Part 5

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 Gojō Bridge in Kyōto, and thus acquired a loyal and invincible 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 Kamakura, 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 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 _saké_ 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 devastated Japan in the latter half of the twelfth century. Yoshitsune with youthful heat (he is always a boy in the _Nō_ 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 resourcefulness 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 earth-spiders, were routed from their lairs and exterminated 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 _kiōgen_, 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 archæologists and patriots. They are a curious instance of wisely arrested growth. Had they never passed the border-line of archaic dancing, their interpreters would be a dwindling band of Shintō priestesses to gaping peasants. Had they followed in the track of popular drama, they might have been expanded to those loosely-knit and blood-curdling tableaux which delight the shopkeeper. But, being compressed within severe limits and addressed to none but educated audiences, they present in exquisite epitome the literature, the history, the musical and choregraphic art of mediæval Japan. The foreigner derives from them an impression of the beliefs and customs, the manners of speech and dress, the heroism and the dignity, of feudal times. But to a native they convey far more than this. “The _Nō_ poetry,” writes an enthusiast, “is like a great store of the treasures of Eastern culture. It is full of allusions to the classical stories of ‘Manyōshū’ and ‘Kokinshu,’ Chinese poetry and Buddhist scriptures. Its chief characteristic is colour. The words are gorgeous, splendid, and even magnificent, as are the costumes.” But of their literary value, and how far that value is enhanced or impaired by flying puns and prismatic pillow-words, I cannot judge. The Buddhist authorship is very obvious in the case of “Aoi no Uye,” for it will be noticed that, where the _miko_, or Shintō priestess, failed to exorcise the Demon of Jealousy, the priest of Buddha succeeded. But perhaps, in art of this kind, so innocent of construction, so dependent on allusion, it matters very little that the author should efface himself behind the ideals advocated in his work. The _Nō_ are frankly didactic. Piety, reverence, martial virtues are openly inculcated, though never in such a way as to shock artistic sensibilities. Beauty and taste go far to disguise all structural deficiencies.

But let us not apply to these the standard by which we judge mature drama, demanding situation, character, plot, movement. Rather compare them with the miracle-plays and mysteries of the Chester or Coventry collection, which hover between scriptural tableaux and Gothic farce of a peculiarly gross kind. There is no beauty in those rhymed versions of “The Descent into Hell,” “Adam and Eve,” or “The Temptation in the Wilderness.” The authors had such small sense of decency and congruity, that after a serious attempt to handle a solemn vision in “Pilate’s Wife’s Dream,” you are confronted with this stage-direction: (“_Here shall the Devil go to Pilate’s wife and draw the curtain, as she lieth in bed, but she, soon after that he is come in, shall make a rueful noise, running on the scaffold with her skirt and her kirtle in her hand, and she shall come before Pilate like a mad woman._”) Imagine the wildest of _kiōgen_ incidents invading a _Nō_! How shocked a Japanese audience would have been! If the _Nō_ seem occasionally _naïf_ and puerile, the gross _enfantillage_ of European miracle-plays none but readers of them can believe. And, when we reach the tedious “Moralities,” which coincided in this country with the advent of the Protestant Tudors, and were therefore written a century later than the best of the _Nō_, the palm of sacred drama for beauty, interest, and pathos must still be awarded to the disciples of Buddha. Could anything less human or less dramatic be imagined than a cast of personified abstractions, bearing such names as Good Counsel, Knowledge, Abominable Living, and God’s Merciful Promises? We must console ourselves with the reflection that, when once the stage had freed itself from ecclesiastical fetters, the popular drama in England shot far ahead of popular drama in Japan. No student of dramatic art could think for a moment of bracketing Chikamatsu with Shakespeare.

POPULAR PLAYS

POPULAR PLAYS

I

Between the sacred opera of Tōkyō and the comic opera of London the difference is so stupendous, that one shudders to reflect on the unfortunate fact that English playgoers, until quite lately, derived most of their ideas about Japan from “The Mikado” of Mr. W. S. Gilbert and “The Geisha” of Mr. Owen Hall. In 1885 so little was known about Japanese customs and characteristics, that the Bab Balladist ran no risk of insulting the intelligence of his auditors when he introduced his puppets with the words:

“We are gentlemen of Japan, Our attitude’s queer and quaint; You’re wrong, if you think it ain’t.”

