Japanese Plays and Playfellows

by Osman Edwards

A rosy-petalled coronet.

“The shine of day, the sheen of night,

Are drowned in cherry-blossom-light.

“We have no need of sun or star

To revel at Mukōjima.”

But Mukōjima is no more to be compared with Yoshino than Rosherville with Stonehenge. The trees which line the broad Sumidagawa are beautiful but modern; their festal boughs are familiarised and a little vulgarised by the loud merry-making of cockney crowds; all this shouting and laughing recall a barbarian’s bank-holiday. Far westward, on the ridges of Yoshino, where no modern city disturbs the silence of the imperial tumuli, encircled by a low granite fence and enclosing dusty gold relics of dead kings, grow the Thousand Cherry-Trees of immemorial renown. Motoöri sang of them; Hiroshigi painted them; Jimmu. Tenno, the first of the Mikados, in his mausoleum fifteen miles away, is hardly more venerable than they. Every year pilgrims pass through the bronze gateway of the Zo-o-do Temple and climb the mountain side to rest beneath the canopy of tender, billowy blossom, which broods like an ever-renascent cloud of beauty above the Yamato plain, endeared by thirteen centuries of history and romance. Many pleasure-seekers mix with the white-robed pilgrims, who belong for the most part to distant villages and look on religion as an excellent excuse for change of interest and change of scene. Heedless of theology and harassed by no conviction of original sin, they return, like happy children from a picnic, with eyes brightened by the sea of colour and spirits clarified by pure mountain air. Soon the green hills are carpeted with flakes of soft flowerage; the brief splendour of the Thousand Trees is over; the scattered hamlets and holy mounds resume their ordinary quietude.

At Kyōto the cult of the national flower culminates in an annual celebration, the Miyako-odori, a spectacular ballet with choric interludes. For many years the same poet, an old resident, has been assigned the task of composing appropriate lyrics, in which the glories of some historic or legendary hero blend with the praises of the blushing sakura. Musicians, painters, dancers, are engaged to elaborate with auxiliary sound, design, and movement the series of dream-pictures which his fancy has evoked. But words and notes are really subsidiary to the dancing: the tale of the poet is chiefly told by the winding feet and waving arms, the ever-changing pose and mimicry, of the most highly trained geisha in Japan. These number as many as seventy, of whom eighteen combine the functions of choir and orchestra, now chanting, now accompanying on drum and mandoline the statuesque or processional development of the choregraphic theme. The Hanami-Kōji, specially set apart for such representations, is not easy to find. Though within the precincts of the theatrical quarter, it stands a little apart from the other houses, such as the Gion-za Theatre, and is far less capacious; in fact, it bears about the same proportion to its huge, banner-flaunting brethren as the smaller Queen’s Hall to Drury Lane. The structure, too, is entirely different from theirs. Three sides of the building are reserved for the performers. Instead of the parallel hana-michi, trisecting the audience and sloping from stage to entrance, two dancing platforms skirt the “pit” on left and right and join the extremities of the scene: on them sit the singing-girls, concealed at first by cotton curtains. No room remains for the public but the floor between the platforms and a gallery, which faces the drop-scene of the stage proper. As the performance only lasts an hour, it is repeated four or five times in the afternoon and evening of twenty days, and the price of admission to the best (gallery) seats is fifty sen, about one shilling, for economy and simplicity are conspicuous in this essentially popular entertainment.

The dance is preceded by a ceremonious reception of great interest to the foreign visitor. He is conducted to an ante-room and requested to participate in O Cha-no-yu, an august tea-making. The preparation of this aristocratic refreshment must be conducted in accordance with inviolable rules, invented or rather modified by the great Taikō himself, who, not content with military glory, desired to regulate the boudoir as imperiously as the State, in this resembling Queen Anne, who “would sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea.” The twelve utensils employed must be separately cleansed and waved in air by the demure but smart damsel who presides with becoming dignity and science, every gesture, every operation of her deft hands being prescribed by rigid etiquette. After twenty minutes of silent incantation, as it seems, the dainty sorceress has brewed her potion. Then a careful sub-sorceress, who has attentively waited on the principal witch, prostrates herself at the feet of each of the guests, touches the floor with her forehead, and, as she presents a cup of thick, green bouillon, murmurs, “Oh, gracious stranger, deign to taste this honourable tea!” Long as the tea ceremonies appear to the uninitiated, they are considerably shortened and imperfectly observed by the tea-drinkers, who, it is feared, break a thousand and one rules in uncouth efforts to copy the better educated Japanese.

