Page:Tales from old Japanese dramas (1915).djvu/37

Rh his wife. He names the girl Jōruri after the God. Many years later, when she is a blooming maiden, Shana-ō-Maru (the famous hero Yoshitsuné), on his way to Ōshyū, stays at Yahagi. He and Jōruri fall in love with each other, and exchange vows of fidelity. Though simple in plot, the story embodies the rudiments of a drama. Henceforward any compositions used by the professional reciters came to be called jōruri, and the reciters themselves, jōruri-katari, or jōruri chanters; and this is the origin of the name of jōruri which is now applied to the epical drama.

In the era of Keichō (1596–1615) a noted samisen player of Kyōto named Menukiya Chōzaburō, in conjunction with a certain Hikita, a puppet showman of Nishinomiya in Settsu, started the art of working marionettes to the accompaniment of jōruri recitation, and the samisen music. This ayatsuri-shibai, or marionette theatre, rapidly grew in general favour, so much that the Emperor Go-Yōzei was pleased to summon the troupe to his palace to inspect their performances.

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century there was in Yedo a great jōruri chanter called Satsuma Jōun. His bold and energetic manner