Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/56

 neglected, but it need scarcely be said that the unities of time and place have lost, in modern days, the importance they once possessed in the eyes of dramatic critics.

Considering the close relations that existed between the civilisations and literatures of Japan and China, the student naturally expects to find an easily traced connection between the histrionic arts of the two countries. But comparison reveals differences rather than affinities. When it has been said that both arose from the union of dance and song, their points of resemblance have been virtually exhausted. The singing actor, the principal figure of the Chinese drama, found no counterpart in Japan; the religious element in the former country's art is often mere buffoonery, whereas in the latter's it is always reverent; there was no chorus in China nor any open-air stage, and the Chinese never made between tragedy and comedy the sharp distinction which the Japanese drew. Perhaps these comparisons possess little value. It may be urged, for example, that whatever similarities seem to exist between the dramatic art of India and that of Japan, they are at once conclusively differentiated by the fact that, whereas the latter dealt mainly with the tragic aspects of life and appealed principally to the sentiments of pathos and pity, all fatal or tearful conclusions were prohibited in the former. Nevertheless the analogies certainly possess passing interest.