As seen from the strangers’ gallery (for the majority of humble coolies and small shopkeepers have been waiting in patient line until the august tea has been absorbed by their betters, and now sit, packed in tiny compartments, on the floor of the pit) this liliputian theatre has much in common with the galanty-show which first kindled a passion for the stage in distant childhood. The drop-scenes are scarcely more than nine feet high, and of such thin material that through their pale pattern of willow and pine the shining of candles is discerned. It would not surprise me if they grew gradually whiter and brighter, serving at last as the medium for a droll shadow-pantomime of fantastic silhouettes. But even the children would not have come to see that, since their eyes have often followed at home the ingenious shadow-play of parental hands behind the paper-panelled shōji. Rarer and more exotic must be the show to please this easily amused but quickly sated audience. Suddenly the curtains on either side lift, disclosing to the left nine geisha, holding taiko or tzuzumi, circular drums and drums conical, beaten with batons or smacked with open palm; to the right, nine more, with koto and samisen, plucking the strings with curved finger or ivory plectrum: all are much powdered and painted, but soberly attired in black and gold. The prelude lacks melody, lacks harmony, as we understand them, but the sharp, staccato cries, emphasised by drum-taps, the antiphonal, diminishing shrieks, which seem to punctuate a nasal, wailing recitative, insensibly induce a nervous tension of disquieting suspense. The time is most exact: the drums rattle, the zithers clang, in perfect unison. Then along the narrow platforms in front of the musicians issue simultaneously from beneath the gallery two slender files of geisha, whose pink and blue kimono suggest the hues of cherry-blossom and the else cloudless sky. Like running ribbons, they wind towards the stage, festooning at last into a momentary bow before the famous gate, called O Kuru-ma-yose, of which the curiously carven peonies and phœnixes are admirably reproduced, evoking instant recognition. While the dancers disappear through that pictured portal and the curtain falls on the first figure of the dance, let me briefly indicate the subject and intention of this year’s fantasy.

Its hero is Hideyoshi, often entitled Taikō (the retired regent), next to Iyeyasu perhaps the most notable name in all Japanese history—so proverbially notable that Cromwell and Napoleon are not more vividly impressed on the memory of their countrymen. His dramatic rise from rung to rung of the feudal ladder, from peasant’s hut to a regent’s palace, which none but a noble had occupied before him; the contrast of his mean appearance, which caused him to be dubbed “The Monkey,” with his grandiose achievements, which included the commercial supremacy of Ōsaka and the subjugation of Corea; his dreams of world-empire; the patronage of art, which led him to summon a congress of tea-drinkers and to take an active part in the presentation of Nō plays; the adroit concentration of power in his own person, despite the jealousy of patricians and the victories of contemporary generals; these and many other circumstances of his career loom large in patriotic tradition. He was eclipsed by Iyeyasu in statesmanship, for the latter founded a constitution and established a dynasty, which lasted two hundred years, and might have lasted longer but for foreign intervention; yet Hideyoshi’s is the more picturesque, the more striking personality. Perhaps it would not be straining an historical parallel to allege that the great soldier of Kyōto prepared the way for the great legislator of Yedo as effectively as Julius Cæsar prepared the way for Augustus. Be this so or not, it is plain that the beginning of the seventeenth century after Christ in Japan and the end of the last century before Christ in Italy coincided with similar transitions from militant anarchy to peaceful despotism. The golden age of the Tokugawa may be cited as an argument for imperial rule with the pax Romana of the Cæsars. It might be supposed that the names of Iyeyasu and Hideyoshi have no more virtue as a rallying-cry for their descendants than the watchwords of Roundhead and Cavalier have for us. But such is not the case. Subtly reincarnate in the cities which they glorified in life, their spirits still give battle after death in the bloodless field of civic rivalry. Tōkyō is still Yedo, the Petersburg of the empire, created by a despot’s will and the centre of law, of authority, of administration; but it is to Kyōto, as to Moscow, the holy city, that lovers of art and of religion are inevitably attracted. Hers are still the finer temples, the lovelier fabrics, the nobler legacies of Old Japan. One thing, however, she has not, which the capital has—a fitting monument of her greatest citizen. Whereas the mausoleum of Iyeyasu at Nikkō is such a masterpiece of commemorative gratitude, expressed in the language of plastic and decorative art, that “whoever has not seen Nikkō [so runs the saw] has no right to use the word kekkō (splendid),” the conqueror of Corea, the arbiter of august tea-making, lacks the tribute of a monumental tomb. This stain on the scutcheon of Kyōto is to be speedily wiped out. Now that the Emperor has transferred his court to the eastern capital and made the Tokugawa citadel his own, the western merchants are eager to redress the balance by building on the heights of Maruyama for the glory of Hideyoshi and the bewilderment of tourists such a triumph of memorial architecture that Iyeyasu shall at last he outshone and the connotation of kekkō be fraught with ampler meaning. The plans are drawn, the work begun, patriots and pilgrims have subscribed thousands of yen, the best modern artists in wood and bronze have been charged with the heavy privilege of surpassing their illustrious predecessors. Whether they succeed or not, the Hideyoshi monument was a subject so rich in suggestion, so popular in itself, so complex in its appeal, that the poet of the Miyako-odori could not wish for a better or more burning theme. And that is why the pink-and-blue geisha made their first exit through O Kuruma-yose, which Hidari Jingoro, the immortal left-handed carpenter, adorned with marvellous birds and flowers when commissioned to carve a royal gateway for his master’s, the Taikō’s, palace at Fushimi.