assume, entirely destroying all illusion by their ridiculous perplexity. The farmer discovers the trick, and administers a sound drubbing to the fraudulent artist, while the Jizo make their escape. The humour of this naturally depends on the "business" of the performers, since no pretence is made to literary merit in the dialogue, \ 54 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS which is couched in colloquial Japanese of the same period as the lyrical dramas themselves — that is, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. The most important, if not the most interesting, item in the programme was a little historic play in two scenes, entitled " Funa Benkei," or " Benkei at Sea." No figure in Japanese annals is so popular as Benkei, the devil youth (Oniwaka), credited with eight feet of stature, unless it be Yoshitsune, the valiant boy, who vanquished the giant in single combat on Gojo Bridge in Kyoto, and thus acquired a loyal and in- vincible henchman. The numberless adventures in which Benkei by strength or cunning ensures the success of Yoshitsune have been utilised again and again by painters and playwrights. Unfortunately, the fruits of victory are always snatched from Yoshitsune's grasp by the jealous despotism of his elder brother, Yoritomo, the terrible chief of the Minamoto faction. When the play opens he is discovered with a handful of faithful followers at Omono-no-ura, whither he has fled to escape the machinations of his brother ; but further progress is delayed by the arrival of Shizuka, a beautiful geisha, who entreats permission to bid him farewell. Benkei refuses to allow this, and asserts that his master wishes her to return at once to Kama- kura, the capital, without an audience. But the girl will not believe that her lover has sent so harsh a message, and insists on dancing once more before him. Shizuka's dance is very elaborate and beautiful, though a little tedious for the European, who has not been trained to appreciate the symbolic import of woven measure and waving arm. At the outset a tall golden head-dress, in shape like an elongated Phrygian cap, is carefully placed on her head. In RELIGIOUS PLAYS 55 this she revolves and slowly, slowly expresses by that choregraphic language — which the profane would take years to acquire — all her passion and despair at losing her lover and lord. Yoshitsune, deeply moved, gives her a sakd cup, as a sign that she may carouse with him for the last time ; but Benkei, sternly insensible to dalliance, bids her withdraw and gives orders to set sail. Once more the performers take their places in a primitive piece of framework representing a boat, while the resources of orchestra and helmsman are taxed to their utmost in' the endeavour to simulate a storm. The fife screams, the drums thunder, the steersman stamps his foot, and suddenly out of the furious tempest rise grim spectres with black, fleecy hair, gilt horns, and blood-stained halberds. These are the ghosts of the Taira clan, slaughtered by the Minamoto in a great sea-fight at Dan-no-ura, two years before — a battle which might be termed the Bosworth Field of the great civil war which devas- tated Japan in the latter half of the twelfth century. Yoshitsune with youthful heat (he is always a boy in the No dramas) lunges at the phantoms and shouts his war-cry, but Benkei (who adds the functions of a priest to his other accomplishments) strikes down his sword, and, producing a rosary, hurls a volley of exorcising prayers at the discomfited ghosts. As always, the play ends in David's deliverance from danger by the re- sourcefulness of Goliath. " Tsuchigumo," the Earth-Spider, the last piece performed, is founded on a curious legend, whose chief merit may be that it affords excuse for a fantastic stage-picture. It seems that a band of robbers, who lived in caves and were known by the nickname of $6 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS earth-spiders, were routed from their lairs and exter- minated by Kintaro, servant of Yoremitsu, whose valour was much enhanced in popular estimation by the flattering rumour that the defeated pests were not men at all, but a race of enormous demon -insects. Accordingly, the climax of " Tsuchigumo " is a stirring encounter between Imperial Guards, armed with swords and spears, and masked monsters, who entangle their weapons and baffle their aim in a cloud of long gauzy filaments, resembling the threads of a spider's web. The piece is pure pantomime, owing even less than usual to music, incident, or poetic style. " The Owl- Priest," the last of the kiogen, calls for no description. Such are the religious plays in their last phase of development, the fruit of a religious revival on the part of archaeologists and patriots. They are a curious instance of wisely arrested growth. Had they never passed the border-line of archaic dancing, their in- terpreters would be a dwindling band of Shinto 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 mediaeval 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 No poetry," writes an enthusiast, "is like a great store of the treasures of Eastern culture. It is full of allusions to the clas- sical stories of * Manyoshii * and ' Kokinshu,' Chinese RELIGIOUS PLAYS 57 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 Shinto 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 No 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 Coven- try 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 shirt and her kirtle in her hand, and she shall come before Pilate like a mad woman?) Imagine the 5 8 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS wildest of kiogen incidents invading a No ! How shocked a Japanese audience would have been ! If the No seem occasionally naif 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 No, 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 Chika- matsu with Shakespeare. POPULAR PLAYS , POPULAR PLAYS I < Between the sacred opera of Tokyo 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 with- out 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. Subse- 62 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS quent information throws a curious light on the misleading characteristics of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, enabling me to acquit the producers of ignor- ance, but not of mystification. I learn that the Japanese representative accredited to the Court of St. James's very naturally objected to the slight im- plied 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 exag- gerated 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 Di6sy 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 con- cerned. 