Takase: Fine Japanese Calligraphy

II. FINAL FORM OF THE ANCIENT DRAMA

Painting, seen from above, of a gathering in a courtyard in front of a long building with a dark roof and a veranda at the left. One person in a long robe stands in the open space at the center with one arm raised, and many seated people in robes fill the ground around its edge, in rows along the right and bottom and in small groups near the center. Bare and leafy trees and a pine stand among them, and a building with slatted panels shows at the upper right. — Children’s dance called “Chigo Ennen-no-Mai”

The time was approaching for our national drama, through imitation and assimilation of foreign drama, to achieve its final form. From the Heian Period (about 780 A. D.), the dramatic form became clarified, and various popular plays made their contribution to its basic forms. The chief among these are:

Ennen-no-Mai. This is the general name for the various performances presented by the priests after the religious ceremonies. They consisted of dances, songs, dialogues, and some of even a more dramatic form.

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Painting on a pale ground of a row of people in wide round hats with dark ties, standing, crouching or seated close together across the top. One holds a long thin pipe to the mouth, two hold large round drums marked with swirl patterns, and one at the far left has a bottle-shaped object beside the head. At the lower left a person in dark clothes sits on a rearing dark horse, and at the right edge a person in stiff dark clothes with a round mark on the chest is partly cut off. — Picture representing Dengaku

Dengaku. By this is meant the music of the country-side. The song and dance performed by the people in ancient times appropriated, in some measure, the Gigaku and Sangaku, and gave them definite form.

Sarugaku. What had formerly been called Sangaku gradually came to be called Sarugaku, its nature being almost the same as that of the Dengaku. The only difference was that in Dengaku the performers were priests, whereas the performers in Sarugaku were other officers connected with the Shintō shrine. This Sarugaku, as well as the Dengaku, took over the dramatic elements of Shirabyōshi and Kuse-mai, and made remarkable progress, such as we can see in the Noh drama of today. That is, it purified itself

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Photograph of a person standing at the center on a glossy floor in a loose dark coat with wide sleeves over a pale robe and wide pale trousers, a long rake slanted across the body in one hand; the face is pale, with an open mouth. At the left a person in a patterned robe kneels, and at the right more people kneel in shadow, one with a pale face. Behind them a painted backdrop of branches with small flowers shows at the left and a bamboo plant stands before striped panels at the right. — Noh dance (Photo: T. Okamoto)

by discarding all irrelevancies and retaining its intrinsic elements. This was in the Muromachi Period, about the year 1370, and was largely due to the efforts of the father and son, Kwan Ami and Se Ami. What is still more remarkable, these men combined in one the dramatist, the director and the actor. Se Ami’s Dramatic Essay may well be compared to the Ars Poetica of Aristotle. The comedy which is performed between the acts of the Noh drama is called Kyōgen. This also took on its form during this period. This Noh and Kyōgen became the progenitor of all forms of the later Japanese drama. It is also a well-known fact that their influence may be seen in the dramatic writings of Yeats, the British poet.

All the dramatic forms that led up to the above-

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Photograph of two people on a bare floor in front of a dark painted backdrop with small white flowers. At the right a person stands in a wide-sleeved pale robe and a tall pointed cap, the face pale and showing little detail, holding a thin pole upright. At the left a person kneels in a pale jacket with wide shoulders and white wide trousers, facing the viewer. — Kyōgen, sister performance of the Noh is One-act Comic Interlude

mentioned Noh and Kyōgen were developed among the noble or the samurai classes; but, on the contrary, it was the Kabuki or Shibai, the modern Japanese drama, that had its place among the common people. Let us remind ourselves that in contrast to the foreign drama, which developed under the patronage of rulers and nobility, our Japanese drama had to meet the persecution of the upper classes, reaching its highest development through the enthusiastic endorsement of the common people.

See “Japanese Noh Plays,” Volume 2 in Tourist Library.