The Noh Plays of Japan (27 page)
"MIIDERA. A mother, crazed by the straying away of her little boy, is advised by a neighbor any way to go to Otsu, for there stands the temple of Mii which she had seen in a dream.
"The priests of Miidera, with the little boy among them, are out in the temple yard viewing the full autumn moon. The attendant tolls the great bell, whose lovely note wavers long over the lake below. The mad mother appears on the scene, and, drawn to the bell, makes to toll it. The head priest forbids her. There follows an argument full of bell lore, and its effect on troubled hearts. She tolls the bell, and mother and son recognize each other.
"One of the cards I sent shows the mother tolling the bell. She comes on first in a red flowered robe, is advised by the neighbor and goes out. The priests come on. The sounding of the bell is the hinge of everything, a thing of great sentiment. As it is, in reality, one of the most touching things in the world, it seemed to me clever that there was no attempt to represent it. On the contrary, the action centred in the toller, a cheery old gossiper used to the job, who more or less spat on his hands and said Heave ho as he swung the imaginary horizontal beam. Only when he had done so, he continued his Heave ho in a kind of long echoing hum. Then he danced. The mad mother came on in another dress, very strange, light mauve gauze over white, no pattern, and the bough in her hand. Why, when the old man had already tolled, for one's imagination, a non-existent bell in the real way with a heavy beam, the mother should actually pull a colored ribbon tied to an elaborate toy, it is hard to say. But it is right.
"I saw this taken by Mansaburo, who, like his brother Rokuro, has a beautiful voice. The singing is so unlike ours, that at first one feels nothing about it. But after three or four performances one notices, and
I recognized the beauty of both these brothers' voices before I knew they were brothers, or, indeed, that they were noted in any way. In fact I was still in the state when I had not yet realized that one might come to discussing the merits of these players hidden in robes and masks as hotly as one discusses the qualities of the favorites on the ordinary theatre.
"I don't know if you know about the curtain. Every subsidiary detail of the performance possesses, I don't know how to say, but a solidity. It's there. God knows how it came there; but there it is, and it's not a contrivance, not an 'idea.' The entry to the stage, as you know, is by a narrow gallery, beside which three little pine-trees rise like mile-stones. This gallery ends with a single heavy curtain, which does not rise as ours do, or draw aside or fall as in the Japanese theatre. It sweeps back, only bellying a little. It is, in fact, as I saw when I was allowed behind, lifted by poles fixed to the bottom corners.
The poles are raised rapidly by two men kneeling a good way behind. Suddenly the curtain blows back as by a wind, and the expected figure, whom you know must be coming or something, i.e. suspense is prepared by what has already happened, is framed in the opening, and there pauses an instant. I am speaking, not of the first entry, but of the second one, when the person who aroused the pilgrim-visitor's curiosity as a temple-sweeper or a water-carrier, and vanished, reappears as wait necessitated by the change of costume and mask is filled in by an interminable sayer of short lines, with the same number of feet, each line detached from the next as if the speaker were going from one afterthought to another. He is a bystanderâperhaps a shepherd in one play and a fisherman in anotherâwho knows something, and dilates on it to fill in time. The musicians lay aside their drums. Everybody just waits. Up sweeps the curtain, and with the re-entry of the revealed personage comes the intenser and quicker second part for which the slow first part was a preparation."
S
OME
of the facts brought to light by the discovery of Seami's
Works
:
(1) It had long been suspected that the current
Kwadensho
was not the work of Seami. The discovery of the real
Kwadensho
has made this certain.
(2) Traditional dates of Kwanami and Seami corrected.
(3) It was supposed that only the music of the plays was written by their nominal authors. The words were vaguely attributed to "Zen Priests." We now know that in most cases Kwanami and played the triple part of author,
*
musical composer, and actor.
(4) It was doubted whether in the fourteenth century Sarugaku had already become a serious dramatic performance. We now know that it then differed little (and in respect of seriousness not at all) from Noh as it exists today.
(5) It was supposed that the Chorus existed from the beginning. We now learn from Seami that it was a novelty in 1430. Its absence must have been the chief feature which distinguished the Sarugaku of the fourteenth century from the Noh of today.
(6) Numerous passages prove that Noh at its zenith was not an exclusively aristocratic art. The audiences were very varied.
(7) Seami gives details about the musical side of the plays as performed in the fourteenth century. These passages, as is confessed even by the great Noh-scholar, Suzuki Ch
Å
k
Å
, could be discussed only by one trained in Noh-music.
Footnotes
*
Kyogen Zenshû,
p. 541. This farce is a parody of such Noh-plays as
Ukai
.
â
The Buddhist "Six Ways,"
Rokud
Å
.
*
See
Ukai,
p. 101.
*
Or, according to Fenollosa, bought a stage belonging to an ex-daimy
Å
.
*
Or rather "arranger," for in many instances he adapted already existing Dengaku or.Kovaka
