Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/122

 Death is generally accomplished by edged tools, and the antics of the fencers, the wonderful endurance of the hacked victims, and the streams of red paint and red silk ravellings that ooze forth delight the audiences, who shout and shriek their “''Ya! Ya!” and “Yeh! Yeh!" The swordsmen are often acrobats and jugglers in disguise, who enliven the extended slaughters with thrilling tours de force. Seppuku the honorable death, or hara-kiri'' as it is most commonly known, is always received with breathless interest and wild applause, and the self-disembowelling of the hero, with a long last oration, still seems to the Japanese something fine and heroic and the most complete revenge upon an insulting foe.

The detail and minuteness with which everything is explained, and the endless etiquette and circumlocution, are thoroughly Japanese. Little is left to the imagination in their dramatic art, and an ordinary play has more sub-plots and characters than one of Dickens’s novels. With the rapid adoption of new customs, the theatre is becoming the only conserver of the old life and manners.

If the Japanese stage has its blood-and-thunder and its tank drama, it has also its millinery play. The costumes alone are often worth going to see, and the managers announce the appearance of historic brocades and armor worthy of museums. Danjiro owns and wears a sacred coat of mail that belonged to one of the Ronins, and his appearance in it is the signal for the maddest applause. Such treasures of costume and of armor are bequeathed from father to son, and from retiring star to favorite pupil. As tokens of high approval rich and noble patrons send to actors rare costumes, swords, pipes, and articles of personal use. Excited spectators even throw such tributes upon the stage. One approving foreigner, seeing the rain of hats, coats, obis, and tobacco-pouches, once tossed his hat down. Later the manager and the actor's valet returned the hat and asked for ten 106