Jinrikisha Days in Japan
dipping them in soy before broiling; and white eels are the bits broiled without sauces. Laid across bowls of snowy rice, the eels make as pretty a dish as can be served one, and many foreigners besides the appreciative English poet have paid tribute to their excellence. An eel dinner in a river-bank tea-house, with a juggler or a fow maiko to enliven the waits between the courses, is most delightful of Tokio feasts.
CHAPTER X
THE JAPANESE THEATRE
“Saturated with the refinements of an old civilization,” as Dr. Dresser says, and possessing all other arts in perfection, it is not surprising that the Japanese drama should be so well worthy of its people. The theatre has reached its present development slowly and with difficulty. Caste distinctions hindered its rise, actors ranking next the eta, or outcast class in feudal days, and the play-houses of such degraded beings lying under ban. Only the middle and lower classes patronized them, nobles never attending any public exhibitions, and all women being excluded.
In the golden age of the Tokugawas the drama began to win recognition; theatres were built by the Shogun; the marionette shows, the first departure from the No Kagura, gave way to living actors and realism succeeded. In the great social upheaval and rearrangement of classes following the Restoration, actors rose a little in social esteem and gained some rights of citizenship. But another quarter of a century will hardly rank the dramatic with the other arts and honor its interpreters. Noblemen now attend the theatre, but actors never receive an invitation to their clubs. A few years since, Tokio
96
