Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/37

Rh, has the reputation of being a Lothario. Probably the low esteem in which he was held in the feudal days when he was dubbed a river-side beggar from the first theatre in Kyoto being built on the river-side, was responsible for his low morality which made him content to be in private life the plaything of loose women. But though he has not quite emerged from that despicable state, the importance of his profession is beginning to be recognised and his lax morality to be condemned. But whatever the actor’s private life may be, the theatre is certainly the most notable of public diversions in Japan as in other countries and is on that account always interesting.

Though there were stately dances set to music and song in the old times, the drama, in the ordinary sense of the word, did not arise until the sixteenth century. As the earliest play dealt with the loves of Lady Joruri, the daughter of a wealthy countryman, and Yoshitsune, a younger brother of the founder of the feudal system and one of the favourite heroes of old Japan, dramatic productions became known as joruri. This play has been attributed, on doubtful authority, to Ono O-Tsu, a waiting-woman in the household of Ota Nobunaga, the Taiko’s master. It was not, however, for the stage that the earlier dramas were composed. When the country had recovered peace under the Tokugawa shogun, Satsuma Joun, a native of Sakai, near Osaka, who had studied music under a noted blind musician, gave with puppets made in Kyoto, dramatic performances in Yedo. He was the first to recite and sing lyrical dramas, and his booth drew crowded houses during the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Many of his pupils, on leaving him, also exhibited puppets with new musical variations which became known after them. There are thus divers styles of music, which may all be traced to Joun’s. Joun and his immediate successors appealed in their representations to the military spirit which was still very active. For nearly a century, these puppet-shows retained popularity