Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/257

 classes of the nation, namely, the Saru-gaku, or "monkey mime," and the Den-gaku, or "bucolic mime." The monkey mime was suggested by a courtier, who went about the Palace garden one night with the skirts of his robe tucked up, simulating cold and dancing to a refrain that will not bear translation. It was, in short, a comic dance adapted to any and every motive, its sole purpose being to create laughter. There were thirty celebrated Saru-gaku (or San-gaku, as it is also called), all of which were reputed to be capable of drawing tears of laughter from a confirmed misanthrope. The stanzas recited by Saru-gaku performers in early times have not been preserved. They seem to have been of a trivial, jesting character, unworthy of record and entertaining only in connection with the dance. Neither is it quite certain that the account here given of the origin of the Saru-gaku is correct. Some authorities maintain that the dance dates from the time of Prince Shotoku (572-621); that its real name was, not "monkey (saru) mime," but "three (san) instruments music;" that it derived the appellation from the fact of three kinds of Korean hand-drum having been then, for the first time, used to accompany songs, and that the prefix "three" (san) was afterwards changed into saru (monkey) owing to mispronunciation, or because the dance received an essentially comic character. Yet another theory assigns to the prefix san the significance of "dis