Part 2
Quoting again from my paper: “Before the play begins the chorus comes in, robed in blue or blue-grey, and enters into the colour scheme. The men squat on their heels with their legs folded straight and flat along the boards on the right of the stage, and before them lie their fans, which remain closed through the whole play, but are raised upright while they are singing. The chorus chants at intervals throughout the piece, sometimes informing the audience of the events supposed to be taking place, or to have taken place, sometimes moralising on the fate or feelings of the hero or heroine, sometimes describing their emotions, sometimes even instructing them. While they are doing this their fans are raised upright, with one end touching the ground, and are laid down again directly the words are finished. The Japanese name for the chorus is _ji_, a word meaning also ‘ground’--the ground colour, as it were, on which the figures of the drama are painted.” As is natural, such an arrangement of chorus and stage recalls the Greek plays. The comparisons and contrasts between this and the Greek, which spring immediately to one’s mind, have already been published by Prof. Chamberlain and others, who have given some account of the _Nō_, and to whose works reference should be made (see list on p. 103).
The Music
The music is an important feature of the _Nō_ plays, when they are completely presented. Indeed, the whole play can be more fairly compared with opera than with anything else on our stage, though the “singing” is very different from ours. The songs are given with a curious voice in which suppressed breathing is an item of value. Other parts of the play are chanted in unison, and even the prose “words” are intoned in a unique way which removes them absolutely from the realm of ordinary speaking, and makes them--to a foreigner--practically indistinguishable from the songs. There are, in addition to this vocal music, four instruments, and the players of these are distinct from the chorus and do not enter into its chanting at all, except sometimes with a sudden sharp Ha! or something which I confess I can only describe as being like the howl of a cat, and which did not seem to me to add to the impressiveness of the music, but to detract from it.
The musicians enter the theatre and take their place on the stage, in the places indicated in the diagram, after the chorus is seated and before the actors appear. In a full set of musicians the first is the performer on the _taiko_, who plays a flat drum set in a wooden stand on the floor, ornamented with a gorgeous scarlet silk tassel of such size and brilliance as to lend a vivid beauty to the quiet colour scheme. The next musician is the player of the _ōtsuzumi_, which is a kind of elongated drum held on his knee. The _kotsuzumi_ is an hour-glass-shaped drum, which is held on the shoulder. Both Profs. Chamberlain and Dickins call this a tambourine, but that name gives an entirely wrong impression both of the shape and the sound of this instrument. The last musician plays the _fue_ or flute.
Most Westerners are content to call this music “a discord.” It is therefore pleasant to find Mr. Sansom saying, “At times the flute strikes in with a long-drawn note that has a strange and moving quality of sadness.” Personally, with the exception of the single interjected cries, the music appealed to me as being in complete harmony with the pieces and as adding greatly to their charm and meaning.
The Actors
The actors enter from behind the curtain at the end of the gallery leading to the stage. They move towards the stage one by one, and very slowly, with long intervals between each step, every motion of which has been decreed for centuries. Captain Brinkley says, “It is, indeed, more than doubtful whether any other people ever developed such an expressive vocabulary of motion, such impressive eloquence of gesture. These masked dancers of the _Nō_, deprived of the important assistance of facial expression, and limited to a narrow range of cadence, nevertheless succeeded in investing their performance with a character of noble dignity and profound intensity of sentiment.” The actors pause at each of the pine trees which stand by the gallery to mark a stage in their progress. Only men act, and for the women’s parts they wear the conventional masks with the white, narrow face and the eyebrows painted high up on the middle of the forehead, which is the classical standard of female beauty. Masks are also worn by those representing demons or ghosts, and these masks are much on the same plan as those worn by children on the fifth of November. They are made of carved wood with a slit for the mouth and two holes for the eyes. They are palpably masks put over the face and make no pretence at verisimilitude; indeed, sometimes the girl’s mask may be openly tied on with a fillet ribbon across the forehead. They are clearly illustrated in the plates facing pages 14 and 76, where the white mask-face is put so as to show quite frankly the tanned and corrugated neck of the elderly actor. Wild bushy heads of long hair are also worn by those taking the part of demons, and sometimes by the ghosts, as is seen in the plate facing p. 76, where the little figure represents the ghost in the _Sumidagawa_.
