Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/49

Rh restricted nine years ago the maximum duration of a performance to eight hours, to the great dissatisfaction of the confirmed play-goers who consider themselves cheated of their money’s worth by this limitation. In the country, however, the good old leisurely hours appear to be still retained. As a performance, then, lasts eight hours even in Tokyo, play-going is really a regular day’s business.

As compartments in a theatre hold four or five persons each, it is usual to make up a party and book a whole compartment through a teahouse connected with the theatre, for every theatre has many dependent teahouses whose business it is to provide their patrons with everything they require in the theatre through the long hours; but those who are willing to be put in the same compartment with strangers go straight to the theatre and thereby escape the commission levied by the teahouse on all its provisions. The spectators eat their noon or evening meals at the theatre, or at the teahouse between the acts; but confectionery and sake are freely partaken while the play is going on. Indeed, many male play-goers cannot enjoy a play unless they drink at the same time, and they have often been known to turn their backs upon the stage and, overcome with the sake, add their own music to the gidayu-singer’s. Play-going is, therefore, also an expensive pastime.

It is seldom that a whole day’s performance is taken up by a single play. There are generally portions of two or three different plays run on the stage on the same day.

The drama is of three kinds, historical, o-iye, and domestic. Historical plays deal with warlike and unsettled times, the favourite subjects being those connected with the events immediately preceding the establishment of the Shogunate (1185), the futile attempts made by Kusunoki, father (1294–1336) and son (1327–1349) to re-establish the authority of the Emperor, and the civil wars of the sixteenth century. Under the Tokugawa shogun, the country enjoyed peace; but in the families of the great territorial