There was no one to tell him that his “gentlemen of Japan” were not Japanese at all, but Chinamen without pigtails. The very names--Pish-Tush, Nanki-Poo, Pitti-Sing--were redolent of China, while Pooh-Bah, with his insatiable appetite for bribes, was a typical mandarin. However, the author had picked up a real war-song, tune and all (“Miyasama, miyasama”), and the Three Little Maids from School giggled very prettily in their novel costumes. Subsequent information throws a curious light on the misleading characteristics of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, enabling me to acquit the producers of ignorance, but not of mystification. I learn that the Japanese representative accredited to the Court of St. James’s very naturally objected to the slight implied in attaching the name of his imperial master to a frivolous and ridiculous extravaganza. One would have thought that the most obvious obligations of courtesy dictated a change of title and of rank in the leading character. Instead, pains were taken to make the action and demeanour of the performers so exaggerated that no Japanese would recognise in them his fellow-countrymen, while the British public, not being in the secret, was encouraged to suppose the local colour as correct as was compatible with the exigencies of such a piece.

Eleven years later came “The Geisha.” By this time Mr. Arthur Diosy had founded the Japan Society, and gladly brought special knowledge to the help of the management. The result was a very charming and realistic picture, so far as externals were concerned. The rickshaw-man and dapper policeman, the wistaria and chrysanthemum, the frolicsome tea-house girls, might have been imported from Yokohama. This author, too, had picked up a real native song (“Jon kina, jon kina”), of which the associations were fortunately not explained to the audience. But the plot of “The Geisha” was as farcically untrue to life as that of “The Mikado.” And this time some one was found to say so. An indignant Tōkyō journalist, who happened to see the opera, thus commented on its import:

“The idea of Japan prevalent in foreign countries is thus reflected:

“Happy Japan, Garden of glitter! Flower and fan, Flutter and flitter; Lord of Bamboo, (Juvenile whacker!) Porcelain too, Tea-tray and lacquer!”

“Light-hearted friends of Japan find in these lines the most happy features of the country, and overlook the gross injustice done in the play to the Japanese nation. A Japanese chief of police is made to proclaim publicly that superior authority exists in order to satisfy the personal desires of its holder. Human souls are sold by public auction, and a person may be found guilty, according to law, after trial or before! I would not complain of these imputations, or rather results of ignorance, creeping into a comic piece if it were not patronised by those who think themselves good friends of Japan, and if it were not illustrative of the way in which they look at our country.”

At last, in September 1899, a serious romantic play, purporting to represent Japanese life, was produced under the title of “The Moonlight Blossom.” It was even more faithfully staged than the comic operas. We now saw for the first time a Shintō priest, a blind shampooer, and a temple with wooden _torii_ and stone lanterns. The plot was compounded of Adelphi elements, familiar enough, in spite of their flavouring from Liberty’s. You had the good and bad brothers, the misunderstood heroine, the intriguing widow, forged documents, secret meetings, attempted murder. You had even the “comic relief” and cockney humour of a duel on stilts. But Adelphi incidents would not have mattered so much (the Tōkyō drama is mostly melodrama) if the author had avoided Adelphi psychology. No Japanese woman indulges in the independence or the invective of Naniwa. “What stupid owls men are!” might pass for a maidenly jest in this country; never in that. If Arumo were truly a Nagasaki priest, he would never condescend to solicit the advice and affection of the other sex. The fatal substitution of Occidental for Oriental particulars in “the way of a man with a maid” vitiated Mr. Fernald’s claim to interpret Japanese romance. His men and women lacked the dignity and severity of Eastern etiquette.