The Costumes
Though in other respects the _Nō_ staging is so simply organised, the costumes of the actors are sumptuous and completely representative of the parts the actors are playing. The various robes are all of mediæval cut and fashion, and are mostly very stiff with opulent brocades or embroideries. Some of the styles are shown in the various illustrations in this book, and it will at once be noticed that they are all elaborate and richly coloured. While the cut of most of the garments is something akin to the simple _kimono_ and _hakama_ (divided skirt worn by the men when fully dressed) of the present day, they are on a more massive scale with great stiff boufflé divided skirts (as the figure in plate 3, p. 14, shows particularly well), and with the kimono sleeves so wide and stiff that the wearer seems almost three times his normal width. The figure on the Frontispiece illustrates such excessively voluminous and elaborate dress. The garments may be worn in overlaid series, showing beneath a rich overdress the edges of many equally fine under-robes, and of course armour and accoutrements are carried by those representing the ancient warriors.
The costumes of the _Nō_ are in truth the treasures of a museum, put to actual use.
Properties
There are few or no “stage properties” of any kind. Just as there is no scenery and the images of the places in which the action lies must be evolved in their own minds by the spectators, guided by the descriptive passages of the play; so also there are no appliances. If the actors, for instance, have to enter a boat and be rowed across a stream, they will perhaps merely step over a bamboo pole. If one of the characters has to ladle up water and offer it to a fainting warrior, the whole action is accomplished with a fan. Sometimes there may be a little in the way of properties--for example, the arbour-like bowers in plate 3, p. 14, which are drawn on to the stage and represent dwellings, and in plate 4, p. 16, where the little temple bell is brought into the action. But even in such cases the actors have to create an illusion round the accessories by their words and motions.
We scarcely need to be reminded that Shakespeare’s plays were originally written for a stage which had but little more in the way of properties, and that even to-day there are not a few persons who feel that Shakespeare’s finest passages do not gain but actually lose by the life-like and elaborate settings of the modern stage.
When one hears the _Nō_ called archaic and primitive because of their absence of scenery and the child-like simplicity and artlessness of the properties one feels it is by a critic who is confusing values. “Words which unaided can hold an audience, a drama which can paint the scene directly on the mind with little intervention of the eye, is surely not rightly described as primitive.”
The Audience
Prof. Aston, in his _History of Japanese Literature_, says (p. 200): “Representations (of the _Nō_) are still given in Tokio, Kioto and other places, by the descendants or successors of the old managers who founded the art ... and are attended by small but select audiences composed almost entirely of ex-Daimios or military nobles and their ex-retainers. To the vulgar the _Nō_ are completely unintelligible.” The contrast between the audiences at the _Nō_ and at the common theatre is very marked, but then it must be remembered that practically no one of culture or refinement attends the common theatre, and practically every one of that class is interested in the _Nō_. Owing to the present social conditions in Japan, however, the audiences at the _Nō_ pieces are not so small or so restricted as this would lead us to believe if we did not remember that ex-daimios and military nobles have entered almost every social grade; many, indeed most, of the common police are Samurai, excessively poor students of the University or school teachers, and even rickshaw-men may be the representatives of the proud old families. When, a little more than forty years ago, the great social upheaval and re-organisation of Japan took place, and the nobles and Samurai lost their privileged positions, though they were given positions of honourable standing so far as possible, many of them entered the ranks of what we would call the “common people”; and so it happens that to-day there are permeating nearly the whole of society, in all its grades, some of the old cultured class. Among policemen, rickshaw-men and gardeners one may come across men of deep classical interests and knowledge, and a poor student living on a few shillings a week may spend his evenings chanting the _Nō_ songs to the moon. Indeed, while I was in Tokio such a one lived near the house in which I dwelt for a few months. I never met him personally, because I did not wish to destroy the wonderful impression of melancholy romance and weird beauty which his chanting gave me. The many evenings that I sat alone on my balcony, looking toward Fuji mountain, behind which the sun had set, and heard in the swiftly passing twilight and under the glittering oriental stars the mournful, tragic chants of the _Nō_ which this young man was practising, have left their life-long impression on me, and perhaps account for the deeper love and understanding of the _Nō_ which have come to me than to the foreigners who hear only a few performances in a theatre. Yet this young man lived in what could scarcely be called more than a hovel, and he is representative of thousands now so living in Japan.
