Japanese Plays and Playfellows

by Osman Edwards

The story of Shunkwan, however, was quite devoid of spectacular appeal. Exiled in 1177 with other rebellious priests by Kiyomori, the ruthless Taira chief, to Devil’s Island (Kikai-gashima), he is discovered celebrating with his companions an oblation to Kumano Gongen and praying for speedy restitution to his fatherland. Pitiful indeed is the case of these banished suppliants, who wear the blue-and-white hempen skirts of fishermen and whose penury is such that they are obliged to bring the god water instead of saké, sand instead of rice, and hempen fetters instead of white prayer-cord. Kumano Gongen hears and answers their petition. An imperial messenger arrives from Kyōto with a letter from the daughter of Shunkwan, announcing that the Son of Heaven, Lord of the Land of the Rising Sun, has been graciously pleased to recall his erring subjects, pardoning their offences and inviting their prayers for an expected heir to the throne. Beaming with grateful joy, the old man now scans the imperial mandate more closely, only to find that his own name is omitted from the list of those forgiven. Yasugori and Moritsuné will be taken, but he, Shunkwan, must be left. In vain do his fellow-exiles lament and protest; all know that the Son of Heaven’s decree must be obeyed to the letter. Accordingly, the others embark, while their disappointed chief falls, speechless and hopeless, on the shore. A simple, poignant story! So touchingly interpreted, that the primitive and even ludicrous makeshifts of the mounting seemed hardly incongruous! The mooring and unmooring of the boat, for which the crudest parody in outline of rope and wood did duty, and the final embarkation (as represented in the picture) were gravely accomplished in complete immunity from ill-timed laughter; the messenger’s grotesque hakama, elongated trousers, trailing a good yard behind the feet, that the wearer might seem to walk on his knees while about his master’s business, provoked no smile; in fact, any trivial details and defects were swallowed up in the prodigious earnestness of the actors. The part of Shunkwan was played by Mr. Umewaka himself with much pathos, depending entirely on tone, carriage, and gesture, since all facial expression is barred by the strict convention of playing the Nō in masks. While the presentation of spectres and supernatural beings must be facilitated by this custom, since many of the masks are masterpieces of imaginative skill, yet, where the interest is purely human, that illusion at which all drama aims is proportionately diminished.

Now came the children’s turn to laugh at the first of the kiōgen, entitled Kitsune Tsuki, “Possession by foxes.” Most of the comical interludes deal with rustic stupidity or cunning, and all refer in some way to religious belief or practice. If one may judge by the ubiquity of his images, the fox is the most sacred animal in Japan. No shrines are so numerous as those of Inari, the rice-goddess, and before each stand two white foxes, with snarling lips and teeth clenched on a mysterious golden object, which completely baffled the curiosity of M. Loti, though later writers declare it to be no more than a key, symbolising the portal of wealth unlocked by divine favour. But Inari herself is completely eclipsed in popular awe by her attendant foxes. It is they who, if not propitiated, ruin the rice crop; they who have the power, like the werewolf, of assuming human shape and of “possessing” unfortunate beings, whose only chance of delivery lies in exorcism by a priest. In the case of the kiōgen now presented this superstition had been turned to comical use. We learned that Farmer Tanaka had sent two of his men into the fields with rattles to scare away birds, laying on them many injunctions to beware of the dæmonic fox, Kitsune, whose exploits had lately made him the terror of that neighbourhood. The warning is but too effectual. So full are the watchers’ minds of the dread of fox-possession, that, when their master appears with a jug of saké in his hand as a reward and refreshment after labour, they believe him to be Kitsune, the tempter, and thrash him soundly out of his own rice-field!

Some have asserted that love, the romantic and chivalrous love of Western literature, is absent alike from the art and letters of Japan. Nevertheless, what could be more romantic than the title and plot of the play, attributed to the Emperor Gohanazono though signed by Motokiyo—“Koi no Omoni,” “The Burden of Love”? The lover is Yamashina Shoji, an old man of high birth, but miserably poor, to whom out of charity has been entrusted the tending of the Emperor’s chrysanthemums. A court-lady, seen by chance one day as he raised his head from the flowers, inspires a passion which he feels to be beyond hope or cure. He confides his unhappiness to one of the courtiers, who counsels him to carry a burden round and round the garden many times, until, haply, the lady “seeing, may relent.” This he does. At first the burden seems light as air, being buoyantly borne, but gradually it grows heavier and heavier, until at last he staggers to the ground, crushed to death by unavailing love. Soon after his ghost appears, a melancholy spectre with long white hair and gown of silver-grey, with wattled staff and eyes of hollow gold. At this point all chivalry certainly vanishes, for the angry apparition stamps and glares, and, shaking locks and staff, stoutly chides the beauty for her callous cruelty. The lady does not once intervene, but throughout the piece sits motionless, a figure rather than a person, her eyes fixed on the burden itself, as it lies, concrete and symbolic, wrapped in apple-green brocade, near the front-centre of the stage. This inclusion of a significant silent object among the dramatis personæ is curiously effective. The sight of Yamashina tottering beneath a physical weight would have made clumsy prose of a beautiful poetic truth. His feelings are better conveyed by the dirge-like song and lugubrious posturing, which poverty of language compels one to miscall a “dance.” Full of dignity and fine gesture is the ghost’s rebuke. Slowly revolving on his heels, or tossing back his streaming, silvery hair, now dashing his staff upon the ground, now raising his kimono sleeve slowly to hide his face, one felt that this weird figure was expressing elemental passion in a language more elemental than speech. I cannot say as much for the lady, whose coronet of thin gold with silver crescent in front and pendent pagoda-bells on either side, surmounting a mask of singular ugliness, seemed the fantastic headpiece of a crude idol very foolishly idealised. But it served to illustrate, with an irony which the imperial author had not intended, the so grievous “burden of love.”

