IV
Kabuki ghosts are more artistic than matters for psychical research. Supernatural visitors are dearly loved by playgoers in Japan, and as material for stage treatment the ghostly is handled with great skill.
Tall autumn grasses waving silvery plumes, a lonely deserted cottage that gives one a creepy sensation, a rising moon casting a melancholy effulgence, the distant booming of a temple bell—and ghostly Japan is well represented.
In such a play, a travelling silk-dealer neglects his wife and wanders far afield, experiencing many adventures. At last his steps turn homeward. His wife appears, but he does not know that she is a visitant from another world, although the audience is in the secret, the delicate suggestions of ghosthood preparing them for the supernatural. She tells him her sad story, he falls asleep, and she disappears in a truly ghost-like fashion, sinking down slowly behind the stone which marks her burial-place. The stage is darkened and with the light there is seen the reality—the dwelling in ruins and decay, tall weeds growing through the broken floor, and a pale moon throwing its white light over the deserted scene.
In a play by Mokuami, Sogoro, a fish-dealer, of a low type but chivalrous, comes to right the wrong done to his sister O-Tsuta, a maid in the residence of a daimyo. She has been tortured and put to death at the instigation of a man-servant in the lord’s service whose overtures she had spurned. Sogoro appears brandishing a sake tub, from which he has imbibed too freely. He is finally calmed by a gift of money for the girl’s funeral expenses, and the news that the plotter against his innocent sister has gone the way of all stage villains.
O-Tsuta, who has been sent to her untimely end under such wrongful circumstance, returns as an apparition. Her body has been thrown into the garden well and issues forth in a puff of smoke, a haggard, grey, emaciated spirit with uncanny movements appearing as a shadow on the shoji, or white paper window.
Kasane is another ghostly heroine popular with Kabuki audiences. She is disfigured and deformed, and has been transformed from a pretty woman into one unpleasant to behold. Kasane has married Kinugawa, her dead sister’s husband, and, all unknowing, she is the victim of ghostly jealousy.
Her husband keeps her blissfully unaware of her facial defects, as he has forbidden her to look in a mirror. She does so, is overcome by horror, fights with Kinugawa and is killed. Her ghost rises out of the river, long, wan, grey, tapering, like a shadow that moves upward through no power of its own, to disappear in a similar strange fashion behind a bridge.
Once more the wraith appears calling Kinugawa to come, and he is just about to sink under the enchantment of the ghostly Kasane, when he thinks of a spell to break the chains of death that seem binding him and is released just as morning dawns. A black drop curtain falls revealing a sunny morning, people passing over the bridge, among them a charming young maiden, the very actor who impersonated the unfortunate Kasane but a moment before.
Of all the ghostly heroines of Kabuki, O-Iwa is certainly the most tragic. She is the creation of Namboku Tsuruya in his play Yotsuya Kaidan, The Ghost of Yotsuya, the latter a thriving quarter of modern Tokyo.
Scene from Yotsuya Kaidan, or The Ghost of Yotsuya, by Namboku Tsuruya. Onoe Baiko is seen as the disfigured O-Iwa, and Onoe Matsusuke the kind old masseur who holds up the mirror that she may learn the truth.
Iyemon, oil-paper umbrella maker, one-time samurai, then ronin in hard luck, has a pretty young wife, O-Iwa, who has just borne him a child. His indifference to her is remarkable. The daughter of a well-to-do neighbour is in love with Iyemon, and her family conspire to put the wife out of the way by sending her a gift of medicine which is a powerful poison that will disfigure her face. The poor creature, weak and ill, unsuspecting the dark design, thankfully drinks the fatal cup. An old masseur takes pity on the unfortunate O-Iwa, and is thoroughly solicitous, a character that saves the play from becoming too sordid.
O-Iwa changed by the poison presents a hideous aspect, and the actor taking this rôle plays directly upon his audience.
The following scene shows Iyemon feasting at the neighbour’s house, where he is asked to put away his wife and marry their daughter. He consents, but his hesitation is the one redeeming quality to his credit. Then he returns home with set purpose to treat O-Iwa so shamefully that she will leave the abode of her own accord.
