Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/221

Rh respect since the beginning of the fifteenth century, is a square wooden room open on all sides but one, and supported on pillars, the side of the square being about eighteen English feet. It is surmounted by a quaint roof somewhat resembling those to be seen on Buddhist temples, and is connected with the green-room by a gallery some nine feet wide. Upon this gallery part of the action occasionally takes place. Added on to the back of the square stage is a narrow space where sits the orchestra, consisting of one flute-player, two performers on instruments, which, in the absence of a more fitting name, may perhaps be called tambourines, and one beater of the drum, while the chorus, whose number is not fixed, squat on the ground to the right of the spectator. The back of the stage, the only side not open to the air, is painted with a pine-tree, in accordance with ancient usage, while, equally in conformity with established rules, three small pine-trees are planted in the court which divides the gallery from the space occupied by the less distinguished portion of the audience. The covered place for the audience runs round three sides of the stage. Masks are worn by such of the actors as take the parts of females or of supernatural beings, and the dresses are gorgeous in the extreme. Scenery, however, is allowed no place on the lyric stage."

It will readily be understood that the difficulty of arriving at the meaning of such compositions as the Nō is very considerable. Mr. Mitford, no mean scholar, in his Tales of Old Japan pronounces them "wholly unintelligible"; though this statement must be taken with