In adapting “Madame Butterfly,” a popular American story, for the Anglo-Saxon stage, Mr. David Belasco was on far safer ground. Since M. Pierre Loti set the fashion, many romancers have exploited the pathos of temporary marriage between the faithless Westerner and the trustful Oriental girl, but hitherto, in spite of the obvious opportunities for scenic effect, the theme had not been handled by a serious dramatist. Now, Mr. Belasco relies greatly, as all who saw his version of “Zaza” will remember, on the electrician and the limelight man. To them belongs the credit of the most exquisite and typical episode in “Madame Butterfly.” As poor little O Chō San sat patiently at her window, with her baby asleep beside her and her face turned towards the harbour where lay the newly arrived ship of her fickle lieutenant, for full twenty minutes there was silence behind the footlights, while through the paper panes of the _shōji_ could be seen the transition of dusk to darkness, of darkness to twilight, of dawn to day. All the poetry of the play was in those twenty minutes, and a great deal of its truth. Devotion and dumb endurance are more characteristic, I think, of such a woman than the melodramatic suicide which touched so many of her audience to tears. If a competent musician had co-operated with the stage-manager to give us a play without words in the manner of “L’Enfant Prodigue,” I should have been better pleased, for the strange “broken American” jargon and the silly monotonous song which Miss Evelyn Millard had to say and sing, though legitimate enough, were tiresomely out of harmony with the grace and beauty of her movements, her looks, her costume. An extraordinary lapse of taste was that which permitted the dying heroine to wave the star-spangled banner in her child’s face. But most of all I doubt the verisimilitude of the alleged motive for self-destruction. Sometimes Madame Chrysanthème counts her money and feels rather relieved when her foreign lover sails away; sometimes she regrets him with genuine sorrow, and might conceivably put an end to her life if confronted with the alternative of an odious match. But what she would not do is what Madame Butterfly does--namely, consider that she had suffered a dishonour expiable only by death. The Western sentiment of honour is out of place in such a connection, for she had been party with open eyes to a legal, extra-marital contract, sanctioned by usage and arranged by her relations. The infidelity of her partner might wound her heart; it could not strike her conscience.

After many more or less accurate adumbrations of Japanese life on the boards of London theatres, at last, in the spring of 1900, came “The celebrated Japanese Court Company from Tōkyō,” of which the leading stars, Mr. Otojiro Kawakami and Madame Sada Yacco, were freely described as the Henry Irving and Ellen Terry of the Far East. Most of the critics, expecting too much and understanding too little, went empty away, or if they derived any pleasure from the entertainment, derived it from purely æsthetic and undramatic qualities. For a week the stars shone on empty benches; but then the fashionable and artistic public, which has a habit of ignoring the professional critic, became aware of the fact that a miniature comedy and tragedy of rare delicacy and charm, as _naïf_ as they were beautiful, could be seen, and seen only for a few afternoons, in the prosaic neighbourhood of Notting Hill. Success was assured, and we are promised a return visit in the autumn. But the critics were partly justified in their cold reception of alien art. They had come for drama and been put off with pantomime. “If this be Japanese drama,” they said, “a little of it goes a long way. We have had enough.” Had they been given drama as it is played in Tōkyō, with long, irrelevant scenes and a plot requiring four hours to unravel, how much more discontented they would have been!

It is a pity that the advertising note was pitched too high. Good wine needed less bush. There is no “Japanese Court Company,” but his Majesty the Emperor was once present at a performance by Mr. Kawakami during a garden-party in the grounds of the Marquis Kuroda. Mr. Kawakami is certainly not the “Henry Irving of Japan,” for that title, whatever be its precise meaning, belongs rather to Ichikawa Danjuro, associated for more than half a century with the impersonation of historical and mythical heroes. But he holds a high and honourable position among actors of the _sōshi_ school, as they are called--a school which bears some resemblance to the Théâtre Libre or the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. The _sōshi_ were students, desirous of reforming and modernising the conservative traditions of their stage, and Mr. Kawakami’s contributions to the movement consisted of two plays: a realistic piece, founded on the war with China, which brought him great profit and renown, and an adaptation of “Round the World in Eighty Days.” As an actor he is certainly free from the painful mannerisms of the older generation: his elocution is more even, his action more quiet and sudden, his facial expression less exaggerated. As for Sada Yacco, who braved the public opinion of her countrywomen by being the first of her sex to act in company with masculine comrades, her presence would be an acquisition to any stage. Until three years ago she was a geisha, and thus combines with much physical attraction of voice and face the secret of supremely graceful movement. Her dances were revelations of the witchery of Salome’s art. Her histrionic powers are not less remarkable.

