Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/188



N a previous chapter some account has been given of the origin and development of the sacred mime, of its connection with the bucolic dance, and of the gradual rise of the den-gaku and the saru-gaku. From the second half of the fourteenth century, when the Ashikaga Shōgun Yoshimitsu ruled in Kyōtō, the saru-gaku became an almost necessary feature of all social entertainments among the upper classes; and in the time of Yoshimasa (1449-1472) four families, Kwanze, Kamparu, Hōshō, and Kōngō, were publicly recognised as the possessors of all the best traditions and methods of the mimetic art. The great captain, Oda Nobunaga, and his still greater contemporary, Hideyoshi, the Taikō, were ardent patrons of the saru-gaku, dancing it themselves with the utmost earnestness. The Taikō, studied under Gōshō, the master expert of his era, and danced to the accompaniment of a song specially composed (the Akechi-uchi koya-mode) in commemoration of his victory over the traitorous slayer of Nobunaga. Thenceforth to be able to take a part in the saru-gaku—or the No, as these dances were usually called in later times—became an absolutely essential accomplishment of every feudal chief, court noble, or samurai of rank. It has to be remembered that although the Japanese are intensely fond of spectacular displays,