He refuses to give her money, even takes her clothing and the mosquito net, which he pretends to pawn. O-Iwa, shocked by her altered looks, overcome by her husband’s inhumanity, no longer desires to live, and kills herself with a sword.
Iyemon returns home once more to find her dead body, and at the same time discovers Kohei, the servant, whom Iyemon had gagged and imprisoned in the cupboard in a previous scene. Kohei is a witness to O-Iwa’s misery, and so Iyemon puts him out of the way. The two corpses are no sooner bundled out of sight by Iyemon’s ruffians than the bride arrives in state and there is a scramble to prepare for her. When Iyemon approaches his new wife she is still in her wedding robe. He takes off the white veil that covers her head and discovers the frightful visage of O-Iwa. Making a plunge with his sword he cuts off the head of his bride. In haste he runs to tell her father, when he encounters the ghost of Kohei, and using his weapon again he severs the head of his father-in-law.
The scene which follows, however, quite outdoes anything in the supernatural in which Kabuki is wont to specialise. Iyemon fishing in the river discovers the door to which the bodies of the two victims were tied when they were thrown into the water. O-Iwa raises her head and speaks in sepulchral tones, and the door turning over, Kohei’s ghost repeats its tragic phrase: “Master, medicine, please!” For these were the words Kohei used when interceding on O-Iwa’s behalf. The same actor takes the rôles of both ghosts, and the lightning change from wife to servant is left to the imagination of the spectators, and only the stage mechanics beneath the blue and white cotton waves know how the transformation is effected.
Without doubt Botan Doro, The Peony Lantern, takes first place among the ghost plays of Kabuki. A Chinese tale retold by the professional story-teller, Encho, and dramatised by Mokuami and Fukuchi, the two outstanding playwrights of the Meiji era, it is always performed in midsummer. Ghosts are a cooling influence for theatre-goers surfeited with the sights and sounds of the hot thoroughfares, and shades from another world clad in grey, with wan, indistinct faces, seen vaguely behind weeping willow branches, seem appropriate stage characters in summer weather.
The chief characters in Botan Doro are O-Tsuyu, a beautiful maiden in love with Hagiwara Shinsaburo. There is also the young lady’s maid, and a picturesque evildoer, Tomozo.
O-Tsuya meeting secretly with her lover is suddenly surprised, and they are rudely parted. In despair, she commits suicide with her maid, and the ghostly shapes visit Shinsaburo nightly. A priest gives him a small golden image of the Goddess of Mercy to ward off her nocturnal visits, and puts up a charm to keep O-Tsuya away.
Tomozo, the hero’s faithless servant, steals the image and tells his wife that the ghost of O-Tsuya will appear and pay him a sum of money for hiding it, the influence of which prevents her from entering her lover’s house. He is firmly convinced the ghost will appear, and his look-out for the apparition is so full of surprise and contrast, and the suspense so well sustained, that the audience is thoroughly keyed up in anticipation. Tomozo and his wife talk so much of the ghost that every moment they think she has come, and soon are trembling with fear, the frightened wife taking refuge under the large green mosquito net suspended over her bed.
O-Tsuya and her maid are suddenly seen to float behind the drooping branches of a willow tree, seemingly suspended in air, the maid carrying the ghostly lantern, shaped like a pink peony, that gives out a dim and intermittent glow.
The transaction over between O-Tsuya and Tomozo, the ghosts make their way towards Shinsaburo’s house, but they cannot enter unless the Buddhist charm above the doorway is removed. This Tomozo accomplishes, and immediately as the two weird shapes vanish, a peony lantern is seen to rise mysteriously from mid-stage and without the aid of hands, sail through the air and enter an open space over the door. Shinsaburo is now left to the mercy of the ghosts, who claim him as their own and take him away from the land of the living.
There is a superstition concerning The Peony Lantern to the effect that actors who play the ghosts’ rôles soon pass away. This was brought home when the play was presented at the Imperial Theatre in August 1919. During the performances two of the most promising young actors of Tokyo, taking the rôles of mistress and maid, took ill and died within a week of each other. Nightly they had been seen, pale-faced, the hair worn long and dishevelled, the maid with the ghostly lantern in hand, moving behind the willow tree. Soon they were to become like the shades they impersonated, no longer of the earth, earthy.