Perhaps the chief obstacle to illusion, and the one most easily remedied as regards scenic accessories, is the enormous area of the stage. It is far too large to be enclosed between “wings” and “flies,” while the custom of exit and entry along the flower-walks transgresses our cardinal principle of separating those who act from those who look on. As a rule, the supposed locality of the piece, be it palace or temple or battle-field, is a wood-and-cardboard island in a sea of bare boards, of which the circumference nearly corresponds with that of a revolving section of the stage, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, which turns on lignum-vitæ wheels. While one scene is being enacted, a second is being prepared behind, and at a given signal the eccyclema is whirled round, carrying away one set of actors and bringing on their successors. Do not suppose, however, that realistic effects are outside the range of the Meiji-za or Kabuki-za management. I remember a melodrama, written by a lieutenant in the Japanese navy, in which the hero, though encumbered by a heavy piece of ordnance hoisted on his shoulders, cut down eight assailants in turn in spite of a terrific storm, which drenched the company with real rain and blew down real trees, planted that afternoon!
The actor is a more important personage than the author in most people’s eyes. Until this relation shall be reversed, the Thespian cart is not likely to leave the rut in which it moves. Meanwhile, a glance at their respective positions may fitly conclude this essay. Before Meiji, the present era of enlightenment, the mummer was treated as a rogue and vagabond. He was regarded with contempt as a koyamono, or “occupant of a hut,” and placed on a par with mendicants. In public places he was obliged to wear a mebakari-zukin or hood, which covered head and face all but the eyes, and was only allowed to frequent particular restaurants. Unless he belonged to one of the half-dozen theatrical families who ruled the stage with oligarchic exclusiveness, monopolising the secrets of the profession, the power to admit novices, and the right to play particular parts, his progress was slow. Beginning with the horse’s leg (uma no ashi), a limb of the pantomimic charger, which was indispensable to historic drama, he was obliged to buy or insinuate his way by adoption to more important parts before he could earn either fame or fortune. Nowadays all that is changed. Free competition rules. The public is his only patron. Without training or payment of fees to the Ichikawa, the Onoye, or the Nakamura, a successful débutant can march by his own merits into wealth and popularity. As he treads the flower-walks, fans, purses, embroidered pouches will be showered at his feet; to his dressing-room will come love-letters innumerable, for the Japanese “matinée girl” is very susceptible; in public he will be pointed out, the idol of the masses; his crest will be on the tortoise-shell or ivory pin, which adorns the high coiffure of the stage-struck musumé; finally, should he ever reach the head of his profession, he may hope to make as much as £5000 in four weeks, far surpassing the modest income of a prime minister or an archbishop.
The Heroine of a Problem-play.
But the author, instead of ruling the kingdom which he creates, is in most cases no more than a theatrical employé. In fact, the term “create” can only be used with much qualification, for the genesis of a play is curiously and multifariously planned. First, the manager sends for the author, and indicates the subject and period which he desires to form the bases of a drama; the author prepares and submits two or three drafts, from which the best is selected; then the cast is appointed, and the chief actors are consulted about their parts, which of course are modified to suit their suggestions; then the composer is called in, and, if the musical setting should lead to new alterations in the libretto, the author has no choice but to submit. When plays have to be constructed in this way, you cannot expect them to have any more artistic value than a London pantomime or “musical comedy.” Nor has the author the satisfaction of salving the wounds to “artistic conscience” with consolatory gold. On the first run of a piece (the season is never longer than four or five weeks at a time) he may receive £20; a revival may bring him in £10 more, a provincial tour yet another £10. On the whole, he will be lucky to make £50, while the leading actor makes £5000. But then the audiences do not pay their money for the opportunity of solving historical problems or appreciating intellectual artistry: their object is simply to feast eyes and ears on a sensational pageant, in which to them the actor is king. They do not bestow a thought on the power behind the throne, chained there by ignorance and convention. Plays are sometimes published, but their sale is insignificant. The aristocracy, both of birth and intellect, hold too much aloof from a plebeian amusement, which under higher conditions might become a fruitful and immortal art. When I think of Mr. Fukuchi, fettered by public taste, that stupidest of Jupiters, to the Caucasus of picturesque melodrama, while vulturine actors peck at his brains, I wish that a chorus of Oceanides, winged ideas and ideals from Paris, from London, and Christiania—could cross the seas to Tōkyō and liberate Prometheus.
GEISHA AND CHERRY-BLOSSOM