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III

We have now come to the point where we
can deal with this mass of playwriting as
literature. The plays are written in a mixture
of prose and verse. The finest parts are in
verse; ordinary conversation lapses into prose;
the choruses are always in verse.

It appears that the first period of Japanese
civilization supplied the chance elements for
the Noh, that is, the dances and certain attitudes
of mind. The second period supplied the
beginnings of literary texts. The third period,
dating from the end of the twelfth century, is
marked by the rise of the military classes and
supplied naturally a new range of dramatic
motives. The land was filled with tales of
wild achievement and knight-errantry and
with a passionate love for individuality, however

humble. The old court customs and
dances of the supplanted nobles were kept
up solely in the peaceful enclosures of the
Shinto temples. New forms of entertainment
arose. Buddhism threw away scholarship and
mystery, and aimed only at personal salvation.
As in contemporary Europe, itinerant monks
scoured the country, carrying inspiration from
house to house. Thus arose a semi-epic literature,
in which the deeds of martial heroes were
gathered into several great cycles of legend,
like the Carolingian and the Arthurian cycles
in Europe. Such were the Heike epic, the
Soga cycle, and a dozen others. Episodes
from these were sung by individual minstrels
to the accompaniment of a lute. One of the
most important effects of this new epic balladry
was to widen greatly the scope of motives
acceptable for plays.

As for comedy, another movement was
growing up in the country, from farmers'
festivals, the spring sowing of the rice, and the
autumn reaping. These were at first mere
buffooneries or gymnastic contests arranged
by the villagers for their amusement. They
were called Dengaku, a rice-field music. Later,
professional troupes of Dengaku jugglers and
acrobats were kept by the daimios in their

palaces, and eventually by the authorities of
the Buddhist and Shinto temples, in order to
attract crowds to their periodic festivals. Such
professional troupes began to add rude country
farces to their stock of entertainments, at first
bits of coarse impromptu repartee, consisting
of tricks by rustics upon each other, which
were probably not out of harmony with some
of the more grotesque and comic Shinto
dances. About the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries these two elements of comedy—the
rustic and the sacred—combined at the Shinto
temples, and actors were trained as a permanent
troupe. Such farces are called Kiogen. In
the later part of the fourteenth century, towards
the end, that is, of the third period, Dengaku
troupes of Shinto dancers advanced to the
incorporating of more tragic subjects, selected
from the episodes of the balladry. The god
dancer now became, sometimes, a human
being, the hero of a dramatic crisis—sometimes
even a woman, interchanging dialogue with
the chorus, as the two ancient Shinto choruses
had sung dialogue in the Kagura.

It was not till the fourth period of Japanese
culture, that is to say, early in the fifteenth
century, when a new Buddhist civilization,
based upon contemplative and poetic insight

into nature had arisen, that the inchoate
Japanese drama, fostered in the Shinto temples,
could take on a moral purpose and a psychologic
breadth that should expand it into a vital
drama of character. The Shinto god dance,
the lyric form of court poetry, the country
farces, and a full range of epic incident, in
short, all that was best in the earlier Japanese
tradition, was gathered into this new form,
arranged and purified.

The change came about in this way. The
Zen parish priests summoned up to Kioto the
Dengaku troupe from Nara, and made it play
before the Shogun. The head actor of this
Nara troupe, Kwan, took the new solo parts,
and greatly enlarged the scope of the music
of the other acting. During the lifetime of
his son and grandson, Zei and On, hundreds
of new plays were created. It is a question
to what extent these three men, Kwan, Zei,
and On, were the originators of the texts of
these new dramas, and how far the Zen priests
are responsible. The lives of the former are
even more obscure than is Shakespeare's. No
full account exists of their work. We have
only stray passages from contemporary notebooks
relating to the great excitement caused
by their irregular performances. A great temporary

circus was erected on the dry bed of the
Kamo river, with its storeys divided into
boxes for each noble family, from the Emperor
and the Shogun downwards. Great priests
managed the show, and used the funds collected
for building temples. The stage was a raised
open circle in the centre, reached by a long
bridge from a dressing-room outside the circus.