Consequently one must remember that though the audience of a _Nō_ theatre is “select” in the real sense, it is not by any means entirely composed of wealthy folk.
All who can afford to do so come in full ceremonial dress, which is sombre-coloured both for men and women, for custom only allows the brilliant colours to be donned by children and young girls. Most of the audience arrives by nine o’clock in the morning, and remains till three or four in the afternoon. The “boxes” are little matted compartments marked off on the floor, with railings round them but six inches high, and every one sits on his folded-up legs on a cushion on the floor. As will be seen in the diagram (p. 10) the audience sits round three sides of the stage. In the winter they will have a little charcoal fire in the box beside them, and will sit warming their hands over it as they watch the piece.
Concerning the Effect of the _Nō_ on the Audience and on me
In a common theatre the audience talks, eats, and even plays games between the scenes of the play, and gives its best attention during a murder or a very realistic hara-kiri, when the blood trickles in lifelike fashion out of the actor’s mouth as he writhes for half-an-hour in his death agonies with a crimson gash across his middle. I shall never forget a scene of the kind which nearly did for me altogether, but which stirred the whole audience to breathless attention. During a performance of the _Nō_, on the other hand, most of the audience listen absorbedly to the whole piece, many being well able to check or criticise the actor if he should make the slightest slip, as they are personally acquainted with the parts. Others follow the chanting with a book of the text in their hands, and thus secure themselves against losing a word; for the _Nō_ is like our own opera in this, that unless one is well acquainted with the words of the piece they are apt to be lost here and there. Each one of the audience has some knowledge of classical poetry, and according to the degree of this knowledge is the enjoyment of the thousand allusions and part quotations and adaptations that are in the plays. With each recognised reference to some classic poem or story, the richer does the suggestion of the whole become, for a word or a phrase which has but little meaning in itself becomes fragrant and beautiful when it carries with it the perfume of a thousand lovely and suggestive memories. Also working upon the sensitive audience all the time, there is the psychic effect of the beautiful and harmonious colouring and of the potent music. The psychological effect of music is a power which we all vaguely recognise, but few of us begin to understand. Nevertheless, I hold it as certain that for the time being it physically as well as spiritually affects us, and that when we are tuned to the throb and rhythm of fundamentally great and _right_ music, though we are no nearer to an intellectual understanding of the root things of the universe, yet we are actually nearer a spiritual oneness with, and hence a sort of comprehension of them. The music of the _Nō_, founded on a different scale from our own, has a very peculiar effect, yet one in complete harmony with the mental conceptions of the plays.
And to this effect the audience of the _Nō_ is pre-eminently exposed, for all the surrounding conditions are calculated to enhance and aid it: the magnetic effect of the quiet, intellectual audience on itself; the beautiful simplicity and harmony of the colour scheme within the theatre; the dignity and impersonalness of the actors fulfilling their anciently prescribed actions; the allusions and suggestions of the poems, the descriptions of natural beauties and the frequent references to religious and philosophical ideas; when combined with the strange and solemn music of the singers create together within the heart of the observer a something which is well nigh sublime.
