The audience is as interesting a study as the players, each little square box being another stage, whereon the picturesque drama of Japanese life is enacted. Trays of tea and sweetmeats and single teapots are constantly supplied to the spectators by attendants, who tread the narrow partition rails between the boxes like acrobats. Whenever the curtain closes there is a swift scurrying of these Ganymedes to the boxes, while the children climb upon the partition rails and the hana michi, or run about the theatre, even romping upon the stage itself, and peeping under the curtain to see what the carpenters are hammering; all with perfect ease and unconsciousness.
Visiting the star in his dressing-room is a simple commercial transaction. The actors make a fixed charge for receiving such visits, deriving a regular income from this source. Danjiro’s dressing-room is high up among the flies back of the Shintomiza stage, with a window looking down upon it, so that he needs no call-boy. He often shouts down to the stage himself, and has the action of the play delayed or hastened, according to his toilet or his humors. Nothing could be more scornful and indifferent than Danjiro’s treatment of the high-priced visitors to his dressing-room. Fulsome flattery, if offered with the florid and elaborate Japanese forms, will mollify him, and the old fellow—eighth idolized Danjiro in succession—will finally offer tea, present a hair-pin to a lady, or write an autograph on a fan in his most captivating stage daimio manner. When making up for a part, the great actor sits on the mat before a large swinging mirror. Except for a character face little disguise is used, as daylight spoils its effect. Three or four meek valets wait upon this spoiled and whimsical old autocrat, and the whole theatre staff attends. The value of his wardrobe, kept in immense covered bamboo baskets, is very great, and its care a serious matter. Part of it was once stolen, and when the whole Tokio police force succeeded in restoring it Danjiro announced that he could never again wear what the touch of a thief had defiled.
Genoske, fourth of his name and line, and Sodanje, a cousin of Danjiro, equally prove the heredity of Japanese genius, and are favorites of the Tokio public. Young actors pay the great stars for the privilege of joining their companies, and studying their methods. Danjiro is said to receive three thousand dollars from the Shintomiza theatre for the year or season, which lasts from early fall until after the cherry blossoms. His connection with the Shintomiza is like that of a sociétaire with the Comédie Française. Yet he plays in other Tokio theatres, has filled engagements in other cities, and everywhere receives from perquisites, fees, and gifts more than the amount of his salary.
The Japanese artist is fully aware of the aid ingenious advertising may lend to genius. Drawing-room engagements do not yet contribute a part of the income of a great actor; but such a one was once brought to drink tea at a foreign house, and obligingly recited from his great roles, and through the interpreter, talked most interestingly to us of his art and stage business. In a few days the native newspapers, the vernacular press, as the British dailies term it, contained accounts of a great entertainment offered this favorite actor by some foreign residents, and the simple afternoon tea of six people was lost to view in the description of the elaborate banquet and attending crowd.
The Government exercises a certain censorship of the stage, as of the press, suppressing an obnoxious play, and arresting manager and company if necessary. No allusions to present political events are allowed, and the authorities permit the expression of no disturbing ideas. The Tokugawas exercised this censorship towards the play of the “Forty-seven Ronins,” because its main argument and many of its scenes reflected too clearly the corrupt practises of the Shogun’s court. Even its name was changed, and, until the Restoration, it was presented as the Chiushingura (Loyal League), and the scenes strayed far from historic fact. Since the new era, managers advertise their representations as most closely following the actual records, and every fresh contribution from historian or antiquarian is availed of.
CHAPTER XI
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY
European sovereigns and reigning families are parvenus compared to the ruler and the imperial house of Japan, which shows an unbroken line from the accession of Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor in 660 B.C., down to the present son of Heaven, Mutsu Hito, one hundred and twenty-first Emperor of his line.
During the feudal period, the Emperors, virtually prisoners of their vassals, the Shoguns, lived and died within the yellow palace walls of Kioto, knowing nothing of their subjects, and unknown by them. After death, each was deified under a posthumous appellation, and there his history ceased. Too sacred a being to be spoken of by his personal name, at the mention of his title all Japanese make an unconscious reverence even now. When his patronymic was written, it was purposely left incomplete by the omission of one stroke of the writing-brush. In the spoken language, the ruler is the Shujo, the Heika, or the Tenno, while in the written language he is the Tenno, the Kotei, or the Mikado. The Empress is the Kogo in both the spoken and the written language, and the honorific sama follows all of these imperial appellations.
Mutsu Hito, the most significant figure in Japanese history, was born in the Kioto palace, November 3, 1852, and, taught and trained as imperial princes had been before him, succeeded to the throne after the death of his father, February 13, 1867. In the following autumn the Shogun sent in his formal resignation, gave back the supreme power to the rightful ruler, and retired to Osaka. In February, 1868, the Emperor, not yet sixteen years of age, received the foreign envoys in the Kioto palace with uncovered face; then, defeating the rebellious Shogun at Osaka, removed his capital to Yeddo, and chose the name Meiji (enlightenment), to designate the era of his reign.