seems, however, to have been produced as yet. For our own part, though favouring the admittance of actors into Japanese good society, if their manners fit them for such promotion, we trust that the stage may remain, in other respects, what it now is—a mirror, the only mirror, of Old Japan. When our fathers invented railways, they did not tear up the "School for Scandal," or pull down Covent Garden. Why should the Japanese do what amounts to the same thing? The only reform called for is one which touches, not the theatre itself, but an adjunct, an excrescence. We mean the tea-houses which serve as ticket agencies, and practically prevent theatre-goers from dealing with the theatre direct. Engrossing, as these practical little establishments do, a large portion of the profits derived from the sale of tickets, they are probably the main cause of the frequent bankruptcy of the Tokyō theatres.
Talking of reform and Europeanisation, it fell to our lot some years ago to witness an amusing scene in a Japanese theatre. The times were already ripe for change. A small Italian opera troupe having come to Yokohama, a wide-awake Japanese manager engaged them, and caused a play to be written for the special purpose of letting them appear in it. This play represented the adventures of a party of Japanese globe-trotters, who, after crossing the Pacific Ocean and landing at San Francisco where they naturally fall among the Red Indians who infest that remote and savage locality, at last reach Paris and attend a performance at the Grand Opera. Thus were the Indian singers appropriately introduced, Hamlet-like, on a stage upon the main stage. But oh! the effect upon the Japanese audience! When once they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, they were seized with a wild fit of hilarity at the high notes of the prima donna, who really was not at all bad. The people laughed at the absurdities of European singing till their sides shook, and the tears rolled down their cheeks; and they stuffed their sleeves into their mouths, as we might our pocket-handkerchiefs, in the vain endeavour to contain themselves. Needless to say that the
