Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/74

52 suspense of this posture-pantomime, with its endless feints and threats and sallies and retreats? And how the anguish of battle is enhanced by the "barbaric yawp" and sharp, intermittent drum-taps, which excite without distracting the spell-bound audience! So abrupt and discreet is the interjected cry of the immobile musicians that one might easily take it for the defiant or hortative outburst of an invisible spirit attracted to the ghostly combat. Indeed, all that is wild and primitive in these enfants sauvages of Melpomene is chastened into harmony by the innate sobriety of Japanese art. The creative instinct works within small limits by small means, but with these means it contrives to project on its tiny stage a vital suggestion of the largest issues. The gods become marionettes for an hour, without wholly losing their godhead.

Good-humoured drollery, of which the gods come in for a fair share, is no more alien to the Japanese than it was to the Greek temperament. And if one had to guess which divinity or divinities are regarded with more affection than awe by such light-hearted worshippers, one would certainly name the Rokujizō, or six Jizō. While Buddha and Kwannon, Tenjin and Inari, dwell in small or stately temples, augustly apart, the six Jizō sit sociably in a row by the roadside or on the outskirts of a shrine, protected (if protected at all) from the weather by a plain wooden shed. For they belong to the class of open-air minor deities familiarly known as "wet gods." Yet they play a large part in the emotional life of the people. Patrons of travellers, women, and children, they bear the semblance of a shaven priest with benevolent countenance, whose neck is generally encircled with a