We can now see why, even in the full lyric
drama, the god dance remains the central
feature. All the slow and beautiful postures
of the early dramatic portion invariably lead
up to the climax of the hero's dance (just as
the Greek had planned for the choric dances).
This often comes only at the end of the second
act, but sometimes also in the first. Most plays
have two acts. During the closing dance the
chorus sings its finest passages, though it will
have been already engaged many times in
dialogue with the soloist. Its function is poetical
comment, and it carries the mind beyond
what the action exhibits to the core of the
spiritual meaning. The music is simple melody,
hardly more than a chant, accompanied by
drums and flutes. There is thus a delicate
adjustment of half a dozen conventions appealing
to eye, ear, or mind, which produces an
intensity of feeling such as belongs to no merely

realistic drama. The audience sits spellbound
before the tragedy, bathed in tears; but the
effect is never one of realistic horror, rather
of a purified and elevated passion, which sees
divine purpose under all violence.

The beauty and power of Noh lie in the
concentration. All elements—costume, motion,
verse, and music—unite to produce a single
clarified impression. Each drama embodies
some primary human relation or emotion;
and the poetic sweetness or poignancy of this
is carried to its highest degree by carefully
excluding all such obtrusive elements as a
mimetic realism or vulgar sensation might
demand. The emotion is always fixed upon
idea, not upon personality. The solo parts
express great types of human character, derived
from Japanese history. Now it is brotherly
love, now love to a parent, now loyalty to a
master, love of husband and wife, of mother
for a dead child, or of jealousy or anger, of
self-mastery in battle, of the battle passion
itself, of the clinging of a ghost to the scene of
its sin, of the infinite compassion of a Buddha,
of the sorrow of unrequited love. Some one
of these intense emotions is chosen for a piece,
and, in it, elevated to the plane of universality
by the intensity and purity of treatment. Thus

the drama became a storehouse of history, and
a great moral force for the whole social order
of the Samurai.

After all, the most striking thing about
these plays is their marvellously complete
grasp of spiritual being. They deal more with
heroes, or even we might say ghosts, than with
men clothed in the flesh. Their creators were
great psychologists. In no other drama does
the supernatural play so great, so intimate a
part. The types of ghosts are shown to us;
we see great characters operating under the
conditions of the spirit-life; we observe what
forces have changed them. Bodhisattwa, devas,
elementals, animal spirits, hungry spirits or
pseta, cunning or malicious or angry devils,
dragon kings from the water world, spirits of
the moonlight, the souls of flowers and trees,
essences that live in wine and fire, the semiembodiments
of a thought—all these come
and move before us in the dramatic types.

These types of character are rendered
particularly vivid to us by the sculptured
masks. Spirits, women, and old men wear
masks; other human beings do not. For the
200 plays now extant, nearly 300 separate
masks are necessary in a complete list of properties.
Such variety is far in excess of the

Greek types, and immense vitality is given to
a good mask by a great actor, who acts up to
it until the very mask seems alive and displays
a dozen turns of emotion. The costumes are
less carefully individualized. For the hero
parts, especially for spirits, they are very rich,
of splendid gold brocades and soft floss-silk
weaving, or of Chinese tapestry stitch, and are
very costly. In Tokugawa days (1602-1868)
every rich daimio had his own stage, and his
complete collection of properties. The dancing
is wonderful—a succession of beautiful poses
which make a rich music of line. The whole
body acts together, but with dignity. Great
play is given to the sleeve, which is often tossed
back and forth or raised above the head. The
fan also plays a great part, serving for cup,
paper, pen, sword, and a dozen other imaginary
stage properties. The discipline of the actor
is a moral one. He is trained to revere his
profession, to make it a sacred act thus to impersonate
a hero. He yields himself up to
possession by the character. He acts as if he
knew himself to be a god, and after the performance
he is generally quite exhausted.