IV. THE DRAMA

The “No” plays—Their character—The popular stage—The Japanese Shakespeare—Summary judgment

Last of all, and hardest to understand, is the Japanese drama. Brought up in our English tradition of the theatre, from Henry IV to Mary of Scotland, how shall we ever attune ourselves to tolerate what must seem to us the fustian and pantomime of the No plays of Japan? We must forget Shakespeare and go back to Everyman, and even farther to the religious origins of Greek and modern European drama; then we shall be oriented to watch the development of the ancient Shinto pantomime, the ecclesiastical kagura dance, into that illumination of pantomime by dialogue which constitutes the No (or lyrical) form of Japanese play. About the fourteenth century Buddhist priests added choral songs to their processional pantomimes; then they added individual characters, contrived a plot to give them action as well as speech, and the drama was born.⁴⁰

These plays, like the Greek, were performed in trilogies; and occasionally Kyogen, or farces (“mad words”), were acted in the intervals, to relieve and facilitate the tension of emotion and thought. The first part of the trilogy was devoted to propitiating the gods, and was hardly more than a religious pantomime; the second was performed in full armor, and was designed to frighten all evil spirits away; the third was of a milder mood, and sought to portray some charming aspect of nature, or some delightful phase of Japanese life.⁴¹ The lines were written for the most part in blank verse of twelve syllables. The actors were men of standing, even among the aristocracy; a playbill survives which indicates that Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu all participated as actors in a Noplay about 1580.⁴² Each actor wore a mask, carved out of wood with an artistry that makes such masks a prize for the art collector of today. Scenery was meagre; the passionate imagination of the audience could be relied upon to create the background of the action. The stories were of the simplest, and did not matter much: one of the most popular told of the impoverished Samurai who, to warm a wandering monk, cut down his most cherished plants to make a fire; whereupon the monk turned out to be the Regent, and gave the knight a goodly reward. But as we in the West may go again and again to hear an opera whose story is old and perhaps ridiculous, so the Japanese, even today, weep over this oft-told tale⁴³ because the excellence of the acting renews on each occasion the power and significance of the play. To the hasty and businesslike visitor such performances as he may find of these dramatized lyrics are rather amusing than impressive; nevertheless a Japanese poet says of them: “Oh, what a tragedy and beauty in the No stage! I always think that it would certainly be a great thing if the No drama could be properly introduced into the West. The result would be no small protest against the Western stage. It would mean a revelation.”⁴⁴ Japan itself, however, has not composed such plays since the seventeenth century, though it acts them devotedly today.

The history of the drama, in most countries, is a gradual change from the predominance of the chorus to the supremacy of some individual rôle—at which point, in most such sequences, development ends. As the histrionic art advanced in tradition and excellence in Japan it created popular personalities who subordinated the play to themselves. Finally pantomime and religion sank to a subordinate rôle, and the drama became a war of individuals, full of violence and romance. So was born the kabuki shibai, or popular theatre, of Japan. The first such theatre was established about the year 1600 by a nun who, tired of convent walls, set up a stage at Osaka, and practised dancing for a livelihood.⁴⁵ As in England and France, the presence of women on the stage seemed revolting and was forbidden; and since the upper classes (except in safe disguise) shunned these performances, the actors became almost a pariah caste, with no social incentive to keep their profession from immorality and corruption. Men perforce took the parts of women, and carried their imitation to such a point as to deceive not only their audiences but themselves; many of these actors of female rôles remained women off the stage.⁴⁶ Perhaps because lighting was poor, the actors painted their faces with vivid colors, and wore robes of gorgeous designs to indicate and dignify their rôles. Back of the stage and about it, usually, were choral and individual reciters, who sometimes carried on the vocal parts while the actors confined themselves to pantomime. The audience sat on the matted floor, or in tiers of boxes at either side.⁴⁷

The most famous name in the popular drama of Japan is Chikamatsu Monzayemon (1653-1724). His countrymen compare him with Shakespeare; English critics, resenting the comparison, accuse Chikamatsu of violence, extravagance, bombast, and improbable plots, while granting him “a certain barbaric vigor and luxuriance”;⁴⁸ apparently the similarity is complete. Such foreign plays seem mere melodrama to us, because either the meaning or the nuances of the language are concealed from us; but this would probably be the effect of a Shakespearean play upon one unable to appreciate its language or follow its thought. Chikamatsu seems to have made undue use of lovers’ suicides to cap his climaxes, in the style of Romeo and Juliet; but perhaps with this excuse, that suicide was almost as popular in Japanese life as on the stage.

A foreign historian, in these matters, can only report, but cannot judge. Japanese acting, to a transient observer, seems less complex and mature, but more vigorous and exalting than the European; Japanese plays seem more plebeianly melodramatic, but less emasculated with superficial intellectualism, than the plays of France, England and America today. So, reversely, Japanese poetry seems slight and bloodless, and too aristocratically refined, to us whose appetite has taken in lyrics of almost epic length (likeMaud), and epics of such dulness that doubtless Homer himself would nod if he were compelled to read the accumulated Iliad. The Japanese novel seems sensational and sentimental; and yet two of the supreme masterpieces of English fiction—Tom Jones andPickwick Papers—have apparently their equal counterparts in the Genji Monogatari and theHizakurige, and perhaps Lady Murasaki excels in subtlety, grace and understanding even the great Fielding himself. All things are dull that are remote and obscure; and things Japanese will remain obscure to us until we can completely forget our Western heritage and completely absorb Japan’s.