Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/310

270 aims. Their writers were amateurs, their actors were amateurs; they knew nothing of stage-craft. The public, excited by the promises, were willing enough to give them a trial, but, as they did not know how to interest the public——"

"Then you gave them no assistance, Mr. Danjuro?"

"None at all."

"Are you blessed with a censor of plays?"

"There is a censorship, but it falls under the head of ordinary police duties, and is not specially limited to the theatre. Political and licentious passages are carefully excised before performance, and I doubt if the authority of the censor has been exercised in the Meiji era (since the Restoration)."

"How is it that foreign plays fail to interest your playgoers?"

It is my honest belief that Kishimoto, from a mistaken idea of sparing my feelings, abridged considerably the answer to this question. Both he and Mr. Danjuro chuckled a great deal, and seemed to be exchanging sympathetic affirmations. Then came the crushing rejoinder: "Because in all your plays the attitude of men to women seems to us not only irrational but ridiculous."

I changed the subject. "Which classes go most to the theatre?"

"The middle and lower classes. Since the Emperor witnessed a performance in Count Inonyé's house in 1886 it has become more fashionable for men of rank to go occasionally, but it cannot be said that the aristocracy, as a class, patronise the stage."

"Can Mr. Danjuro tell me if the mawari-butai, or revolving stage, resembling what the Greeks used to call eccyclema, is native or imported? Some Japanese