Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

During the intermission which followed this impressive but crudely conceived and childish tragedy, we enjoyed an excellent Japanese luncheon in the tea-house near by.

When the curtain rose for the next performance, it disclosed a row of ten or twelve actors clothed in sombre Japanese dress, all on their knees, who proceeded to deliver short speeches eulogistic of the deceased actor in whose memory this series of plays was being performed. The next play represented Tametomo, one of the twenty-three sons of a famous Minamoto warrior, who with his concubine, three sons, his confidential servant, and some other followers, had been banished to an island off the coast of Japan. The astrologers had prophesied that he and his oldest son would die; but that his second son would become the head of a large and powerful family. Not wishing his future heir to grow up on the barren island, he manages to get a letter to a powerful friend on the mainland, who promises that if the boy is sent to him, he will treat him as his own son and educate him for the important position which he is destined to fill in the world. But the father does not wish to disclose his plan to the rest of the family. He therefore bids the two older boys make a very large and strong kite; and when it is finished and brought with great pride to show to the father, he praises the workmanship of both, but calls the younger of the two into the house and presents him with a flute. The child is much pleased with the gift and at once runs away to show it to his brother, but stumbles and falls at the foot of the steps and breaks the flute. This is considered a very ill omen, and Tametomo pretends to be very angry and threatens to kill his son. The mother, the old servant, and the other children plead for the life of the boy; and at last the father says that he will spare his son, but since he can no longer remain with the rest of the family, he will bind him to the kite and send him to the mainland. A handkerchief is then tied over the boy’s mouth and he is bound to the huge kite and carried by several men to the seashore. Then follows a highly emotional scene, in which the mother and brothers bewail the fate of the boy and rebuke the hard-hearted father. The wind is strong, and all watch the kite eagerly; while the father reveals his true motive for sending away his son, and the youngest of the brothers, a babe of four years old, engages in prayer to the gods for the saving of his brother. The servant announces that the kite has reached the shore; and soon the signal fire is seen to tell that the boy is safe. Tametomo then assures his wife that the lives of the family are in danger from the enemy, whose boats are seen approaching the island. At this the wife bids farewell to her husband and takes the two children away to kill them, with herself, before they fall into the hands of the enemy. Tametomo shoots an arrow at one of the boats, which kills its man; but the others press forward, and just as they are about to disembark on the island the curtain falls.

On this lengthy and diversified programme there follows next a selection of some of the most celebrated of dramatic dances. The first of these was “The Red and White Lion Dance.” Two dancers with lion masks and huge red and white manes trailing behind them on the floor, went through a wild dance to represent the fury of these beasts. The platforms on which they rested were decorated with red and white tree-peonies; for lions and peonies are always associated ideas in the minds of the Japanese. Another graceful dance followed, in which the dancers, instead of wearing large masks, carried small lion heads with trailing hair, over the right hand. The masks of these dancers had small bells, which, as they danced, tinkled and blended their sound with the music of the chorus. Then came a comic dance, in which two priests of rival sects exhibited their skill,—one of them beating a small drum, while his rival emphasised his chant by striking a metal gong.

The seventh number on the programme was very tragic, and drew tears and sobbing from the larger part of the audience, so intensely inspired was it with the “Bushidō,” and so pathetically did it set forth this spirit. Tokishime, a daughter of the Hōjō Shōgun, is betrothed to Miura-no-Suké. The young woman goes to stay with the aged mother of her lover, while he is away in battle. The mother is very ill, and the son, after being wounded, returns home to see his mother once more before she dies. The mother from her room hears her son’s return and denounces his disloyal act in leaving the field of battle even to bid her farewell; she also sternly forbids him to enter her room to speak to her. The young man, much overcome, turns to leave, when his fiancée discovers that his helmet is filled with precious incense, in preparation for death. She implores him to return to his home for the night only, pleading that so short a time can make no difference. When they reach the house, a messenger from her father in Kamakura presents her with a short sword and with her father’s orders to use it in killing her lover’s mother, who is the suspected cause of the son’s treachery. Then ensues one of those struggles which, among all morally developed peoples, and in all eras of the world’s history, furnish the essentials of the highest forms of human tragedy. Such was the moral conflict which Sophocles set forth in so moving form in his immortal tragedy of “Antigone.” The poor girl suffers all the tortures of a fierce contention between loyalty and the duty of obedience to her father and her love for her betrothed husband; who, when he learns of the message, demands in turn that the girl go and kill her own father. The daughter, knowing her father to be a tyrant and the enemy of his country, at last decides in favour of her lover, and resolves to go to Kamakura and commit the awful crime of fratricide. After which she will expiate it by suicide.

