Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/75

Rh child's bib of coloured wool, while his hand holds an emblematic jewel, a lotus, a pilgrim's staff, an incense-box, a rosary, or sometimes an infant. In most villages and near many schools will you find the six Jizō, for the country people, loving their children, cherish the children's patron-saint with particular attachment. The amusing kiōgen named "Rokujizō" seemed to please the younger members of our audience infinitely more than the romantic and spectral dramas which preceded it. A pious farmer, anxious to attest his gratitude for a good harvest, resolves to put up six Jizō effigies in his fields, and, seeking a sculptor to carry out his design, falls in with a knavish fellow who boasts that he can carve statues more quickly than any one else in the world, and promises that the six shall be finished by the following day. The bargain is concluded. Then the pseudo-sculptor persuades three confederates to personate Jizō, entrusting them with the jewel, the staff, and the other symbols. As soon as they are well posed as living statuary, he brings the farmer to admire them, and, pretending that the other three are at the opposite end of the field, sends the extemporised gods by a short cut to anticipate the buyer's arrival. He, however, though duly impressed, desires to see the first three again, and then again the second three, until the impersonators, tired with running backwards and forwards, forget what pose and what emblem to assume, entirely destroying all illusion by their ridiculous perplexity. The farmer discovers the trick, and administers a sound drubbing to the fraudulent artist, while the Jizō make their escape. The humour of this naturally depends on the "business" of the performers, since no pretence is made to literary merit in the dialogue,