MATSUDA, THE MASTER OF CHA NO YU
It is in the precise management of each implement, in each position of the fingers, in the deliberation and certainty of each movement, that the art of cha no yu lies, and its practice must be kept up throughout the lifetime of a devotee. Even with all the foreign fashions, the old ceremonial rites are as much in vogue with the upper classes as ever, and the youth of both sexes are carefully trained in their forms.
Much less pretentious and formal are the eel dinners with which Japanese hosts sometimes delight their foreign friends, as well as those of their own nationality. Even Sir Edwin Arnold has celebrated the delights of eels and rice at the Golden Koi, and there are other houses where the delicious dish may be enjoyed. When one enters such a tea-house, he is led to a tank of squirming fresh-water eels, and in all seriousness bidden to point out the object of his preference. Uncertain as the lottery seems, the cook, who stands by with a long knife in hand, quickly understands the choice made, and seizing the wriggling victim, carries it off to some sacrificial block in the kitchen. An eel dinner begins with eel-soup, and black eels and white eels succeed one another in as many relays as one may demand. The fish are cut in short sections, split and flattened, and broiled over charcoal fires. Black eels, so called, are a rich dark brown in reality, and the color is given them by dipping them in soy before broiling; and white eels are the bits broiled without sauces. Laid across bowls of snowy rice, the eels make as pretty a dish as can be served one, and many foreigners besides the appreciative English poet have paid tribute to their excellence. An eel dinner in a river-bank tea-house, with a juggler or a few maiko to enliven the waits between the courses, is most delightful of Tokio feasts.
CHAPTER X
THE JAPANESE THEATRE
“Saturated with the refinements of an old civilization,” as Dr. Dresser says, and possessing all other arts in perfection, it is not surprising that the Japanese drama should be so well worthy of its people. The theatre has reached its present development slowly and with difficulty. Caste distinctions hindered its rise, actors ranking next the eta, or outcast class in feudal days, and the play-houses of such degraded beings lying under ban. Only the middle and lower classes patronized them, nobles never attending any public exhibitions, and all women being excluded.
In the golden age of the Tokugawas the drama began to win recognition; theatres were built by the Shogun; the marionette shows, the first departure from the No Kagura, gave way to living actors and realism succeeded. In the great social upheaval and rearrangement of classes following the Restoration, actors rose a little in social esteem and gained some rights of citizenship. But another quarter of a century will hardly rank the dramatic with the other arts and honor its interpreters. Noblemen now attend the theatre, but actors never receive an invitation to their clubs. A few years since, Tokio founded an association for the improvement of the theatre, and the development of the histrionic art of the country in its own distinctive way. Viscount Hijikata and Viscount Kawawa were elected president and vice-president of this Engei Kyokai, but little is known of its actual work.
Instead of farce or recitative prologue preceding the play, come one or two acts of classic pantomime or character dance, or an interlude of this kind in the middle of the drama. These classic pantomimes resemble the No Kagura simplified.
This No dance, or lyric drama, is the dramatic form current before the seventeenth century. Bordering on the religious, it suggests the Greek drama, and the passion and miracle plays of mediæval Europe. Originally, the No was the pantomime festival dance of the Shinto temples, fabled to have been first performed by Suzume before the cave of the Sun Goddess. The sacred dance is still a temple ceremonial, and the dances of the Shinto priestesses at Nikko and Nara are famous. In time the No became the entertainment of honor in the yashikis of the great, and princes and nobles took part in the solemn measures when greater princes were their guests. To the slow and stately movements of the dancers, and their play with fan and bells, dialogue was added, and an exaggeration of detail and etiquette.
The No is wholly artificial, the movements of the actors being as stiff, stilted, and measured as the classic idiom in which the dialogue is spoken, and the ancient and obsolete ideographs which set forth the synopsis of the action. Confined to the yashikis and monasteries, the No was the entertainment of the upper classes, who alone could understand its involved and lofty diction and intricate symbolism. While the bare arguments of plays and dances are as familiar as fairy tales or folk-lore, only scholars of great attainments can read their actual lines, and the full translation of a No programme for the Duke of Edinburgh, on his visit to Japan, busied the interpreters of the British Legation for days, with the aid of all the old native poets and scholars in Tokio.
The No is a trilogy, occupying four or five hours of three successive days. The first set of scenes is to propitiate the gods; the second to terrify evil spirits and punish the wicked; and the third to glorify the good, beautiful, and pleasant. The dramatis personæ are gods, goddesses, demons, priests, warriors, and heroes of early legend and history, and much of the action is allegorical. By a long gallery at the left the actors approach the elevated pavilion or platform of the stage, which is without curtain or scenery, and almost without properties. The audience sits upon the matted area surrounding the three sides of the stage. Flute, drum, and pipes play continuously, and a row of men in old ceremonial dress sit statuesque at one side of the stage, chanting and wailing the explanatory chorus throughout the performance. In the great scenes the actors wear masks of thin lacquered or gilded wood, and valuable collections of such ancient dance masks are preserved in temples and yashikis. The costuming is superb, the old brocade and cloth-of-gold garments showing the court costumes of centuries ago, and the great families and monasteries hold their ancient No costumes as chiefest treasures.