Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/77

Rh tradesman for a prostitute, when performed by actors, can acquire additional pathos by reducing the distance between the audience and the character. The danger here is that the appetite for realism will be whetted by this first concession, and that the poetic dialogue will be replaced by more “natural” prose, that the conventional dramatic usages such as the journey of the two lovers will be suppressed; in short, that the play as conceived by Chikamatsu will disappear in favour of a work possessing the kind of realism he so deplored.

In Chikamatsu’s own day, the most popular of his works by far was The Battles of Coxinga, one of his most imaginative creations. It is estimated that it was seen by 240,000 people at one theatre alone during the 17 months of its initial run—this in a city whose population did not exceed 300,000. The play was imitated by various other writers, and in due course it was adapted for use by actors. But it was from about this time that the actors began to imitate the movements of the puppets, thus attempting to preserve some of the stylization. Yeats was fascinated when he saw a Japanese actor perform in this manner, and noted in the stage direction to his own play At the Hawk’s Well that all the persons of the work should suggest marionettes in their movements.

The puppets eventually lost in popularity to the actors in Japan, although the art continues to be practised on a small scale, chiefly, like the Nō, for the enjoyment of connoisseurs. Comparing the two, the Nō is clearly more poetic, and altogether couched on a higher aesthetic plane than the jōruri. It is noble and remote—one might almost say Aeschylean. Or, to give an analogy drawn from Western music, the Nō is like the operas of Monteverdi or Handel—beautiful and expressive, but not particularly dramatic. The slow miming and dancing which usually so weary the foreign visitor to a Nō performance have