Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/41

Rh but a blind Jōruri performer would be out of character.

An important fact connected with the Military epoch is that it saw the beginnings of the histrionic art in Japan. There is some obscurity about this point, but the most accurate researches go to show that the embryo of the Japanese drama is to be found in the Den-gaku, or "bucolic mime," reference to which has already been made. The Den-gaku suggested spectacular effects, and the dramatic idea was derived from the various kinds of song and dance described above,—the spirited epics of the Biwa-bozu; the tragic recitative of the Jōruri performer; the genre sonnets (ima-yo) and semi-poetical chaunts (mono-gatari) of the "white measure-markers;" and the Buddhist "life-lengthening dance" (yennen-mai), in which a fan-bearing acolyte postured while friars beat hand-drums.

It seems impossible to trace the exact processes by which a true drama was evolved from these elements, but there is little room to doubt that Buddhist priests first conceived the project of combining the spectacular effects of the Den-gaku with the emotional appeals of the various musical and recitative performances in vogue from the thirteenth century downward. Unfortunately there does not survive even one clearly identified example of a Den-gaku performance thus modified. The Den-gaku, as tradition describes it and as the national memory recalls it, was simply a