The closing performance of the entire day was a spectacle rather than a play. It represented the ancient myth of the Sun-goddess, who became angry and shut herself up in a cave, leaving the whole world in darkness and in sorrow. All the lesser gods and their priests assembled before the closed mouth of the cave and sang enticing songs and danced, in the hope of inducing the enraged goddess to come forth. But all their efforts were in vain. At last, by means of the magic mirror and a most extraordinarily beautiful dance, as the cock crows, the cave is opened by the power of the strong god, Tajikara-o-no-miko-to; and the goddess once more sheds her light upon the world.

At the close of this entire day of rarely instructive entertainment it remained only to pick at a delicious supper of fried eels and rice before retiring,—well spent indeed, but the better informed as to the national spirit which framed the dramatic art of the Old Japan. It is in the hope that the reader’s impressions may in some respect resemble my own that I have described with so much detail this experience at a Japanese theatre of the highest class.

CHAPTER VIII
THE NO, OR JAPANESE MIRACLE-PLAY

The comparison of the Japanese dramatic performance which bears the name of “Nō” to the miracle-plays of Mediæval Europe is by no means appropriate throughout. Both, indeed, dealt in the manner of a childish faith, and with complete freedom, in affairs belonging to the realm of the invisible, the supernatural, the miraculous; and both availed themselves of dramatic devices for impressing religious truths and religious superstitions upon the minds of the audience. Both also undertook to relieve a protracted seriousness, which might easily become oppressive, by introducing into these performances a saving element of the comic. But in some of its prominent external features, the Japanese drama resembled that of ancient Greece more closely than the plays of Mediæval Europe; while its literary merit, and the histrionic skill displayed upon its stage, were on the whole greatly superior to the Occidental product. In the “Nō,” too, the comic element was kept separate from the religious, and thus was never allowed to disturb or degrade the ethical impressions and teachings of the main dramatic performances.

In the just previous chapter the account of the probable origin of this form of dramatic art in Japan has been briefly given: and a few words as to its later developments will serve to make the following description of some of the performances which I have had the good fortune to witness, in the company of the best of interpreters, more interesting and more intelligible. It has already been pointed out that the Nō was at first performed by Shintō priests in the shrines, and so the acting, or “dancing,” and the music are of a religious or ceremonial origin and style. But the texts of the drama called by this name came from the hands of the Buddhist priests, who were the sources of nearly all the literature of the earlier periods.

The popularity which these ceremonial entertainments attained at the court of the Tokugawa Shōguns received a heavy blow at the time of the Restoration. With all their many faults, the Tokugawas were active and influential patrons of art and of the Buddhist religion. After their overthrow, important material and military interests were so absorbing, and the zeal for making all things new was so excessive, that there was no small danger of every distinctive form of native art suffering a quick and final extinction instead of an intelligent and sympathetic development. Besides, the philosophical and religious ideas of Buddhism, as well as of every form of belief in the reality and value of the invisible and spiritual, were at the time in a deplorable condition of neglect or open contempt. About the fifteenth year of the Era of Meiji, however, an attempt was made to revive these religious dramatic performances. And since this movement has been more and more patronised by the nobility, including even some of the Imperial family, and by the intellectual classes, the equipment, the acting, and the intelligent appreciation of the audiences, have so improved, that it is doubtful whether the “Nō,” during its entire historical development, has ever been so well performed as it is at the present time. According to a pamphlet prepared by a native expert, it is the supreme regard given by the suggestion of spiritual ideals to a trained and sympathetic imagination, which furnishes its controlling artistic principles to this form of the Japanese drama.