Japanese Plays

by A. L. Sadler

  Shinto is the national cult, which consists in the stimulation, and also the organization of the reverence for, and interest in the founders of the nation, and particularly in the Imperial House. All the great military leaders and administrators, the sages, loyalists, and thinkers have their shrines or places of remembrance in public just as the family ancestors have theirs in private. Were matters organized on these lines in England there would be more or less standardized shrines to all her heroes from the gods of our Scandinavian ancestors, King Arthur and his companions, King Alfred, Hereward, Robin Hood, and so on to Drake and Raleigh and the other great Elizabethans to Nelson, and the moderns and the Cenotaph. All these are celebrated with us in historical novels, with the exception of such cases as Shakespeare’s few historical plays, or in poems, mostly modern. These are not lacking in Japan either, but it is the drama that has been a more powerful influence in this ancestral cult. But as the Shinto of these days was an ally of Buddhism, since the Buddhist ecclesiastics, with admirable shrewdness and insight, did not oppose the ancient national cult but preferred to go shares with it, it follows that the Noh has almost as strong a flavor of Buddhism as of Shinto, though the number of pieces with the former as its motive is very much less. Thus the introducing character of Deuteragonist is as often as not a Buddhist monk with his characteristic phrase, “Shōkoku Ikken no sō nite sōrō”– “I am a priest traveling round the sights of my country.” It is the Buddhism of the older type, Nara, Shingon, and Tendai, and of the Amida sects, such as would be congenial to the Court and military circles.

  The resemblance of the Noh to the Greek theater has often been made the subject of comment. There is the same chorus, which was the original ballet, from which two or three performers detached themselves to take the principal parts while the rest remained to comment. And the Protagonist, etc., do not really identify themselves with the character, but remain detached from it. There is a similar restriction of the performers to men, and the subject to past history and largely tragedy. There is also the same absence of scenery, use of masks, emphasis of gesture, posture, and clear articulation, the same view of emotion as a thing to be suppressed by properly heroic people, and the same view of the drama as an outlet for repressed feelings. But there is no dependence of the one on the other or any connection at all, it seems. Both must have proceeded independently from the same practical type of mind, well endowed with a sense of form and of the value of history as an education and a State cult.

  It is probably unique that in Japan all the elements from which the dramas have grown are still to be seen. The Kagura or Sacred Dance, the Folk Dance, the Biwauta or Minstrel Ballad, the Noh, the Joruri or Gidayu or Popular Ballad, the Puppet Theater and the Kabuki all flourish owing to the support and protection afforded them by the unchanging condition of the national institutions.

  One noticeable characteristic of the Noh is its strong appeal to local patriotism, a very potent element in the national variety. Almost all the plays are intimately connected with famous scenes, and abound in moving descriptions of their beauties as well as of their historic associations. With their well-known love of nature, Japanese have always been given to traveling around their country on one pretext or another, often religious, and do so still, greatly to the profit of the national railways. A very convenient handbook entitled Yokyoku Meisho Meguri, or A Tour Bound Scenes of the No Drama, enumerates a hundred and seventy of these places arranged under their districts and with full information about railways and vehicle routes and distances. These scenes are scattered all over the country, but seventy-seven of them lie between Kyoto and Tokyo in the Tokaido provinces, while the Sanyo district between Kobe and Shimonoseki by the Inland Sea has fifteen; twenty are in the Kansai region round Nara, Yoshino and Kii province, while the opposite Sanin coast facing Korea has only five. Kyushu has ten and the northern Tohoku district fourteen. Thus it will be seen that most of these places are in parts easily accessible and likely to be well known, while the fact that a very important function of temples was, and is, to be used as rest-houses, making pilgrimage easier and more comfortable. That this national feeling is not confined to Japan, though better organized there than anywhere else, is clear from such a very understanding statement as the following, made in a well-known work on England, where, speaking of Tintagel and the Arthurian legend, Thomas Burke observes: “Here is something older than Canterbury, perhaps older than Stonehenge and with more meaning for us. For these tales, whether true tales of figures with a strange past or the fancies of inspired minstrels and chroniclers, make the real Talmud, Koran, or Bible of England. The average Englishman’s personal religion, whatever he may be taught or choose to believe, is not an imported religion of Eastern mysticism. It is the religion of honor, courage, right acting, and right thinking; and the hastiest observation of the English character shows that the average Englishman is more ashamed of falling short of Kipling’s ‘If ’ than of falling short of the Sermon on the Mount. His working pattern is not the sweet saint, but the gentleman whose origin is found, not in any church, but in the knights of that king whose birthplace this is said to be.” When one reflects on the amount of boredom children might have been saved if the parish church had been like the Shinto Shrine, or even if the miracle play had been retained in it, we may see perhaps some reason for Japan’s reputation as a “paradise for the young.”