Kyōto court-life of the twelfth century, painted for posterity in the famous, interminable pages of “Genji Monogatari,” one of the oldest achievements of the lady-novelist, has found less tedious and equally faithful presentment in such dramatic miniatures as “Aoi no Uye,” Prince Genji’s long-suffering wife. Jealousy is the keynote of this lyrical play—that insatiable, self-torturing jealousy which is the hardest of demons to expel. Again I noticed a piece of curious, silent symbolism. The poor, demoniac wife, who gives her name to the play, does not appear, either as person or figure: in her stead a long strip of folded brocade, suggesting a bed of sickness, lies immediately behind the footlights. Thus, though sub-conscious of her entity, the spectator is compelled to focus all attention on the apparition, which takes double form. First comes the spirit of the Princess Rokujo, who takes vengeance on her false lover (Genji is the Don Juan of Japan) by haunting the helpless Aoi in the shape of a pale wailing woman. A miko, or Shintō priestess, is summoned to exorcise the intruder. In vain she rubs her green rosary, muttering fervid prayers: the spirit wails more loudly, more intolerably, and only yields at last to the fiercer spells and rougher wrestling of soul with soul on the part of a mountain-priest. But his victory is short-lived, for a terrible phantom, the Devil of Jealousy, wearing the famous Hanja mask, replaces Rokujo. Inch by inch the priest falls back, as the grinning demon with gilt horns and pointed ears slowly unveiled from a shroudlike hood glides forward to smite him with menacing crutch. To and fro the battle rages beside the prostrate Aoi no Uye; neither holy man nor devil will give way; the screaming and shrill fifing of the musicians rise to frenzied pitch; adjuration succeeds adjuration, until the evil spirit is finally driven away. Nothing can exceed the realism of this scene, so masterfully played that the hardiest agnostic must be indeed fancy-proof if he cannot feel something of the awe inspired into believers by this terrific duel. Moreover, this is exactly the sort of incident which exhibits to the full extent of their potency the peculiar characteristics of Nō drama. What human face, however disguised and distorted, could rival the malignant horror of a Japanese mask? What mincing and gibing Mephistopheles could compare for a moment with the devilish ingenuity and suspense of this posture-pantomime, with its endless feints and threats and sallies and retreats? And how the anguish of battle is enhanced by the “barbaric yawp” and sharp, intermittent drum-taps, which excite without distracting the spell-bound audience! So abrupt and discreet is the interjected cry of the immobile musicians that one might easily take it for the defiant or hortative outburst of an invisible spirit attracted to the ghostly combat. Indeed, all that is wild and primitive in these enfants sauvages of Melpomene is chastened into harmony by the innate sobriety of Japanese art. The creative instinct works within small limits by small means, but with these means it contrives to project on its tiny stage a vital suggestion of the largest issues. The gods become marionettes for an hour, without wholly losing their godhead.

