RELIGIOUS PLAYS
[RELIGIOUS PLAYS]
The traveller who witnesses a “Nō Dance,” hastily improvised for his amusement at the Maple Club of Tōkyō, or who chances upon a pantomimic duologue in grotesque costume, rendered on a rough platform to divert the crowd before a temple at the matsuri—half fair, half festival—can really form no idea of the exquisite little dramas which for more than five centuries have been performed privately in the houses of Japanese nobles and are still enacted at rare intervals to an invited audience. The common term “Nō Dance” is rather misleading, since it only suggests the rhythmic posturing of the characters—very graceful, it is true, and pregnant with meaning for the initiated—but ignores other factors, such as the words, the story, and the music, which contribute quite as memorably to the total effect. Operetta will not do, since the choric strains, which stimulate attention and intensify emotion with their staccato accompaniment, are subordinate throughout. If, then, that may be styled a play which revolves on a single episode and relates to no more than three or four persons, a very close parallel lies between these and the religious plays of Europe. In both you find the same reverence for the past, dictating the devout demeanour of actors and audience; in both a minute traditional interpretation, governing the diction, the action, and the dress; in both a perpetual association of the scenes depicted with sacred legends and the spirit world. But whereas Christianity yields one and the same drama, once in a decade, to the peasants of Oberammergau, the Shintōist Pantheon, sanctifying national history and full of deified heroes, appeals to both patriotic and religious instincts through the medium of an art sometimes immature but always refined.
The roots of this musical pantomime reach far back into mythological times. The figure of the Terrible Female of Heaven, stamping on an inverted tub to startle the Sun Goddess from her cave, is generally invoked on the threshold of inquiries into the origin of Kagura, or temple-dancing. Grotesque and venerable, it is not illuminating. More startling to me is the statement of a modern authority that “in the eighth century, in the later period of the Nara dynasty and at the beginning of the Heian period, combining the Korean and the Chinese music with the native, a certain perfect form of Japanese music came to exist.” To comprehend this “perfect music,” as rendered on drum, fife, and flute, esoteric education is required. But it may be admitted that certain Wagnerian effects of terror and suspense and tumultuous agitation are thumped and wailed into the auditor, while his ocular attention is absorbed by deliberate phantoms. Very deliberate are the phantom dancers, whether their theme be simple or complex. On the dancing stages at the Shintō temples of Ise and of Omi, on the four platforms of the Kasuga Temple at Nara, the subject was naturally mythological or had relation to the temple’s own history. Such songs as went with the dance were simple, short, and primitive. They would be heard at Court ceremonies, too, for the union of Church and State was close. They were sung by members of privileged families, who guarded and transmitted from father to son the professional secrets of their “perfect music.”
However, the beginning of the Ashikaga period in the fourteenth century saw the corruption and development of a perfect germ into complex variety. Both sacred and secular rivalry contributed to this result. The Biwa-hōshi, blind priests and lute-players, who went from castle to castle of the Daimyōs, singing Heike-monogatari, historical romances of warlike quality in prose and verse, opened new vistas of subject-matter, while Shirabyōshi, the refined and cultivated precursor of the comparatively modern geisha, extended both the scope and the significance of posture-dancing. The Kioku-mai, or memory-dance, came into vogue, being characterised by closer co-ordination of music and movement, while the accompanying song would often celebrate a romantic episode or a famous landscape. Many of these songs survive, embedded in the chorus of Nō texts; in fact, they may be regarded as the nucleus of Nō drama.
The Muromachi Shōgunate witnessed the final transition from dance to drama, recitative and singing speeches and dramatis personæ being superadded to the chorus. Kiyotsugu (who died in 1406) and his son Motokiyo (who died in 1455) are generally credited with this development. They belonged to the Yusaki family—one of the four families who exercised hereditary management of the Nara stage. They held a small estate, and succeeded in winning the Shōgun’s patronage for their Sarugaku or Nō, which became extremely popular at Court. Naturally enough, the choric songs became panegyrics of the reigning Shōgun, and helped to embellish his Court pageants.
It is not believed that the actor-manager did more than prepare and conduct the Nō, in which music and dancing were still the chief features. The author was contented to remain anonymous, and that for good reasons. Intellectual light shone mostly in the monasteries during that dark age of feudal fighting. If the Buddhist monk could make of this aristocratic amusement a vehicle for Buddhist teaching, individual obscurity was a small price to pay for corporate influence. Therefore, while it cannot be stated as a fact that the famous priests Ikkiu and Shiuran wrote the finest Nō poetry, it is certain that yurei or ghosts and Buddhist exorcisers became very common characters on the Nō boards, while the chorus betrayed (as I am told) “many deep conceptions of mystic religion.” What higher compliment has ever been paid to art, dramatic or pictorial, than the struggles of priests and politicians to wield its influence? There is something pathetic in this aspect of the rivalry for Terpsichore’s hand. At first she wore the red trousers of a Shintō priestess and was wooed by the Mikado. Then the Shōgun came, a strong man armed, and with him she danced into the Buddhist camp.
The sixteenth century gave the final touch to this musical drama, which approximated more and more to secular plays without ever entirely losing its official character. The ghosts faded out, the Buddhist influence grew less marked, for it had to traverse the tyranny of Nobunaga, who patronised Christianity and destroyed the monasteries of Hiei-zan. But henceforward, as an aristocratic institution, the Nō was to retain its popularity, though since the sixteenth century none have been written. A programme is still extant on which the two greatest names in Japanese history, those of Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, star the list of performers. The actors were treated as samurai, military retainers, though the performers in popular shibai (theatres) were held in contempt. In the latest specimens knighthood is the invariable theme, set to more various music and illustrated by more violent posturing.