Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/63

Rh, as an aristocratic institution, the Nō was to retain its popularity, though since the sixteenth century none have been written. A programme is still extant on which the two greatest names in Japanese history, those of Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, star the list of performers. The actors were treated as samurai, military retainers, though the performers in popular shibai (theatres) were held in contempt. In the latest specimens knighthood is the invariable theme, set to more various music and illustrated by more violent posturing.

Throughout the Tokugawa era (1602–1868) every Daimyō who could afford it maintained a troupe of Nō players to reproduce for his edification the thoughts and habits of mediæval art. Old costumes, old masks, old music were faithfully preserved; no innovation of text or interpretation was allowed by the hereditary custodians and directors. And since the shock of the Restoration a reaction has set in, favouring their revival.

At present there are in Tōkyō six troupes of Nō players, with a répertoire of from two to three hundred plays. These retain so firm a hold on cultured conservatives—the younger generation finds them slow—that Mr. Matsumoto Keichi, one of the leading publishers, is now issuing a series of one hundred and eighty-three illustrative colour prints—Nō no ye—whose fine drawing and delicately blent hues are as superior to the flamboyant aniline horror by which the Nihon-bashi print-seller advertises the newest blood-and-thunder melodrama as that itself is inferior to the aristocratically-nurtured Nō. Reproduced as faithfully as may be, the pictures of Mr. Kogyo will, I hope, impress the reader with the archaic simplicity and beauty of the original design, provided that he