Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/117

 the different scenes, although the great facts are historical and cannot be misrepresented, now that the Tokugawa’s ban against the play is removed. Danjiro plays it in one way, and other actors have their versions, but none of them play it the same at every engagement, nor repeat just the same acts on every day of an engagement.”

With dramatic authorship so vague and uncertain, the origin or author of any play is far to seek. Revivals and rotations of the old favorites constitute a manager’s idea of attractions, a new scene or two, a novel feature, and some local picture or allusion being enough to satisfy the most blasé patron. No accurate libretto nor printed book of the play can thus exist, but the illustrated programmes give a pictorial outline of it—a veritable impressionist sketch, noting its salient features, and leaving all details to time and imagination. There are no dramatic unities, no three-act or five-act limitations, and no hampering laws of verse and rhythm. An orchestra and half-concealed chorus explains, heralds, and lauds the action, a survival of the No gradually disappearing with other things before the demand for shorter hours and briefer plays.

Women do not appear on the Japanese stage, female parts being played by men, who often make these roles their specialty, cultivating and using their voices always in a thin, high falsetto. The make-up, the voices, gait, action, and manner of some of these actors are wonderful, and Genoske, the greatest impersonator of female characters, when dressed for the part of some noble heroine, is an ideal beauty of the delicate, aristocratic type. Outside the great theatres, in plays and side-show entertainments, that may be compared with our dime museums, a woman is occasionally found on the stage; and, a few years ago, a Tokio manager amazed the town with the performances of a company made up entirely of 101