  As to their classification, an examination of the one hundred and ninety-seven plays given in the Yokyokushu or Noh Corpus shows that fifty-three are stories from Japanese ancient history and legend; forty more are from the Heike Monogatari which is of the same type except that it relates to the civil wars of the later twelfth century; six are from the Genji Monogatari representing Court life of the tenth century; another forty-seven have definitely Shinto motives, and twenty Buddhist, while Chinese history supplies the background for twenty-one; eight are stories of metamorphoses of plants and animals; two are simply auspicious compositions; one is combined Buddhist-Shinto, and one is a straight-out ghost story. It will be seen from this rough analysis that Japanese historical themes are very much in the ascendant, for practically a hundred and fifty are of this nature, while of the rest quite a few are intimately connected with it.

  And the Noh in its turn gave rise to the Kabuki or theater of the people. Seeing that the Noh-players were salaried and employed by the aristocracy, there was until the seventeenth century little opportunity for ordinary people to see it or any other dramatic performance. Only when there was a Kanjin Noh, which was the name given to one held to raise money for a temple or a shrine, was there room for any but a select few. For this Benefit Noh a special stage was erected surrounded by a high fence with gates–and an entrance fee charged, a thing quite unknown in the ordinary Noh, which was entirely non-commercial. Later on in the Tokugawa era this Benefit was given by order of the Shogun to raise an honorarium for the family that gave it. It was held eight times during this era, six times for the Kwanzei house and twice for the Hosho. It must have been an ideal benefit, for a batch of tickets was allotted to each ward of the city and had to be bought by the ordinary people, while there was no escape for the great nobles from buying boxes. And by command of the Shogun all other entertainments were closed while the Benefit Noh was on.

  It was this stage, with its two-storied loges on each side for the great, and seats on the ground in front for the multitude, that developed into the Kabuki or popular theater about the end of the sixteenth century, roughly about the time the same institution arose in England. The long passage across the Kabuki theater from the back of the house to the stage is evidently the gallery of the Noh adapted to an audience that sits on both sides of it, though even now the best seats in a theater are those that face this passage on the right-hand side. This passage, known as the “Flower-path,” and the revolving stage, are conveniences that allow for more spacious effects than does the more limited arrangement of the European theater, as is indicated by the adoption of these devices in the ver
y modern houses to obtain those intimate relations between actors and audience that the Japanese theater has always possessed.

  The Noh stage has no scenery of any kind and was standardized in that those built by the nobles in their mansions both in town and country had to be constructed by craftsmen of the house of Gora, the Shogunal stage architect, in the same style, lest they coincide with that in the castle at Edo which was slightly different. But there were small “models” placed on it to suggest scenery, sketchy gates and boats and trees and turrets and cottages in outline to indicate the required atmosphere.

  The Kabuki Theater on the other hand went in for realism and melodrama instead of elegant and restrained convention, and its audience was almost confined to the citizens or “mere street people,” since the military gentry did not patronize it, except occasionally incognito. As the Legacy of Tokugawa Ieyasu observes: “There are different kinds of music and drama for samurai and officials and the lower classes. They must be performed by each class within the prescribed limits.” Actually one of these incognito visits of a lady-in-waiting in the Shogun’s castle in the early eighteenth century had a considerable effect on the world of Kabuki, when she went on the quiet to the theater instead of the temple, spending there the money that should have been given to the priests, and even having the effrontery to ask the priests to buy her tickets. And not content with just going, she stayed to make merry and get drunk, and to drop liquor from an upper box into the eye of a samurai who was sitting below, who was naturally affronted and complained to the authorities, with the result that they inflicted exemplary penalties on the lady and her friends the actors, and a set of hampering rules on all the theaters.

  And just as their clientele was not distinguished, so the Kabuki actors had no social standing, though they soon formed families on the lines of the Noh artists and other specialists into which a player must be born or adopted in order to enter theatrical circles. And they remained male too, but since no masks were used in Kabuki there was instituted a woman impersonator type who made it his business to play female parts.

  Though treated differently, the subjects of the Kabuki were just the same as those of the Noh. In fact, the first recorded Kabuki plays are episodes in the life of Yoshitsune, the hero of the Gempei wars of the twelfth century. They are all stories of the great and usually sad deeds of the past. For it seems that the Japanese have always sought the drama as an escape or a diversion, and evidently they do so still, for quite recently a magazine article complained that it was a great shame to see a worthy modern play left unacted, while on the other hand a new output of works taking the audience back to the Kamakura, Toyotomi, or Tokugawa periods (1200-1870) is always sure of recognition and appreciation from manager and public alike. Evidently, this is the complaint of a writer who finds it difficult to compete with the past. The three hundred and eighty-five plays of Mokuami and other older types, for instance, have dominated the stage since he produced them during his not very remote days (1816-93).

