ettas just mentioned, partly in marionette dances accompanied by explanatory songs, called jōruri or gidayū. This explains the retention of the chorus, although in diminished numbers and exiled to a little cage separated from the stage, where they sit with the musicians. Hence, too, the peculiar poses of the actors, originally intended to imitate the stiffness of their prototypes, the marionettes. It was in the sixteenth century that this class of theatre took its rise. Oddly enough, though the founders of the Japanese stage were two women, named O-Kuni and O-Tsū, men alone have been allowed to act at the chief theatres, the female parts being taken by males, as in our own Shakspeare's age, while at a few inferior theatres the conditions are reversed, and only women appear. It would seem that immorality was feared from the joint appearance of the two sexes, and in sooth the reputation of O-Kuni and her companions was far from spotless.[1] Of late years the restriction has been relaxed, and performances by mixed troupes of actors and actresses may occasionally be witnessed.
From the beginning, plays were divided into two classes, called respectively jidai-mono, that is historical plays, and sewa-mono, or dramas of life and manners. Chikamatsu Monzaemon and
- ↑ Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, writing to us to remonstrate on this reference to O-Kuni as needlessly severe, gives her story, which is, as he says, both picturesque and touching. It may be taken as typical of a whole class of Japanese love-tales:—
"She was a priestess in the great temple of Kitsuki, and fell in love with a swash-buckler named Nagoya Sanza, with whom she fled away to Kyōto. On the way thither, her extraordinary beauty caused a second swashbuckler to become enamoured of her. Sanza killed him, and the dead man's face never ceased to haunt the girl. At Kyōto she supported her lover by dancing the sacred dance in the dry bed of the river. Then the pair went to Yedo and began to act. Sanza himself became a famous actor. After her lover's death O-Kuni returned to Kitsuki, where, being an excellent poetess, she supported or at least occupied herself by giving lessons in the art. But afterwards she shaved off her hair and became a nun, and built a little temple in Kitsuki where she lived and taught. And the reason why she built the temple was that she might pray for the soul of the man whom the sight of her beauty had ruined. The temple stood until thirty years ago: but there is now nothing left of it but a broken statue of the compassionate god Jizō. The family still live at Kitsuki; and until the late revolution the head of the family was always entitled to a share in the profits of the local theatre, because his ancestress, the beautiful priestess, had founded the art."
