Throughout the Tokugawa era (1602–1868) every Daimyō who could afford it maintained a troupe of Nō players to reproduce for his edification the thoughts and habits of mediæval art. Old costumes, old masks, old music were faithfully preserved; no innovation of text or interpretation was allowed by the hereditary custodians and directors. And since the shock of the Restoration a reaction has set in, favouring their revival.

At present there are in Tōkyō six troupes of Nō players, with a répertoire of from two to three hundred plays. These retain so firm a hold on cultured conservatives—the younger generation finds them slow—that Mr. Matsumoto Keichi, one of the leading publishers, is now issuing a series of one hundred and eighty-three illustrative colour prints—Nō no ye—whose fine drawing and delicately blent hues are as superior to the flamboyant aniline horror by which the Nihon-bashi print-seller advertises the newest blood-and-thunder melodrama as that itself is inferior to the aristocratically-nurtured Nō. Reproduced as faithfully as may be, the pictures of Mr. Kogyo will, I hope, impress the reader with the archaic simplicity and beauty of the original design, provided that he have the gift of sympathetic intuition, so as to divine what tale of terror, what burden of grief, obscure to him, is yet manifest enough behind quaint mask and rigid gesture to the heirs of national hagiology. The solemnity and pathos of each dramatised incident in the life of hero or saint is emphasised by the time-honoured locutions of mediæval Japanese, which of course convey by mere association, as Elizabethan English to us, the tone and atmosphere of dead centuries. Yet, independently of the musical old speech, so cumbrous and so courteous, it is impossible to miss the meaning of these tiny tragedies, enacted as they are by instinctive masters of gesticular eloquence. The writer was particularly fortunate in gaining admission to a series of Nō produced by the Umewaka company or society, which has this advantage over the other five organisations, diverging on points of textual accuracy and stage ritual, that it traces unbroken descent through its chief from the Kanza school of music appertaining to the Yusaki family of Nara. When Commodore Perry forced open the door of the East in 1854, hitherto closed for more than two hundred years to Western barbarians, Mr. Umewaka captained a little band of Nō players attached to the then all-powerful household of Keiki, the last of the Tokugawa Shōguns.

Then followed bloody civil war, the bombardment of Kago-shima and Shimonoseki, and the restoration of the Emperor to supreme power. The ex-Shōgun immured himself, a private gentleman, in strict seclusion. His company of players was of course disbanded, but little by little, from rare representations in the houses of friends to more frequent revivals, consequent on growing fame, their erudite and enthusiastic chief was able to found his present very flourishing society. One gentleman, an ex-Daimyō, presented the troupe with a large stage of polished pine from his dismantled castle; a second contributed a priceless store of plays in manuscript; Mr. Umewaka himself brought the best gift of all, profound and practical knowledge of the stage technique, which is curiously elaborate in spite of seeming simplicity, and bristles with professional secrets. The orchestra consisted on this occasion of a flute and two taiko, drums shaped like a sand-glass and rapped smartly with the open palm. At irregular intervals, timed no doubt by the exigencies of the text, the musicians emitted a series of staccato cries or wailing notes, which seemed to punctuate the passion of the player and insensibly tightened the tension of the auditor’s nerves. In two rows of three on the right of the stage sat the chorus, six most “reverend signiors” in the stiff costume of Samurai, who intervened now and again with voice and fan, the manipulation of the latter varying with the quality of the strains assigned to the singers. In placid moments the fan would sway gently to and fro, rocked on the waves of quasi-Gregorian chanting, but, when blows fell or apparitions rose, it was planted, menacing and erect, like a danger-signal before the choralist’s cushion. The musicians were seated on low stools at the back of the stage before a long screen of conventional design, in which green pines trailed across a gold ground, harmonising admirably with the sober blues and browns of their kimono.

A glance at the programme gave assurance of prolonged and varied entertainment, since no less than five religious plays and three kiōgen (lit. mad words), or farcical interludes, were announced in the following order:

1. Shunkwan, the High-Priest in Exile.
2. Koi no Omone, the Burden of Love.
3. Aoi no Uye, the Sick Wife.
4. Funa Benkei, Benkei at Sea.
5. Tsuchigumo, the Earth-Spider.

Kiōgen.
1. Kitsune-Tsuki, Possession by Foxes.
2. Roku Jizō, the Six Jizō.
3. Fukuro Yamabusshi, the Owl-Priest.

By an hour before noon the audience, seated on cushions in little pews holding four or six persons, had composed itself to that air of thoughtful anticipation which I had hitherto associated with devotees of Ibsen or Wagner. Many peered through gold spectacles at the copies of the antique text, whose phraseology was not without difficulties even for the scholars and artists present; the women’s faces were far graver and more thoughtful than one usually sees in the land of laughing musumé; the prevailing grey and black worn by women and men suffered sporadic invasions of bright colour wherever you saw children settling, like human butterflies. For these, though their ears availed them little, could follow with wondering eyes the strange succession of gorgeous or terrible figures—warriors and spectres and court-ladies—evoked for their delight.

Shunkwan in exile.