 Chapter 19 of East by West by Henry W. Lucy. We reach Tokyo in time for dinner, after having in six days travelled two hundred and fifty miles via circuitous route. It may be useful to know that the journey cost us, a party of three, a trifle over thirty-six pounds, or two pounds each per day. On arriving at the hotel we remarked that Ito was coming along with our baggage. The mention of our guide's name had a remarkable effect upon the landlord. His face lighted up with joyous recognition. Ito, he explained, Ito, great friend of mine! His house burned down last night, everything lost, his mother burned out. It is a long time since I have seen a man in such a state of exultation, that he should by good luck be the very first to tell Ito this great news, after a sojourn of six days out of the reach of letters or newspapers. Ito might have gone straight home to Yokohama, and then someone else would have told him. Whilst I was wondering how I could keep this really amiable man from Ito, or at least induce him to break the news gently, the guide himself appeared. The landlord made a dash at him, and seizing him by the hand as if to congratulate him on some momentously happy event. He cried, Ito, your house burned down last night, I got peligram! Ito was evidently stunned at the blow thus ruthlessly dealt. It was only yesterday he had been telling me how he had bought the house just two months ago, and set his mother and sister up in it. Now it was gone. And Japanese houses are never insured for the sufficient reason that no insurance company will grant policies. Well, he said after a pause during which the landlord had been eagerly scanning his face. It can't be helped. This was disappointing, but the landlord had other shots in his locker. Everything burned up, he cried. Well, said Ito, with a brave little smile, it can't be helped. Things were looking hopeless, now was the time to bring up all reserves. And your mother burned out, he roared, greedily devouring Ito's expression with his eyes. Anybody hurt? Now, said the landlord, a little chat-fallen. Well, it can't be helped, said Ito, forlornly going back to his formula. After this the landlord retired utterly routed. Never had he had such a welcome home for a traveller, and Ito had taken it all as calmly as if it was a match that had been burned. The fire was a very serious one to others besides Ito. It began about eleven o'clock at night, at the top of the Japanese street in Yokohama already described. The fire god was promptly brought out and placed between the boundary of the fire and the houses yet untouched, but the flames laughed him to scorn, would even have burned him too, had he not from time to time been moved higher up to establish a fresh boundary. Water was scarcely of any more avail. Japanese houses are made of wood and paper, the materials in ordinary use in Western lands the kindling of fire. Once a flame the fire goes as far as the wind will carry it, and by one o'clock in the morning four hundred and sixty houses were burned to the ground and their inmates homeless. I saw a letter written by a native clerk engaged in one of the European houses. It is a gem of epistolary correspondence. It ran thus. November 7, 1883. My dear Tolbert, dear sir, will you please give me a only one-day holdy, because I am very sorry my house set in fire at this early morning, therefore I most look after my family and co. Your up-stair boy. We had arranged to go to the theatre in the evening, but in view of Ito's affliction I suggested that the visit should be postponed. Ito, however, with the philosophy that had actuated him on first hearing the news, declined to be let off. I can't do no good now," he said. It will be all the same if I go down to Yokohama by the last train. So it was settled to my permanent satisfaction, for it happened that on this particular night we saw the Japanese drama at its best, located in a handsome building, presented by a crack company, and the peace chance seemed to be one of the most characteristic and widely popular. The theatre at Tokyo is a new one of immense size, and was, on the night of our visit, densely crowded, notwithstanding the fact that the prices are, by comparison with English theatres, surprisingly high. But then, as Ito observed, you can stay all day, if you like. Theatre going in Japan is a serious social undertaking. The doors open early in the morning, and the performance is not over till ten o'clock at night. Thus, when the Japanese go to the theatre, they literally make a day of it. There is, in connection with the theatre at Tokyo, a tea-house where refreshments are obtainable at reasonable prices. This is within the building, and people who have once obtained entrance are permitted freely to pass from the theatre to the tea-room. But there must arise occasions when, in the course of the day, there comes to persons a desire to leave the theatre. The head of the family may want to go home to look through his correspondence, or to transact an hour's business by way of