Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/106

80 gave up Liaotung at the bidding of Russia, France, and Germany—all these were as widely praised and honoured by their fellow-countrymen as Kumagaya or Nakamitsu.

Next in popularity to the historical are the social plays (sewamono), of which the main topic is love. This love, however, has nothing in common with the well-regulated affections which dominate our middle-class comedy from "Our Boys" to "Sweet Lavender," and culminate in the addition of two or three conventional couples to suburban villadom. Domestic happiness having been arranged for most young folk by their elders, neither courtship nor marriage (if the former could be said to exist) presented material for dramatic treatment. The heroine is either a geisha or a courtesan, exposed by her profession to the worst caprice of passion and of fortune. In neither case is she necessarily repulsive or even reprehensible. On the contrary, she is often held up to sympathy as a model of filial devotion, having sold her virtue for a certain period to save her parents from beggary. Public opinion is still so much more Confucian than Christian among Japanese peasants, that not only does a father incur no odium for selling his daughter, but she would be regarded in many districts as wickedly unfilial if she objected to be sold. It is true that by decrees added to Japanese law in 1875 and 1896 such sale is forbidden: girls are no longer bought; they are hired. But during the Yedo period, whose morals are mostly reflected in such pieces, the famous oiran sama or lady-courtesan was a very dazzling figure, while the humble jōro was at least regarded with pity. If we put aside for the moment Western feeling on this subject, it is clear that no romance could be more