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 fortu- nately not explained to the audience. But the plot of " The Geisha " was as farcically untrue to life as that of 11 The Mikado." And this time some one was found to say so. An indignant Tokyo journalist, who happened to see the opera, thus commented on its import : " The idea of Japan prevalent in foreign countries is thus reflected : POPULAR PLAYS 63 " 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 Shinto 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 64 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS have mattered so much (the Tokyo drama is mostly melodrama) if the author had avoided Adelphi psy- chology. No Japanese woman indulges in the inde- pendence 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 Ame- rican 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 Cho 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 shoji 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. POPULAR PLAYS 65 Devotion and dumb endurance are more character- istic, 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 har- mony 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 Chrysantheme 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 Tokyo," of which the leading stars, Mr. Otojiro Kawakami and Madame Sada E 66 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 aesthetic 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 naif as they were beautiful, could be seen, and seen only for a few afternoons, in the prosaic neighbour- hood 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 Tokyo, with long, irrelevant scenes and a plot requiring four hours to unravel, how much more dis- contented 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, what- ever 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 soshi school, as they are called — a school MR. DANJURO AS " LADY OF KASVGA" (A 87) MR. DANJURO AS " JIRAIYA " (p. 262) MADAME SADA YACCO (p. 67) MR. OBOJIRO KAWAKAMI (/. 67) FAMOUS JAPANESE PLAYERS POPULAR PLAYS 67 which bears some resemblance to the Theatre Libre or the Theatre de l'CEuvre. The soshi were students, desirous of reforming and modernising the conservative traditions of their stage, and Mr. Kawakami's contribu- tions 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 im- pression 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 cur- tailed ; next, as much dancing as possible was intro- duced, so that the damari, or pantomimic scene, which in Tokyo 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 68 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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. 11 Zingoro, an Earnest Statue Carver," narrates the pretty legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, with the addi- tion 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 Poupee," 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 awaken- ing 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 thd&tre, 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 POPULAR PLAYS 69 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 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. 70 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 jujutsu, 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 con- ventional melde. 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 pictur- esque. 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 bust- ling 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 say ate, 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. POPULAR PLAYS 71 The second act passes in a Buddhist temple, where Nagoya, flying with his fiancde, 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. Per- mission is given. First she treads a solemn temple- dance, a no-mat, 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 (nzaru-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 72 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 naif 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 Sanzaburo, and made her peace with the god Onamuji by devoting part of the receipts to repairing his shrine, gave her first theatrical per- formance at Kyoto. 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 ronin, 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 No was a marked characteristic of the secular humanistic drama, but whereas England had not long POPULAR PLAYS 73 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 offmore amazing contortions, for acrobatic activity plays a large part in legitimate drama, which would seem incomplete without damari, or panto- mimic 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 Osaka 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 74 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 Tokyo 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 as authentic the 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 Moliere, 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 shared 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 POPULAR PLAYS 75 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 u The Fisher-Boy of Urashima " is presented, the adults are quite as appre- ciative 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 76 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS Czar for indoctrinating docile peasants than the Yedo drama was of service to the Shogun. 