Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/61

Rh temple's own history. Such songs as went with the dance were simple, short, and primitive. They would be heard at Court ceremonies, too, for the union of Church and State was close. They were sung by members of privileged families, who guarded and transmitted from father to son the professional secrets of their "perfect music."

However, the beginning of the Ashikaga period in the fourteenth century saw the corruption and development of a perfect germ into complex variety. Both sacred and secular rivalry contributed to this result. The Biwa-hōshi, blind priests and lute-players, who went from castle to castle of the Daimyōs, singing Heikemonogatari, historical romances of warlike quality in prose and verse, opened new vistas of subject-matter, while Shirabyōshi, the refined and cultivated precursor of the comparatively modern geisha, extended both the scope and the significance of posture-dancing. The Kioku-mai, or memory dance, came into vogue, being characterised by closer co-ordination of music and movement, while the accompanying song would often celebrate a romantic episode or a famous landscape. Many of these songs survive, embedded in the chorus of Nō texts; in fact, they may be regarded as the nucleus of Nō drama.

The Muromachi Shōgunate witnessed the final transition from dance to drama, recitative and singing speeches and dramatis personæ being superadded to the chorus. Kiyotsugu (who died in 1406) and his son Motokiyo (who died in 1455) are generally credited with this development. They belonged to the Yusaki family—one of the four families who exercised hereditary management of the Nara stage. They held a small estate, and succeeded in winning the Shōgun's