foil to the exciting pleasure of the drama. In such case, a device is brought into use worthy the attention of English theatre managers. Instead of receiving a pass-out check, the patron of the drama holds out his right hand, and on the wrist the attendant stamps a mark which has the advantage of not being transferable. Hence there is, at the door of the Japanese theatre, no crowd of boys or men begging for your check. All one who has been out has to do on returning is to show his wrist, and he is passed in. Theatre-going being essentially a family arrangement, places are disposed of accordingly. There are, of course, no chairs, everyone squatting on the floor. But in the Tokyo theatre the auditorium is broken up into something like sheep-pens in which family circles or companies of friends squat. Everywhere there is the hibachi and the everlasting pipe. Men and women fill the minute pipe, thrust it in the live ashes of hibachi, take their three whiffs, and then knock out the dust, presently beginning the process over again. On the night of our visit there was a special attraction in the nearest approach to a ballet permitted by Japanese customs. A body of forty-three dancing-girls had been engaged, and since dancing on the public stage is an innovation in Japan, there was a great rush to see it. The girls themselves were handsomely paid, and by way of compromise with a consciousness of infringing immemorial custom, they handed over their wages to a local charity. This is all very well to begin with, but there is no doubt that the thin end of the wedge has been inserted, and within twelve months this exceedingly modest approach to the ballet will be further pursued. The dance itself was to the western taste of melancholy and soul-depressing performance. Forty-three damsels dressed precisely as if they had walked off a Japanese tea-tree moved in a single file across the stage, and down the gangway, running at right angles with the stage, and passing through the mass of the audience in the pit. This is a peculiarity of the Japanese theatre, which is really very effective. Instead of the actors and actresses entering from right or left of the stage, or from behind the scenes, they walk onto the stage, as it were, out of the pit. The green room, instead of being at the back of the stage, is at the front of the house, and there are two gangways, one for approach and the other for exit. Another striking peculiarity, and I venture to think an improvement in the Japanese stage carpentry, is that the scenes revolve upon an axis, something on the principle of the merry-go-round at the fair. There is no dragging of scenes hither and thither by heated supers, and no necessity for weights. A scene is set by a revolution of the machinery, which brings not only the scene, but the actors in full view of the audience. When the scene is played out, there is another turn at the crank. Scene 80 is ground out of sight, and scene 81 comes on. In cases where an untimely death takes place on the stage, and the scene not being closed, it is not desirable together to change it, two figures draped in black, with black hoods over their heads, enter and remove the corpse. According to common understanding, these hooded figures are supposed to be invisible. In western countries, the movements of stage machinery are directed from the privacy of the side wings. In Japan, on the left-hand side of the stage facing the audience, there kneels a man with a piece of wood in either hand, shaped after the fashion of a clog. When a scene is to be changed, he wraps on the floor with the clogs, and the machinery moves. His duties are further extended in the direction of imitating footsteps. Thus an actor entering by one of the gangways already described, his approach is heralded by an excellent imitation of running footsteps played by the man with the clogs. Only there is this peculiarity about it, that reversing the ordinary state of affairs, he begins the pattering of feet in the distance with tremendous rapping, which cleverly dies away to the slightest tapping as the footsteps approach nearer to the stage, and might therefore be presumed to be more audible. On the other hand, a kettle drum, which forms a prominent feature in the orchestra, occasionally and apparently apropos de botte, begins to be beaten with slow tapping, increases at tremendous speed until it reaches a deafening roar at which it stops as suddenly and as inconsequentially as it began. The orchestra is composed partly of instrumentalists and partly of vocalists, both sitting a cage on either side of the stage, the front being fenced by a gauzy trellis work through which the figures are dimly discerned. Whilst the drum suddenly goes off in a kind of epileptic fit, and a most unmusical thrumming is upraised by a manipulation of an instrument called the samisen, the vocal orchestra on the other side from time to time break forth in most monotonous and most melancholy chants. The stranger notes that whilst this chanting is going forward, the