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 samurais 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 dis- obeying 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 atro- cious, 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 Tokyo theatre in the autumn of 1898. The incident, more or less POPULAR PLAYS 77 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 co- operation of stage and cage. While father and son, mounted on terrific black and white chargers, inter- change 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 con- cealment 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 murderers 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. 78 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 mans 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 sup- posed from the foregoing analysis. Subsidiary pea- sants, 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 cha- racters, 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 ronin, whose simultaneous suicide is the subject of more than fifty dramas, and whose vene- rated 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- POPULAR PLAYS 79 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 Govern- So JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS ment 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 dra- matic 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 joro 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 POPULAR PLAYS 81 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 ad- venture would diversify the plot. The nimble-wittsd 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 pro- duced 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 con- siderable 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 Nabe- shima 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 daimyo 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 82 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 daimyo'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 No. Let them be as imaginative, as patriotic, as lofty as you like, they remain stirring POPULAR PLAYS 83 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 impos- sible task until the conditions of theatrical represen- tation 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 ade- quately 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 amuse- ment 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 Soshi-Shibai, was started with a loud flourish of trumpets in Tokyo. The promoters were soshi (ex-students), who, as actors or authors, or both, proclaimed their intention of revolutionising the stage and informing it with nine- 84 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS teenth-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 Pari- sian, presented his compatriots with a version of (i Le monde ou Ton 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 Tokyo tradesman has never kissed anybody, and would not incommode his wife with sentimental attention. He was merely mys- tified 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 POPULAR PLAYS 85 seem to be that pursued by Mr. Tsuboiichi and Mr. Fukuchi, who continue to write plays on episodes in their own history, but strive to avoid the extra- vagance and unreality of their predecessors. Mr. Tsuboiichi, who was well known as a critic and novelist before he turned playwright, invented the term mugen- gekki 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 86 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 far- seeing wisdom and patience of the ruler, together with the perseverance and devotion of the ruled. The poli- tical and personal strands of interest are so cleverly com- bined, 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 com- pleted his work of equipping Japan with a durable constitution, retired to Suruga, and, leaving the sho- gunate 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 ronin, having been dispossessed of title and estates by Hideyoshi. The task was beset with difficulty. First the wife of Hidetada, and then that Shogun himself, lost no POPULAR PLAYS 87 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 samurais 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 rdgime. Asked to choose her own reward for service so admirably rendered, the pre- ceptress 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 daimyo, 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 38 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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. Shake- speare 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 Ameri- can 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 ven- ture upon to-day in a London club ; Portia, masquer- ading 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 Soshi-Shibai ever dare to present it, I feel sure that the Tokyo counterpart of Mr. Clement Scott would denounce their action in such terms as these : " This disgusting representation of the most loath- some of all Shakespeare's plays was unutterably offen- sive. So foul a concoction ought never to have been POPULAR PLAYS 89 allowed to disgrace the boards of a Japanese theatre. The lewd maunderings of Sir John Falstaff, the licen- tious jesting of Mistress Ford, Mistress Page, and Mis- tress 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 Eliza- bethan 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 comprehen- sion, 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 inter- mediary tableau, which is generally the most beauti- fully mounted of all. During the day every one eats and drinks and smokes. The women take tea, the men sakd, while the babies loudly and numerously imbibe milk. Between the acts, when the handsome POPULAR PLAYS 91 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 com- plexion. 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 refresh- ments, besides taking charge of your watch, purse, and any other article of value. The Tokyo 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 con- ducted to a box and presented by a polite attendant with cushion, programme, tobacco-box, tea, and sweet 92 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 train- ing and discipline of onnagata, or impersonators of female parts. Formerly they were not only given the POPULAR PLAYS 93 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 pro- clivities 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 Mat. Notwithstanding every precaution and privi- lege, 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 Tokyo has no actresses, the Women's Theatre in Kyoto, 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 hope- lessly 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 inflic- tion. 