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But on second thoughts he reflects that the child is his own heir, and that it would be on the whole better to save him. So he binds him firmly to the shaft of his spear and retreats to the seashore with Kwasei, pursued by the enemy. Kwasei is killed by a bullet, and Go Sankei, by an improvised Cesarean operation (coram populo /), rescues her living child, a beautiful boy, which he wraps in his dead mother’s sleeve. “ But stay ! if the enemy find that the child is gone, they will Spare no pains to discover it.” So he stabs his own child, who, it may be remembered, was all this time lashed to the shaft of his spear, and substitutes it for the infant Prince. zz¢ Go Sankei. Enter Go Sankei’s wife with the Princess. They hide among the reeds by the seashore. A Tartar officer named Godatsu follows in pursuit. He takes a small boat and searches all the creeks near them. Riuka (Go Sankei’s wife) catches his oar and overturns his boat. He goes to the bottom, and Riuka gets into the boat with the Princess. Godatsu comes up from below all dripping, and a combat ensues, in which Godatsu has his head cut off by Riuka. Then, as in her bedraggled and blood- stained condition she is no fit company for a princess, she shoves off the boat containing the latter, which is carried away by the wind and tide, and remains behind on the shore. The chorus describes the situation in poetical imagery, t 284 JAPANESE LITERATURE ACT er The scene changes to Hirado, in Japan. Kokusenya, with his wife, is gathering shellfish on the seashore, when a small boat approaches. It proves to contain the Princess, who had drifted over from China, Koku- senya’s wife, a low, vulgar woman, who provides the comic element of the play, is overcome with laughter at the Chinese which the Princess and her husband talk. Jealousy then gets the upper hand, but this gives way to respect when she learns the rank of the stranger. Kokusenya, who is the son of a trusted minister of the Ming Emperors, makes up his mind to restore that dynasty, and proceeds with his father and mother to China, leaving the Princess in his wife’s charge. On arriving there, they resolve to seek the assistance of Kanki, a Chinese magnate who had married a sister of Kokusenya. While travelling through a forest on their way to his castle, Kokusenya bearing his aged mother on his back, they fall in with a tiger. Disdaining to use his sword against the beast, Kokusenya gains the mastery over him after a struggle, which, doubtless, gave much gratification to the “ groundlings” of the Osaka theatre. A hunting party arrives; their leader claims the tiger for Ri Toten, the traitorous one-eyed minister of the first act. Kokusenya replies in a style of inimitable braggadocio. With the tiger’s assistance he subdues the huntsmen, and forms of them the nucleus of an army with which to conquer the Tartar invaders. Kokusenya’s first care is to cut off the pig-tails of his recruits, and to give them new names, in which Japanese terminations are stuck on to names indicative of their foreign origin, One of CHIKAMATSU 285 these names is Igirisu(English)-bei. We may well wonder what an Englishman was doing dans cette galére. ACT III Kokusenya, at the head of his newly recruited force, arrives before Kanki’s castle, but he is absent, and they are refused admittance. The old mother, however, is permitted to enter in the guise of a prisoner bound with cords. Kanki returns. The old woman begs him earnestly to espouse her son Kokusenya’s cause. He forthwith draws his sword and tries to kill his wife, but is prevented. He then explains that he has not suddenly gone mad, but that if he joined Kokusenya people would say he was influenced by women, so it was necessary to remove his wife as a preliminary to granting her request. His wife being still alive, this was impossible. News of this refusal being conveyed to Kokusenya, he bounds over the moat and parapet of the castle,! and presents himself before Kanki. After mutual Homeric defiance they prepare to fight, when Kanki’s wife ex- poses her breast, showing that in order to remove all obstacle to the plans of her husband and brother, she has given herself a death-wound. The two then frater- nise, and a quantity of warlike gear is produced, in which Kokusenya is clad, his mother looking on with great admiration. She then commits suicide, enjoining on her son and Kanki to show no weakness in fight- ing against the Tartars, but to regard them as the enemies of mother and wife. She dies with a smile on her face, gazing at the gallant appearance of Koku- senya in the new armour supplied him by Kanki. 