actors on the stage interrupt their play and stand or sit motionless and silent. Ito explains that these are the giorori singers, and their duty is to describe to the audience what the silent actor or actress is at the moment thinking of, to depict the passion that tears his breast or the regrets that sadden it. Thus if Mr Irving were playing Shylock at the Lyceum at Tokyo, instead of being troubled during the trial scene to express his feelings by movement of the facial muscles, he would stand quite quiet whilst the singers in the cage would describe to the audience that his breast was torn with rage, because having expected to cut a pound of flesh from the plump person of Antonio, he now discovered that owing to the erudition of Portia, the suspicious bearing of the judges and the weight of general circumstances, he could enjoy his revenge only at peril of his own life. The forty-three dancing girls entering by the gangway on the right of the stage advanced with measured and unvaried movements. First of all, with right hand uplifted above their heads, and left hand extended downwards and slightly outwards, they swayed their bodies to the right. Then with position of arms reversed, they swayed to the left. Thirdly, they slowly turned round. Fourthly, they took three steps forward, then swayed to the right, next to the left, and so on, da capo. It took about forty minutes thus to advance by one long gangway across the stage, and disappear by the other, always with the same motion, with the strumming of the samisen from the orchestra, and the intermittent epilepsy of the drum. After ten minutes the performance began to pour on the jaded western palette, but Ito sat with lips slightly parted, eyes fixed in admiration too deep for speech, and so sat all the audience through the full forty minutes. Beautiful! Ito exclaimed, when it was over, very nice! The last damsel, always swaying to the right, then to the left, and slowly turning round, disappeared through the doorway amid thunder of applause, and the thread of the drama which had been interrupted was taken up. The play had been going forward through the greater part of the day, and when we arrived at the theatre somewhere after eight o'clock, it was pretty well advanced. The scene opened in front of a pretty tea-house, and revealed a two-sworded man, apparently on the rampage. He was asking a girl for a drink, which she served him with ludicrous contortions indicative of abject fear which convulsed the audience. It should be mentioned in further proof of that modesty on the stage which makes it a memorable thing even for singing girls who appear in the decorous dance, that in Japanese theatres all the female parts are taken by men. The two-sworded man had evidently been recently engaged in active strife. His unsheathed sword was stained with blood. As he drank, he held the sword behind him by way of soothing the frightened damsel. In this position he was taken unawares by a sortie of guests from the tea-house, who apparently resuming proceedings earlier commenced rushed upon him with six brooms and other things picked up haphazard. But the two-sworded man, refreshed with the water, proved invincible. His terrible sword flashed in the air, and his vanquished assailants were standing after a brief tussle quietly with their backs to him as if he were going to measure them for a coat. He drew the sword slowly but firmly across their naked flesh, and they rolled upon the stage, the gore freely flowing. Two of the assailants fled, but whilst one man was being sliced, another stood by, and when his turn came, presented his back, was slashed in the same business-like fashion, and rolled upon the stage with more ebolitions of gore, greeted with loud applause from the gallery. I could not see by what trick these bounteous gouts of blood were made suddenly to appear, but it was very cleverly done. In scene 143, or was it 195, the two-sworded man had another encounter with a couple of casual passes by. This was a good up-and-down fight, the combatants rolling on the ground two to one. And the two-sworded man added two more victims to his lengthening roll, and drew forth another cheer by wiping his dripping sword on the edge of the stone bridge by which the fight had taken place. Whilst thus engaged, a woman appeared on the scene. She uttered a shriek at sight of the two-sworded man, and he emitted a fearful growl. By this time we were getting used to the spirit of the play, and were not at all surprised to see the two-sworded man approach the woman and slay her. After hacking her till she fell to the ground, he placed the sword in her mouth, and thrust it so far down her throat that in withdrawing it he was compelled to put his foot on her chest, and nearly fell backward as the sword came out, an effect which again brought down the gallery, though if they only knew it, it is as old as the day when Last Porcena marched on Rome, and Horatius and his two comrades kept the bridge. On Astua's throat Horatius right firmly pressed