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 94 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 ear- splitting 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-vitse 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 suc- cessors. 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 ord- POPULAR PLAYS 95 nance hoisted on his shoulders, cut down eight assail- ants 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 men- dicants. 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 askz), 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 ddbutant can march by his own merits into wealth and popularity. As he trends 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 " matinee girl" is very 96 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS 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 stage- struck musumd ; 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 in- come of a prime minister or an archbishop. But the author, instead of ruling the kingdom which he creates, is in most cases no more than a theatrical employ 6. In fact, the term "create" can only be used with much qualification, for the genesis of a play is curiously and multifariously planned. First, the manager sends for the author, and indicates the subject and period which he desires to form the bases of a drama ; the author prepares and submits two or three drafts, from which the best is selected ; then the cast is appointed, and the chief actors are consulted about their parts, which of course are modified to suit their suggestions ; then the composer is called in, and, if the musical setting should lead to new alterations in the libretto, the author has no choice but to submit. When plays have to be constructed in this way, you cannot expect them to have any more artistic value than a London pantomime or "musical comedy." Nor has the author the satisfaction of salving the wounds to "artistic conscience" with consolatory gold. On the first run of a piece (the season is never longer than four or five weeks at a time) he may receive ^"20 ; a revival may bring him in £\o more, a provincial tour yet another £\o. On the whole, he will be lucky to make j£$o, while the leading actor makes ^5000. But then the audiences do not pay their money for the opportunity of solving historical problems or appreciat- ing intellectual artistry : their object is simply to feast The Heroine of a Problem-play. POPULAR PLAYS 97 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 pub- lished, 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 Tokyo and liberate Prometheus. GEISHA AND CHERRY-BLOSSOM GEISHA AND CHERRY-BLOSSOM Nothing is more difficult to eradicate than a British misconception of foreign defects. French lubricity, German clumsiness, Russian cruelty, are quite as much articles of faith on this side of the Channel as Albion's perfidy on the other. Similarly, it is useless to con- trovert the popular opinion that the geisha is generally pretty and always improper. Her detractors have seen an English opera bearing her name and traducing her character : it is enough ; they know. Neverthe- less, this opinion is founded on imperfect knowledge, and requires much modification before it can be received as even partially true. Etymologically, a geisha is an accomplished person ; socially, she is an entertainer, who has been trained from the age of seven or eight to dance or sing for the amusement of guests at a dinner-party. Probably her parents have leased her for a certain number of years to a teacher, who undertakes to board and train her, to procure engagements and to chaperon her, to pay a fixed sum to her family as well as a tax to the Government, in return for all of which a sufficient recompense is assured by the fees which a talented artist is able to earn. Less frequently she lives at home and obtains 102 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS engagements through an agent, who receives only a percentage of her gains. The training is continuous and severe. To a foreigner the dancing will appear graceful but monotonous ; it has none of the free, vigorous motion which we associate with the term : on the other hand, for the connoisseur each gesture is significant, each pose symbolic. To appreciate many of the " dances," requiring hours of patient rehearsal, it would be necessary to catch continual allusion to poems, legends, and flowers, with which the treasure-house of Japanese memory is stored. Those who would deny the applicability of the term " music " to " the strummings and squealings of Orientals," would yet admit that both the koto and samisen (the stringed instruments most in vogue) are not to be mastered without constant practice, and the irregular rhythm of the songs, with their abrupt inter- vals and capricious repetitions, cannot be easy to render until the voice has attained extreme flexi- bility. On the mysteries of Japanese music, however, seeing that the best authorities are at variance, only an expert dare pronounce judgment. To return to the question of the social status of the geisha, I should say that it corresponds more exactly with that of a Parisian actress than of an Athenian hetaira. Convention having banished the actress from the Japanese stage, the geisha takes her place as the natural recipient of masculine homage. She is much courted, and sometimes makes a brilliant match. There are a large number who make the profession an ex- cuse for attracting rich admirers, just as the name of " actress" in more Puritan climes will cover a multi- tude of sins. But a professional courtesan she is not : her favours are not always for sale to the highest GEISHA AND CHERRY-BLOSSOM 103 bidder. When her short reign is over at the age of twenty-five, she generally imparts to a younger gene- ration the secrets of professional success. Among these the art of conversation is not the least important. To parry