Good-humoured drollery, of which the gods come in for a fair share, is no more alien to the Japanese than it was to the Greek temperament. And if one had to guess which divinity or divinities are regarded with more affection than awe by such light-hearted worshippers, one would certainly name the Rokujizō, or six Jizō. While Buddha and Kwannon, Tenjin and Inari, dwell in small or stately temples, augustly apart, the six Jizō sit sociably in a row by the road-side or on the outskirts of a shrine, protected (if protected at all) from the weather by a plain wooden shed. For they belong to the class of open-air minor deities familiarly known as “wet gods.” Yet they play a large part in the emotional life of the people. Patrons of travellers, women, and children, they bear the semblance of a shaven priest with benevolent countenance, whose neck is generally encircled with a child’s bib of coloured wool, while his hand holds an emblematic jewel, a lotus, a pilgrim’s staff, an incense-box, a rosary, or sometimes an infant. In most villages and near many schools will you find the six Jizō, for the country people, loving their children, cherish the children’s patron-saint with particular attachment. The amusing kiōgen named “Rokujizō” seemed to please the younger members of our audience infinitely more than the romantic and spectral dramas which preceded it. A pious farmer, anxious to attest his gratitude for a good harvest, resolves to put up six Jizō effigies in his fields, and, seeking a sculptor to carry out his design, falls in with a knavish fellow who boasts that he can carve statues more quickly than any one else in the world, and promises that the six shall be finished by the following day. The bargain is concluded. Then the pseudo-sculptor persuades three confederates to personate Jizō, entrusting them with the jewel, the staff, and the other symbols. As soon as they are well posed as living statuary, he brings the farmer to admire them, and, pretending that the other three are at the opposite end of the field, sends the extemporised gods by a short cut to anticipate the buyer’s arrival. He, however, though duly impressed, desires to see the first three again, and then again the second three, until the impersonators, tired with running backwards and forwards, forget what pose and what emblem to assume, entirely destroying all illusion by their ridiculous perplexity. The farmer discovers the trick, and administers a sound drubbing to the fraudulent artist, while the Jizō make their escape. The humour of this naturally depends on the “business” of the performers, since no pretence is made to literary merit in the dialogue, which is couched in colloquial Japanese of the same period as the lyrical dramas themselves—that is, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.

The most important, if not the most interesting, item in the programme was a little historic play in two scenes, entitled “Funa Benkei,” or “Benkei at Sea.” No figure in Japanese annals is so popular as Benkei, the devil youth (Oniwaka), credited with eight feet of stature, unless it be Yoshitsune, the valiant boy, who vanquished the giant in single combat on Gojō Bridge in Kyōto, and thus acquired a loyal and invincible henchman. The numberless adventures in which Benkei by strength or cunning ensures the success of Yoshitsune have been utilised again and again by painters and playwrights. Unfortunately, the fruits of victory are always snatched from Yoshitsune’s grasp by the jealous despotism of his elder brother, Yoritomo, the terrible chief of the Minamoto faction. When the play opens he is discovered with a handful of faithful followers at Omono-no-ura, whither he has fled to escape the machinations of his brother; but further progress is delayed by the arrival of Shizuka, a beautiful geisha, who entreats permission to bid him farewell. Benkei refuses to allow this, and asserts that his master wishes her to return at once to Kamakura, the capital, without an audience. But the girl will not believe that her lover has sent so harsh a message, and insists on dancing once more before him. Shizuka’s dance is very elaborate and beautiful, though a little tedious for the European, who has not been trained to appreciate the symbolic import of woven measure and waving arm. At the outset a tall golden head-dress, in shape like an elongated Phrygian cap, is carefully placed on her head. In this she revolves and slowly, slowly expresses by that choregraphic language—which the profane would take years to acquire—all her passion and despair at losing her lover and lord. Yoshitsune, deeply moved, gives her a saké cup, as a sign that she may carouse with him for the last time; but Benkei, sternly insensible to dalliance, bids her withdraw and gives orders to set sail.

Once more the performers take their places in a primitive piece of framework representing a boat, while the resources of orchestra and helmsman are taxed to their utmost in the endeavour to simulate a storm. The fife screams, the drums thunder, the steersman stamps his foot, and suddenly out of the furious tempest rise grim spectres with black, fleecy hair, gilt horns, and blood-stained halberds. These are the ghosts of the Taira clan, slaughtered by the Minamoto in a great sea-fight at Dan-no-ura, two years before—a battle which might be termed the Bosworth Field of the great civil war which devastated Japan in the latter half of the twelfth century. Yoshitsune with youthful heat (he is always a boy in the Nō dramas) lunges at the phantoms and shouts his war-cry, but Benkei (who adds the functions of a priest to his other accomplishments) strikes down his sword, and, producing a rosary, hurls a volley of exorcising prayers at the discomfited ghosts. As always, the play ends in David’s deliverance from danger by the resourcefulness of Goliath.

“Tsuchigumo,” the Earth-Spider, the last piece performed, is founded on a curious legend, whose chief merit may be that it affords excuse for a fantastic stage-picture. It seems that a band of robbers, who lived in caves and were known by the nickname of earth-spiders, were routed from their lairs and exterminated by Kintaro, servant of Yoremitsu, whose valour was much enhanced in popular estimation by the flattering rumour that the defeated pests were not men at all, but a race of enormous demon-insects. Accordingly, the climax of “Tsuchigumo” is a stirring encounter between Imperial Guards, armed with swords and spears, and masked monsters, who entangle their weapons and baffle their aim in a cloud of long gauzy filaments, resembling the threads of a spider’s web. The piece is pure pantomime, owing even less than usual to music, incident, or poetic style. “The Owl-Priest,” the last of the kiōgen, calls for no description.