his heel, and thrice and four times tugged a mane ere he wrenched out the steel. This done, the man with the clogs beat a rattling accompaniment, at which signal two hooded figures entered and carried off the now embarrassing agglomeration of corpses. The next scene is an exceedingly pretty one, though as nobody is murdered it falls a little flat. The villain is discovered standing in front of a Japanese house, drawing water from a well, such a well as may be seen in any street in Japan. He washes his ensanguine sword and finally his feet. Whilst thus engaged a servant maid comes out and discovers him, again going through a pantomime of terror, which, though perhaps a little overdone for English taste, was really very funny. Ito explains that the two-sworded man, having escaped from his enemies, a considerable proportion of whom must by this time be dead, has come on a visit to his uncle and aunts. The girl, when she finds her voice, informs him that his uncle is out. Presently the old gentleman is discovered entering by the gangway. It is a wet night and a dark one, so the uncle carries his umbrella, whilst before him goes a servant with another umbrella and a lantern to light his footsteps. This was a pretty scene and a realistic one. The man evidently approaching his own house, instead of accidentally turning up from the side as he would have had to do on an English stage. As the uncle and his servant cross the gangway, clogs Patta loud for the distant footsteps, falling to a mere tapping as he comes nearer. The drum goes off in a fit, the samisen is thrummed, and whilst uncle and nephew stand and look at each other, the jewellery singers explain their feelings. Then the stage revolves, and we discover the two-sworded man squatted down in the middle of the room. To him enter uncle and aunt, who squat on either side of him at a brief distance. The nephew relates with judicious moderation his sanguinary story amid slow music from the caged minstrels on right and left who play and sometimes chant. The story is intolerably long, and is varied by few interruptions on the part of his listeners. Once the aunt interposes with the remark, delightful in its naivete, It was very fortunate you did not kill yourself, hurting so many other people, she says. The audience who know all about it having been there since half-boss seven in the morning cried true, and good! It is curious that the sympathies of the audience are entirely with the two-sworded man, a circumstance explained by fuller knowledge of the drama. Captain Brinkley, editor of the principal English paper in Japan, a profound student and an authoritative writer on the Japanese drama, subsequently related to me the full bearings of this popular play. It is the old story of man's love and woman's perfidy. The two-sworded man had had entrusted to him by his master a precious family heirloom. Delilah had betrayed him, had joined a conspiracy to deprive him of his treasure, and had imperiled what to the honest man was even of more value his character as a faithful servitor. These many people he had slain were concerned in the plot, and the woman from whose throat he had found such difficulty in withdrawing his avenging sword was Delilah. Now he had come to the house of his uncle to tell his melancholy story, and to perform the only act left to a dishonoured and disgraced Japanese, that of suicide. Having completed his narrative the nephew announces his intention to commit Harakiri, a duty to his family highly applauded both by uncle and aunt, though the aunt to do her justice shed some tears. Everything could exceed the politeness of the bearing of each member of the party towards the other at this critical juncture. Before addressing each other they bowed till their foreheads almost touched the ground, and their words were full of high-flown courtesy. I observed that the two-sworded man was much longer in cutting his own throat than he was in dispatching other persons, but an end must come to all things and there is an end to his long harangue. The aunt spreads upon the floor a white cloth, without which no Harakiri can be properly conducted. The nephew kneels upon it, the aunt and uncle grouping themselves on either side, the aunt still audibly in tears. The nephew, with a polite gesture, borrows his aunt's pocket handkerchief, which he, with much graciousness of manner, hands to him. He wraps it midway on the blade of his sword, and then thrusts the weapon into his stomach, working it about to the ecstatic delight of the gallery, which reaches a climax when the gore rushes forth in unlimited profusion. Suddenly there is a sound of drums outside, there is a cry, the police are coming. The two-sworded man thereupon cuts his throat, the stage revolves, and the hapless nephew, the didactic uncle and the tearful aunt disappear, with the clogs wrapping, the drum madly throbbing, the sammith ends strumming, and the party in the cage on the right explaining the feelings of the uncle and aunt, which indeed may be well imagined.