In the old days the arrangement of the programme was fixed and unchangeable, and although at present changes are made now and then, the sequence of the pieces remains practically the same.
Ichibamme, or the first piece, is a selection of three acts from a jidaimono, or historical drama. Then comes the naka-maku, or middle curtain. This is a short shosagoto, but occasionally a one-act aragoto offering is presented. Sometimes two short pieces are given, and nowadays this is the position assigned to any attempt by a new writer.
Next comes the nibamme, or second piece. This is a sewamono, or play depicting the life of the people. For conclusion there is a gay dance in which the young actors are generally to be seen. This is called the hane-maku, or end curtain.
Although the Kabuki play forms fall into these four categories, actors, playwriters, dancing masters, musicians, and others responsible for the productions never allowed themselves to follow rigidly the special forms that had been evolved. These stage workers were like a painter who dips his brush into the colours on his palette as they are needed. Similarly the Kabuki experts combined the real with the unreal; introduced dance, pantomime, and, music, even feats of acrobats as they saw fit, and worked freely, unconscious of limitation.
II
Chikamatsu Monzaemon was one of the first dramatists to discover the value of human nature as material for his plays, and his contemporaries and successors also sought inspiration in the domestic life about them, producing the type of drama called sewamono, or plays of the people.
That “All the world loves a lover” is as true of Chikamatsu’s Izaemon as of Shakespeare’s Romeo. Originally acted by Sakata Tojuro of Kyoto in the Genroku age, Izaemon is one of the oldest rôles on the Japanese stage, and never loses its freshness. Animated, sentimental, full of the eternal dreams and joys of youth, Izaemon makes his appearance on the hanamichi eager to see his love Yugiri, an inmate of a house called Ogiya in Shimmachi, the gay quarter of Osaka. Here at a tea-house where he is well known he buys a wide straw hat that hides his face, it being the custom at the time for frequenters of the quarters to go about with their faces hidden. Izaemon selects one that has a red cord on the top, so that Yugiri shall know him. Yugiri, the centre of a courtesan train, makes a brilliant show upon the hanamichi, and within her domain Izaemon is seen as a petted, gilded youth, accustomed to the luxury of the day, as became the son of a prosperous business-house in Kyoto, the Fujiya.
Then is seen the abode of Izaemon’s business-like mother, who, left a widow, has carried on the house in a capable manner. She sorrowfully disinherits Izaemon because of his prodigality as Yugiri’s lover.
Izaemon alone, on a snowy day, in a room of his home looking out on the garden, dreams of Yugiri; asking himself what she is doing at that moment, regretting he cannot go to Osaka since his mother has declared he must find a livelihood for himself. Anxious, yet happy in his dreams, his mother appears, and presents him with a poor kimono made of paper, that his father was obliged to wear when working hard to lay the foundation of the family fortune. This is given the youth as a symbol that he must leave the house on account of his extravagance and likewise must build up his own career. Poor and unsuccessful, tired with wandering about, Izaemon returns to see Yugiri as he has heard that she is ill. A deep straw basket-shaped hat covers his face, his kimono is weather-stained and patched, a forlorn figure, as he stands at the door of the Ogiya. Servants of the place take him for a beggar, and attempt to drive him away, but the proprietor recognises his former wealthy patron, and warmly invites him within.
