Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/65

Rh reality, and to surrender all criticisms for the sake of appreciation. Indeed, the actual expression of the No stage is ever so slight and ephemeral, like many other artistic expressions, the sighs of crickets or shivers of flowers; we have gained, as we behold it, great brevity at an almost astonishing cost of human energy. It goes without saying that the plays themselves are brief; and I have many reasons to be thankful that the stage has never been troubled with the dropping curtain from the beginning till to-day, because the curtain only serves, in my opinion, to bar the stage, to remind us always that we have to restrain ourselves and not come into too close communication with the actors. And what use is the No hall if you cannot drop the curtain in your imagination? although it may not be so often as in other theatres even at this No hall, you have sometimes to drop the curtain yourself before the play is finished.

I have had occasion before to associate the No hall with the tea-room where, through the fragrance of tea, the melody of the boiling kettle, and the curl of incense, you will slowly but surely enter the twilight land of the Unknowable; when you are told that both of them were practically formed, encouraged, and developed under the rule of the Ashikaga lords from the early fourteenth century down to the close of the sixteenth century, who attempted, and even