indiscreet advances and to bandy compli- ments enter as much into her role as the playing of " Kitsune ken" or "fox-forfeit," in which no little agility is needed to represent at the right moment the fox, the man, and the gun on facile fingers. Childish of course the geisha is, like most of her younger countrywomen ; sometimes dangerous and fickle, as her popular nickname of " Nekko," the cat, testifies ; but virtuous as well, in many cases, where she has enough independence and strength of character to resist the flattering importunity of fame's innumer- able suitors. If one of these aspire to win her affection, or merely to make her acquaintance, he has many advantages over the callow youths who wait, like lackeys, at the stage-door of a Western theatre. He is spared the preliminary purgatory of appealing letters, of suppli- catory presents, which may easily fail to secure the desired access. He is not forced to share with a crowd of jealous or indifferent strangers the bitter joy of her nightly apotheosis, when her smiles and wiles must be lavished in promiscuous appeal. He has merely to dine at the tea-house with which she, or her employer, has made a mutually advantageous contract : there, on sufficient notice, she will arrive with her duenna, ready to perform, if need be, for his delight alone, while the semi-privacy of the entertainment affords him every opportunity of pressing his suit. As a rule, however, the geisha performs in parties of two, or three, or more, according to the number of guests. io 4 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS Often the convivial character of the occasion tends to lower the standard of art involved ; indeed, such feasts are apt to degenerate into orgies. To realise the aesthetic possibilities of an art which is only at its lowest bacchanalian, we must quit the tea-house, that temple of the senses, and seek the sacred city of Kyoto, where palace and monastery raise, like antique junks, their majestic or quaintly carven heads above white waves of cherry-blossom. . . . It is April. While English weather is struggling in spasmodic furies of wind and rain to escape the clutch of winter, here the enfranchised spring creeps, fairy- like, from plain to height on rosy sandals. First Tokyo, whose hundred miles of unpaved thoroughfare fatigue the foot and offend the eye with naked dreari- ness, is clothed with draperies of fleecy pink. The spacious parks of Ueno and Shiba are thronged with gazing multitudes, who ride or saunter all day long through flower-encumbered avenues. At night the river-reaches of Mukojima are packed with pleasure- boats, whose lanterns gleam like fire-flies beneath the pale mass of overhanging bloom. Yamaguchi San, who by trade is a rice merchant but by nature a poet, has written in the intervals of business, which is not brisk at this time of year, a little sheaf of poems, each consisting of three lines, which run perpendicularly down strips of iridescent rice-paper. So far as their purport can be construed into grosser forms of verse, I take it to be as follows : " Put on your brightest kimono^ O Hani San, and let us go ! " Bring ivory chop-sticks, lacquer-cup, And rice and wine, that we may sup. GEISHA AND CHERRY-BLOSSOM 105 "On honourable trees is set A rosy-petalled coronet. " The shine of day, the sheen of night, Are drowned in cherry-blossom-light. " We have no need of sun or star To revel at Mukojima." But Mukojima is no more to be compared with Yoshino than Rosherville with Stonehenge. The trees which line the broad Sumidagawa are beautiful but modern ; their festal Roughs are familiarised and a little vulgarised by the loud merry-making of cockney crowds; all this shouting and laughing recall a bar- barian's bank-holiday. Far westward, on the ridges of Yoshino, where no modern city disturbs the silence of the imperial tumuli, encircled by a low granite fence and enclosing dusty gold relics of dead kings, grow the Thousand Cherry-Trees of immemorial renown. Motoori sang of them ; Hiroshigi painted them ; Jimmu Tenno, the first of the Mikados, in his mausoleum fifteen miles away, is hardly more venerable than they. Every year pilgrims pass through the bronze gateway of the Zo-o-do Temple and climb the mountain side ta rest beneath the canopy of tender, billowy blossom, which broods like an ever-renascent cloud of beauty above the Yamato plain, endeared by thirteen centuries of history and romance. Many pleasure-seekers mix with the white-robed pilgrims, who belong for the most part to distant villages and look on religion as an excellent excuse for change of interest and change of scene. Heedless of theology and harassed by no conviction of original sin, they return, like happy children from a picnic, with eyes brightened by the sea. of colour and spirits clarified by pure mountain air. 106 JAPANESE PLAYS AND PLAYFELLOWS Soon the green hills are carpeted with flakes of soft flowerage ; the brief splendour of the Thousand Trees is over ; the scattered hamlets and holy mounds resume their ordinary quietude. At Kyoto the cult of the national flower culminates in an annual celebration, the Miyako-odori, a spec- tacular ballet with choric interludes. For many years the same poet, an old resident, has been assigned the task of composing appropriate lyrics, in which the glories of some historic or legendary hero blend with the praises of the blushing sakura. Musicians, painters, dancers, are engaged to elaborate with aux- iliary sound, design, and movement the series of dream- pictures which his fancy has evoked. But words and notes are really subsidiary to the dancing : the tale of the poet is chiefly told by the winding feet and waving arms, the ever-changing pose and mimicry, of the most highly trained geisha in Japan. These number as many as seventy, of whom eighteen combine the functions of choir and orchestra, now chanting, now accompanying on drum and mandoline the statuesque or processional development of the choregraphic theme. The Hanami-Koji, specially set apart for such representations, is not easy to find. Though within the precincts of the theatrical quarter, it stands a little apart from the other houses, such as the