Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/62

42 patronage for their Sarugaku or Nō, which became extremely popular at Court. Naturally enough, the choric songs became panegyrics of the reigning Shōgun, and helped to embellish his Court pageants.

It is not believed that the actor-manager did more than prepare and conduct the Nō, in which music and dancing were still the chief features. The author was contented to remain anonymous, and that for good reasons. Intellectual light shone mostly in the monasteries during that dark age of feudal fighting. If the Buddhist monk could make of this aristocratic amusement a vehicle for Buddhist teaching, individual obscurity was a small price to pay for corporate influence. Therefore, while it cannot be stated as a fact that the famous priests Ikkiu and Shiuran wrote the finest Nō poetry, it is certain that yurei or ghosts and Buddhist exorcisers became very common characters on the Nō boards, while the chorus betrayed (as I am told) "many deep conceptions of mystic religion." What higher compliment has ever been paid to art, dramatic or pictorial, than the struggles of priests and politicians to wield its influence? There is something pathetic in this aspect of the rivalry for Terpsichore's hand. At first she wore the red trousers of a Shintō priestess and was wooed by the Mikado. Then the Shōgun came, a strong man armed, and with him she danced into the Buddhist camp.

The sixteenth century gave the final touch to this musical drama, which approximated more and more to secular plays without ever entirely losing its official character. The ghosts faded out, the Buddhist influence grew less marked, for it had to traverse the tyranny of Nobunaga, who patronised Christianity and destroyed the monasteries of Hiei-zan. But