Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/143

 ject of making money is generally to spend it on an actor. One can easily guess how it fares with the actor in the absence of social restraint and in the presence of such strong temptation. Besides, he has not even the solace of knowing that worldly prosperity will reward his talents. His pecuniary recompense, indeed, has ceased to be small. It has always been and still is the rule that a play should run for at least twenty-three days. Very often, of course, the period is extended. For such a term the emoluments of Ichikawa Danjuro, incomparably the greatest actor of his era, are twenty-five hundred yen. If, however, he has played in an exceptionally arduous role, an additional honorarium of from two to three thousand yen is given. There are some seven performances yearly. Thus Danjuro's annual income is from ten to fifteen thousand gold dollars. Out of that total, however, he has to disburse large sums for the hire of his costumes, which are not provided by the theatre, and for the support of pupils (deshi) who constitute a kind of society to promote his influence and perpetuate his style. Moreover, the unwritten law of the actor's profession requires that he should live on a scale of lavish expenditure. Apart from the tendency that his art educates to court public notice by magnificent ostentation, there is an instinctive resort to that agreeable method of self-advertisement, and there is also an unconfessed but powerful desire