1 Incidents like this remind us that it was a marionette theatre for which Chikamatsu wrote. Puppets can do many things impossible to human actors, 286 JAPANESE LITERATURE ACT IV We now return to Go Sankei, who, at the end of the first act, had retired to a secluded place among the hills with the heir to the Ming throne. Here follows a Rip van Winkle episode, at the end of which Go Sankei finds that the young Prince has become a boy of seven, whose voice sounds to him “like the first song of the nightingale heard in some secluded valley where snow still lies,” Kokusenya’s father now appears upon the scene, accom- panied by Kokusenya’s wife and the Princess, who have come over from Japan. Whilst they are giving mutual explanations the enemy come in chase; but the gods having been prayed to, a cloud issues from a cave and forms a bridge, over which they cross an abyss to the mountain on the other side. The enemy attempt to follow, but the bridge is blown away by a puff of wind. The five hundred foes tumble to the bottom and are crushed to pieces. GD) EV: Kanki, Kokusenya, and Go Sankei hold a grand council of war, at which the most impossible nonsense is talked. A letter arrives from Kokusenya’s father, stating that finding life at his age, seventy-three, not worth living, he is about to find death in the enemy’s ranks. The three, full of determination to save him, rush off to Nanking, now the Tartar King’s stronghold. The scene changes to Nanking. Kokusenya’s father appears before the gate and challenges Ri Toten to single combat. The Tartar King is seen on the battlements. By his order the old man is seized and brought into the city. Kokusenya and his party appear before the CHIKAMATSU 287 walls. Ri Toten tells Kokusenya that he must choose between his father committing ara-kivi or their both going back to Japan. Consternation of Kokusenya and his party. Speech by Kokusenya’s father, remind- ing him of his mother’s dying injunctions, and adjuring him not to think of his fate. Kokusenya is about to spring at the Tartar King, but is deterred by Ri Toten putting his sword to the old man’s throat. Go Sankei now throws himself at the feet of the Tartar King, offer- ing to give up Kokusenya if the lives of the other two were spared. No sooner has the Tartar King granted this request than Go Sankei springs at him, knocks him over, and binds him. Kokusenya also rushes forward, releases his father, and seizes Ri Toten. The Tartar King has five hundred blows of a bamboo administered to him, and is sent off a prisoner to Japan. Ri Toten’s head is wrenched off there and then, and the play ends amid general rejoicing. A summary of this kind gives too much prominence to the defects of this most famous of Japanese dramas. Its manner is better than its matter. There is a copious flow of sonorous and often picturesque language, of exalted sentiment, and sententious oratory, which divert the reader’s (and still more the audience’s) attention from the improbabilities of the story. The personages do and say many absurd things; yet they speak and bear them- selves in a manner not altogether unworthy of tragic heroes. It may be added that even in his maddest moods Chikamatsu never neglects dramatic force of situation, and that he has a turn for impressive dialogue which ought not to. be ignored. Dulness is not among the numerous faults of the Kokusenya Kassen. The European reader is not likely to relish the more 288 JAPANESE LITERATURE poetical passages of this drama, with their pivot-words and closely woven allusive phrases. Yet possibly there is more in them than we are willing to acknowledge. The Japanese find them the choicest part of the work, and they might not unreasonably deny to foreigners the right to sit in judgment upon the finer raptures of their national muse. As a poet Chikamatsu may readily be allowed one merit: if Japan ever produces epic, drama- tic, or long narrative poems ‘of importance, he will have done much to prepare the way. The popularity of the Kokusenya Kassen with the audiences of Osaka was so great as to call for two con- tinuations in the same style, and it is still one of the stock pieces of the Japanese theatre. KABUKI THEATRE Meanwhile a somewhat different development of the dramatic art was taking place—chiefly at Yedo. Kabuki theatres, which had men for actors, had been established there before the middle of the seventeenth century. The pieces produced in these theatres were at first the com- position of the actors engaged in them, but towards the beginning of the eighteenth century! we hear of definite authors whose works were published under the title of Kyaku-bon. Native critics agree that the Kyaku-bon contain little that is of value as literature. In form .they approach the European drama far more nearly than do the Joruri. The dialogue is here all-important, the chorus, with its narratives and poetical descriptions, taking a subordinate position or being altogether wanting. 1 The first of the series of great actors bearing the name of Ichikawa Dan- juro made his début on the stage in 1673.