Going to the _Nō_ as a stranger and a foreigner, to whom almost all the allusions and suggestions of classical quotation were lost--to whom no thrills could be communicated by the mention of a single word (just think for a moment what feelings the one name _Deirdre of the Sorrows_ creates in you if you know the Irish stories and have seen Synge’s play. Well, just such feelings are created in a Japanese by single words and names, which to us appear prosy or unintelligible), yet even I was caught in the power of the whole creation of the _Nō_. To my earlier words I still adhere: “There is in the whole a ring of fire and splendour, of pain and pathos, which none but a cultured Japanese can fully appreciate, but which we Westerners might hear, though the sounds be muffled, if we would only incline our ears.” Those who find the _Nō_ plays prosy and of mediocre merit, have but partially comprehended them through having been too intent upon the “letter of the law.”
Concerning the dramatic Construction of the _Nō_
True “dramatic” qualities are almost entirely absent from the _Nō_; there is no interplay of the characters, no working up of a story to some moving, dramatic and apparently inevitable conclusion. Nor are the unities of time and place in the least regarded. Even centuries may be supposed to elapse in the course of the story of a play, and an actor may be represented as travelling far while declaiming a short speech. An outline scheme of the plot which would be found to fit the majority of the plays is as follows: The hero or heroine, or the secondary character, sets out upon a journey, generally in search of some person or to fulfil some duty or religious object, and on this journey passes some famous spot. In the course of long and generally wearying wanderings, a recital of which gives an opportunity for the descriptions of natural beauties, this living person meets some god, or the ghost or re-incarnated spirit of some person of note, or perhaps the altered and melancholy wreck of some one of former grand estate. Generally at first this ghost or spirit is not recognised, and the living hero converses with it about the legends or histories attached to the locality. Usually then toward the end the ghost makes itself known as the spirit of the departed hero for which the spot is famous. Often a priest forms one of the characters, and then the ghost may be soothed by his prayers and exhortations. There is generally some moral teaching interwoven with the story, the hero or the ghost exemplifying filial or paternal duty, patriotism, or some such quality; while there is a thread of Buddhistic teaching throughout. In this the main theme is the transitoriness of human life, and at the same time is presented a view of all the pain and misery people may endure when they are not rendered superior to it by a recognition of the higher philosophy that teaches that the whole universe is a dream, from whose toils the freed spirit can escape.
The primitive complement of actors was probably two, but few plays have so small a number. Three or perhaps four actors is the usual, and six, with a few exceptions, is the highest number for a complete cast.
1. The hero or protagonist is called the _shite_.
2. The companion or assistant to the hero is the _tsure_.
3. The balance of the story is preserved by a sort of deuteragonist called the _waki_, who may also have his _tsure_.
4. A child part may be added to enrich or add pathos to the play (as in the _Sumida River_ for example), and he is called the _kokata_.
5. Then there may be the _ahi_, or supplementary actor.
The actors do not perform many evolutions on the stage, and though their movements are in harmony with the story to some extent, they tend to remain more or less in the relative positions that are indicated on the plan of the stage facing p. 10.
Concerning the literary Style of the original texts of the _Nō_
The text of the _Nō_ is composed of a mixture of somewhat stilted and archaic prose, incompletely phrased portions, and poetry in correct metrical form. The strictly compressed and regulated five and seven syllabled lines of the short, standard verses of Japan are here scattered somewhat irregularly. Indeed, the general text of the _Nō_ may perhaps best be described as poetry but half dissolved in prose; or, to use another simile, as an archipelago of little islets of poetry in a sea of prose, each islet surrounded and connected by sandy shores and bars which have been reduced almost to sea level.
All through the pieces there is an immense number of plays upon words, of “pillow” and “pivot” words, of short quotations from and allusions to classical poetry, so that the text simply bristles with opportunities for literary “commentators.” The excessive amount of classical allusion and quotation, while it does not appeal at all to us, is one of the features which principally delights the Japanese literati. For this is considered not only to show the degree of knowledge which the author possessed, but also to add greatly to the richness and suggestiveness of the piece by bringing to the memory other cognate scenes and ideas. The merit of the frequent quotations being that they allow of great compression and terseness of style, so that in a few words an author can bring a series of scenes before the mind of his audience.