  Mokuami was what is called a “sakusha” or a writer attached to a theater to put into suitable form any story that actors might fancy. Hence his considerable output. Three of the Kabuki plays here translated, Raizan, Kakiēmon, and The Village of Drum-makers owe their form to one of the sakusha, Enomoto Torahiko; the last of these writers indeed, for he died only in 1917. The play Kakiēmon is considered his masterpiece, and was written for the veteran actor Kataoka Nizaemon, who takes the principal part in it, as also that of Haiya Shōyu in The Cherry Shower. These four Kabuki plays were chosen as dealing with aesthetic matters and being less tragic than most, and therefore more pleasing to Western taste. This latter play is the work of Takayasu Gekko, a talented writer who is famous for his presentations of the old type of drama in more modern language and shorter form, and without the lengthy interpellations of the chorus, which has been retained in the older Kabuki just as in the Noh. This chorus has remained a persistent feature of the Japanese stage and has maintained itself in an attentuated form even in the cinema-house in the person of the “benshi” or movie orator, who keeps up a stream of comment on the picture or a translation if it be a foreign specimen. And he has found a place, too, in the English talkies to which he adds a translation, no doubt very instructive to students of the language. But these foreign films, of course, play only a minor part, for the Japanese cinema is as much devoted to the past, as is the theater. Devotion to the past, which in Japan is not so very long past, has never apparently excluded living quite effectively in the present. This fact is no longer hidden even from the English industrialist. For it will be noted that the Noh also dealt with the past. The civil wars of the twelfth century and the joys and sorrows of Genji and Ono-no-Komachi, and others in the tenth century and earlier ones were long past to those of Ashikaga days. And the Noh deals with little later than the twelfth century.

  Anyhow, the present day Japanese does not seem to care to sit in the theater and pay a high price for what he can get for next to nothing in the newspaper, or for a few cents in the hall of the public story-teller, who still flourishes and can provide an admirable one-man drama ranging from sentiments of the loftiest patriotism to scenes of rather improper farce, and all in the space of an hour or so. The desire to see something out of the ordinary was advanced by a Japanese critic as a reason for this preference for the tales of bygone days. His countrymen certainly possess it in a superlative degree. They have always realized, and tried to avoid, the monotony of life by studying it as an art and by cultivating the asymmetric and the suggestive. And yet owing to their practical appreciation of economy and dislike of the superfluous, they have for centuries practiced standardization, and these qualities are to be seen very clearly marked in their dramatic forms, in the uniform structure of the pieces, and their variety of detail.

  It must not be forgotten either that during the Tokugawa period any use of historical material of that era was strictly forbidden, so that all plays had to be staged in the days previous to their rule. The famous Chushingura, or Story of the Forty-seven Loyal Retainers (excellently translated by J. Inouye) is an example of such a play, for since the deeds it celebrates took place in 1702, it had to be fitted out with a hero and villain and motive borrowed from Ashikaga days, and though so arranged it has been performed at least yearly on the anniversary ever since. Known as “The Mirror of Bushido,” and foreigners often refer to it as “The Bible of Japan,” its influence has been deep and lasting, and by its standard, thought and action still is, and long will be, justified or condemned. Considering all these things, it is clear that as an educational control over the thoughts of the nation the influence of the various forms of drama has been incalculable.

  Most of the characters in the Kabuki plays are historical, with the exception of those in the Village of Drum-makers. Hon-ami Koetsu, like Kakiēmon, is well enough known to art lovers of Europe and America for the products of his Village of Craftsmen which he established at Takagamine just outside Kyoto on a piece of land given him by Tokugawa Ieyasu. His hereditary business, still carried on by his family, was that of a sword-connoisseur to the Court, but he was master of all the arts. With him and another Konoe Ozan was reckoned as one of the Three Pens or Calligraphists of the time. Haiya Saburobei or Sano Shoeki, as he is usually called, lived a long as well as an elegant life, surviving Yoshino for many years and dying at the age of eighty-one in 1692. He, too, was a poet and author as well as a potter and tea-master, and it is to him that we owe perhaps the most vivid sketch of Koetsu in the memoirs that he wrote called Nigiwaigusa, or Pages from a Busy Life. The tearoom he designed is still to be seen in the precincts of the Kodaiji Temple at Kyoto as is also another built for his wife, and both are fine monuments to their fastidious taste.

  Konishi Raizan belongs to the next generation for he was born in 1635 at Sakai near Osaka, the birthplace of many famous aesthetes including Sen-no-Rikyu. He was a connection of Konishi Yukinaga the “Christian General” who won fame in the Korean campaign under Hi
deyoshi, and lost his head later on for opposing Tokugawa Ieyasu. Raizan’s book of poems, the “Ima-miyagusa,” ranks high among the literary works of that time, and his villa, the Jumando, is still preserved in the village to which he retired, now a suburb of Osaka. Characteristic of him is the verse he made on his deathbed:

  Raizan died because he was born.

  What need of resentment or any other emotion.

  The Kyogen or Comic interlude owing to its nature needs rather little explanation. It is composed of matter that was separated from the original Sarugaku when this was expurgated and edited to make it more dignified to suit the taste of the Ashikaga age. It is given in the intervals between the five pieces of Noh* that normally make up a performance as a relief from the austerity of the latter. The actors are specialists who confine themselves to it, for it is quite outside the province of the Noh performer.