Japanese Hospitalities
founded an association for the improvement of the theatre, and the development of the histrionic art of the country in its own distinctive way. Viscount Hijikata and Viscount Kawawa were elected president and vice-president of this Engei Kyokai, but little is known of its actual work.
Instead of farce or recitative prologue preceding the play, come one or two acts of classic pantomime or character dance, or an interlude of this kind in the middle of the drama. These classic pantomimes resemble the No Kagura simplified.
This No dance, or lyric drama, is the dramatic form current before the seventeenth century. Bordering on the religious, it suggests the Greek drama, and the passion and miracle plays of mediæval Europe. Originally, the No was the pantomime festival dance of the Shinto temples, fabled to have been first performed by Suzume before the cave of the Sun Goddess. The sacred dance is still a temple ceremonial, and the dances of the Shinto priestesses at Nikko and Nara are famous. In time the No became the entertainment of honor in the yashikis of the great, and princes and nobles took part in the solemn measures when greater princes were their guests. To the slow and stately movements of the dancers, and their play with fan and bells, dialogue was added, and an exaggeration of detail and etiquette.
The No is wholly artificial, the movements of the actors being as stiff, stilted, and measured as the classic idiom in which the dialogue is spoken, and the ancient and obsolete ideographs which set forth the synopsis of the action. Confined to the yashikis and monasteries, the No was the entertainment of the upper classes, who alone could understand its involved and lofty diction and intricate symbolism. While the bare arguments of plays and dances are as familiar as fairy tales or folklore, only scholars of great attainments can read their
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