Kabuki

by Zoë Kincaid

I

One overwhelming motive is to be found in the plays of the Doll-theatre and Kabuki—loyalty and self-sacrifice. These were the popular themes that stirred the people to the depths.

It is the conflict of giri (sense of justice, duty, obligation) and ninjo (humanity, sentiment, feeling) which forms the backbone of all the drama produced before the Restoration of the Emperor in 1868. Lord Macaulay has said somewhere that we may safely conclude that the feelings and opinions which pervade the whole dramatic literature of a generation are feelings and opinions of which the men of that generation partook.

This is true in a particular sense of the loyalty tragedies enacted by the marionettes and played by the Kabuki yakusha, for not only did these representations inculcate in the masses a passion for service and self-abnegation, but in them are faithfully mirrored the life of Japan’s feudal age.

If, as Mr. St. John Ervine has said, “the supreme test of a nation’s health is its capacity to produce and to appreciate tragedy”, then these old tragedies, full of the devotion of man for master, the filial duty of children, the faithfulness of wives, and readiness to lay down life for a cause, are revelations of the peculiar virtues and strength of soul that have characterised the humbler people of Japan for the past two hundred years.

Of the many loyalty pieces that come to mind, few are more typical than the long, complicated play concerning the exiled Michizane, the patron saint of Japanese literature, Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami (lit., Sugawara-Family-instruction-hand-writing-mirror). To Takeda Izumo, the Doll-theatre playwright, Kabuki owes a debt of gratitude for this loyalty masterpiece that is the test of the modern actor’s ability. It has even found its way in mutilated form to the London stage as The Pine Tree, and has been performed on the New York stage as Bushido.

Terakoya, or The Village School, is but one of many fine scenes in this long drama dealing with Sugawara Michizane, an historical character who lived a thousand years ago, suffered exile because of a court intrigue, and is venerated to-day as the patron saint of literature. The loyalty of Michizane’s servants, the triplets, called after the plum, cherry, and pine trees, or Umeomaru, Sakuramaru, and Matsuomaru, forms the complicated strands of the drama. Genzo, who has been in the service of the high dignitary and learned writing and letters under him, attempts to hide the heir to the Sugawara family, whom the unrelenting enemy wishes to destroy. Hoping to evade the searching eyes of the villain, Genzo starts a school in a distant village.

There is the familiar opening, the village children busy at their desks writing in their very much-used copy-books, the little son of Michizane, although in disguise, distinguished from the others by his aristocratic bearing. The fat dunce is punished by Genzo’s wife, and stands on his desk with a lighted incense stick in his hand, admonished not to stir until it is burned down.

Matsuomaru’s wife comes to place her son Kotaru in the school, but in reality to give him as a willing sacrifice that he may become a substitute for the princely heir whom the enemy seeks to kill.

Genzo’s entrance by way of the hanamichi focusses all attention upon him. He walks slowly and sadly, with folded arms. For he is faced with a situation which will test his loyalty to the fullest extent. He must save his master’s son. Entering the school the children bow respectfully. He calls two of the boys by name and they answer, raising their heads. But they are country-bred, and cannot be substituted for the prince.