The pieces selected for representation were of course wholly Japanese in subject and sentiment, but, being greatly modified to suit the supposed infirmities of foreign playgoers, they scarcely gave a correct impression of the average Japanese play. To begin with, that the sound of a strange language might not grow wearisome, the dialogue was ruthlessly cut and curtailed; next, as much dancing as possible was introduced, so that the _damari_, or pantomimic scene, which in Tōkyō is more or less of the nature of “comic relief,” sandwiched between exciting incidents, almost became the staple of the play. Finally, the co-incidental music, which strikes so oddly on European ears, was kept within wise limits. But, so far from blaming Mr. Kawakami for these alterations, it is evident that he erred on the right side, and that we should thank him for lopping away several excrescences which disfigure the drama of his native land.

“Zingoro, an Earnest Statue Carver,” narrates the pretty legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, with the addition of a jealous wife. Galatea is a famous geisha, of whom Zingoro carves a statue and falls in love with his own handiwork. The transformation from wood to womanhood is familiar; one has seen it in “Niobe,” in “La Poupée,” in “Pygmalion and Galatea,” but here it is accomplished by a fanciful piece of satire. “Mirror is the spirit of woman,” says the proverb, and the sculptor has merely to slip a _kagami_ into the bosom of his feminine figure, whom vanity at once stirs to life. Zingoro’s delighted astonishment and the doll’s awakening consciousness are vividly portrayed, culminating in a mimetic dance, in which Galatea copies all her maker’s movements. But the climax is reached when the jealous wife enters, and, seeking to reach her rival, is arrested by the simultaneous animation of the God of Thunder, the Carpenter, the Spearman, and the Dwarf, who had up to that moment remained so motionless that most of the audience believed them to be lay-figures. I fancy none but Oriental actors could have achieved this _coup de théâtre_, involving the strain of prolonged muscular tension in attitudes of fantastic violence.

Muscular feats were also prominent, too prominent, in “Kojima Takanori” or “The Loyalist.” This historical drama, which should have occupied three hours, and was compressed into half-an-hour, is founded on a famous instance of feudal loyalty. In the beginning of the thirteenth century Yoshitoki, the chief of the Hôjô family, acquired supreme power under the title of Shikken (minister of the Shōgun or commander-in-chief), and banished three emperors to the little island of Oki. One of these, the Emperor Godaigo, was passing through Inosha on his way to exile, when Takanori, a faithful knight, learned of his arrival, and, having adopted the disguise of a straw rain-coat and hat, taken by force from two peasants, hid himself in the royal garden. There, since even his prodigious valour was unequal to the task of rescuing his sovereign from Yoshitoki’s guards, he resolved at least to furnish consolation by an act of graceful chivalry. Planing the bark of a cherry-tree with his sword, he painted on it with his writing-brush the well-known words of an ancient poem, signifying “While I live, you reign.” The soldiers of the Shikken discovered and attacked him, but suffered an inglorious repulse. Then, as a supreme reward, the bamboo blind of the adjoining villa being lifted for a moment, the Mikado smiled gratefully on his brave adherent, who, touched to the heart, succumbed to happy tears.

This poetic and passionate loyalty, so strangely transported to Notting Hill, was admirably embodied by Mr. Kawakami. Alternately fierce and pensive, agile and immobile, he played the part of Takanori with such force and feeling, that _yamato-damashii_, the fervent temper of Japanese chivalry, lived and moved before us, a visibly realised ideal. I fear, however, that for most of us the serious side of the play was marred by terrific, perpetual fighting. It cannot be doubted that, in days when bows and arrows, swords and spears, were the only weapons, men were capable of extraordinary, acrobatic, hand-to-hand encounters. An American critic, who studied this feature of the acting from the point of view of a professional pugilist, was astounded by the number of throws, lifts, and twists employed, in addition to those tricks peculiar to _jūjutsu_, which other races have yet to learn. But the clash of sparkling swords and the thud of falling bodies were so incessant, that one was apt to lose sight of the ferocious realism, and notice only the comic surprises of this partly historical, partly conventional _mêlée_. To one irreverent lady it suggested the idea of furious grasshoppers battling on the slopes of Fuji.