Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/125

 dollars, as those seeming gifts from the audience were merely pledges or forfeits, to be afterwards redeemed by money under the star’s regular schedule of prices. As protests availed nothing, and the whole house only roared in derision when he said that he had wished Danjiro to keep the battered derby as a souvenir, the enthusiast paid his forfeit.

The audience is as interesting a study as the players, each little square box being another stage, whereon the picturesque drama of Japanese life is enacted. Trays of tea and sweetmeats and single teapots are constantly supplied to the spectators by attendants, who tread the narrow partition rails between the boxes like acrobats. Whenever the curtain closes there is a swift scurrying of these Ganymedes to the boxes, while the children climb upon the partition rails and the hana michi, or run about the theatre, even romping upon the stage itself, and peeping under the curtain to see what the carpenters are hammering; all with perfect ease and unconsciousness.

Visiting the star in his dressing-room is a simple commercial transaction. The actors make a fixed charge for receiving such visits, deriving a regular income from this source. Danjiro’s dressing-room is high up among the flies back of the Shintomiza stage, with a window looking down upon it, so that he needs no call-boy. He often shouts down to the stage himself, and has the action of the play delayed or hastened, according to his toilet or his humors. Nothing could be more scornful and indifferent than Danjiro’s treatment of the high-priced visitors to his dressing-room. Fulsome flattery, if offered with the florid and elaborate Japanese forms, will mollify him, and the old fellow—eighth idolized Danjiro in succession—will finally offer tea, present a hair-pin to a lady, or write an autograph on a fan in his most captivating stage daimio manner. When making up 109