Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/114

 actual lines, and the full translation of a No programme for the Duke of Edinburgh, on his visit to Japan, busied the interpreters of the British Legation for days, with the aid of all the old native poets and scholars in Tokio.

The No is a trilogy, occupying four or five hours of three successive days. The first set of scenes is to propitiate the gods; the second to terrify evil spirits and punish the wicked; and the third to glorify the good, beautiful, and pleasant. The dramatis personæ are gods, goddesses, demons, priests, warriors, and heroes of early legend and history, and much of the action is allegorical. By a long gallery at the left the actors approach the elevated pavilion or platform of the stage, which is without curtain or scenery, and almost without properties. The audience sits upon the matted area surrounding the three sides of the stage. Flute, drum, and pipes play continuously, and a row of men in old ceremonial dress sit statuesque at one side of the stage, chanting and wailing the explanatory chorus throughout the performance. In the great scenes the actors wear masks of thin lacquered or gilded wood, and valuable collections of such ancient dance masks are preserved in temples and yashikis. The costuming is superb, the old brocade and cloth-of-gold garments showing the court costumes of centuries ago, and the great families and monasteries hold their ancient No costumes as chiefest treasures.

The actors enter at a gait that out-struts the most exaggerated stage stride ever seen, the body held rigid as a statue, and the foot, never wholly lifted, sliding slowly along the polished floor. These buckram figures, moving with the solemnity of condemned men, utter their lines like automata, not a muscle nor an eyelash moving, nor a flicker of expression crossing the unmasked countenance. Their tones are unspeakably distressing, nasal, high-pitched, falsetto sounds, and many performers have 98