Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/96

 An American critic, who studied this feature of the acting from the point of view of a professional pugilist, was astounded by the number of throws, lifts, and twists employed, in addition to those tricks peculiar to jūjutsu, which other races have yet to learn. But the clash of sparkling swords and the thud of falling bodies were so incessant, that one was apt to lose sight of the ferocious realism, and notice only the comic surprises of this partly historical, partly conventional mêlée. To one irreverent lady it suggested the idea of furious grasshoppers battling on the slopes of Fuji.

The last play, written by Mr. Kawakami himself about ten years ago—"The Geisha and the Knight"—is dramatically the best as well as the most picturesque. It furnishes Madame Sada Yacco with a part which affords full scope for her talents. It proves her not only an ethereal dancer, but a tragic actress of real power. When the curtain rises we are in the Yoshiwara of Yedo (euphemistically termed the geisha-quarter), with its line of cherry-trees in full blossom between the fifty tea-houses, with the bustling crowd of domestics, minstrels, dancing-girls, and samurai, conventionally disguised, as a knight was bound to be, by amigasa, or large braided hats. Katsuragi, the famous courtesan, attended by her little bevy of servants, passes in gorgeous apparel on those high, black-lacquered sabots which only the taiyu might wear. Soon a quarrel bursts out between her rival suitors, and Banza, determined to provoke a duel, inflicts on Nagoya the disgraceful insult of sayâte, a blow on the sword from a sword's hilt. But scarcely has the fight begun when the girl throws herself between and compels her lover to desist.