Chapter VI: Japanese Evenings

Every land has evening entertainments of some kind. In Japan people go to theatres, including the movies, and attend banquets in tea houses where there are _geisha_ singers. Plays in the theatre, however, often begin at noon and last until midnight. One evening a Japanese friend took me to the Meiji-za, a great theatre of Tokyo. First of all we had to check our shoes at the door, as we might our hats and coats in America. To reach our box we went up a passageway covered with grass or reed matting. It was quite a different box from those in American theatres, for it was only about a foot deep, and in place of chairs there were half a dozen cushions on the matting-covered floor. We sat down cross-legged on these and looked about us. Most of the house was filled with long, shallow inclosures divided by what looked like low, narrow benches, and the floor sloped gently toward the stage. But the hundreds of people who were watching the play did not sit on the benches. They all squatted in the shallow inclosures, and used the benches as tables. The aisles, instead of being lower than the seats, were wooden runways raised above them. Boys in bare feet, or wearing foot mittens, ran noiselessly back and forth along these aisles, carrying tea and rice and other kinds of food and sweetmeats to the spectators. Many of the people sat in family groups, men, women, and children, sipping tea and eating with chopsticks while they watched the actors.

All the actors were men, but some of them played women’s roles. They were dressed in strange and gorgeous costumes, such as are never seen now in real life in Japan. The Japanese have a different taste in plays from that of Western peoples. They do not seem to like plays on modern, everyday subjects, but prefer the stories of ancient times. Probably that is the reason the actors do not look or act or speak like the people of to-day. If a Japanese actor walked out upon the stage in ordinary clothing, and spoke as he would talk on the street or in his house, he would be considered a very poor actor, or no actor at all. There are now a few theatres in Japan where plays of modern life are given, but nearly all the people prefer the old kind.

Instead of speaking in his everyday voice, each actor tries to talk deep down in his chest, so that he sounds like a giant down a well. When the part he is playing becomes very exciting, as during a fight with another character, he may roar like a lion. If he is playing the part of a woman, or a comic role, he turns and talks with a falsetto screech that suggests a boy whose voice is changing. To foreigners all this seems very queer indeed, but the Japanese think it is just the thing to do, and the more a man roars or screeches the more he is applauded. When they are pleased, the people do not clap their hands, and of course they cannot stamp their feet. Instead they shout louder and louder words that mean “Good!” or “Well done!”

Playing in a Way All Their Own

In the play we saw, there were battles on the stage, with many generals in ancient costumes and much waving of strange old flags. Soldiers armed with spears and other ancient weapons, and dressed as Japanese soldiers were a thousand years ago, swept back and forth across the bare boards. There was almost no scenery. A paper arch set up in the middle of the stage was supposed to represent the gate of a city encircled by a great stone wall, and half a dozen sticks represented a forest. Sometimes the actors ran back and forth along the raised aisles, still reciting in their strange voices. Several times two of them, or even whole bands representing _samurai_ (ancient warriors), fought with swords out on the runways, right over the heads of the audience. The spectators did not seem to mind this at all, but continued to sip tea and eat food from little bowls.

No audience ever gave better attention, however, for all the eating and drinking. When rival bands of warriors fought, the people watched every movement of their swords, and shouted with excitement when one man or another pretended to be killed. In our plays such a man would have lain where he had fallen until the curtain came down. But here there was no curtain, and the dead man merely got up and walked off the stage. The play that seemed to affect the audience most was one having a scene between a small boy and his father, who had promised to let himself be killed for the Emperor. There was much blowing of noses all over the house, and many of the spectators were almost crying out loud. Yet the play was very old, and had been given so often that probably every one in the audience knew what it was all about and what would be the ending of it. When one play was over, another began immediately. In one of the great theatres of Tokyo there is a revolving stage, so that the instant one set of actors finishes playing another group is swung around before the audience. But I did not enjoy these strange plays as much as the Japanese audience did, and after watching them for a couple of hours we went out, recovered our shoes, and took a rickshaw home.

The Popular Movies

The Japanese like old stories in their movies also. Passing along one of the theatre streets of Tokyo, or of Osaka, the second largest city of Japan, you would see long rows of posters. But instead of showing modern people in everyday dress, using telephones and automobiles, the posters are pictures of actors in ancient costumes, with strange old weapons. Men, you can see, have played the women’s parts in the film, and even in the picture you can make out that the actors had their faces painted white, as do those on the stage. Nowadays one hears occasionally of a Japanese screen actress, but it will be a long time before many enter that field.

If you went into one of these motion-picture houses with the gay posters and Japanese lanterns before it, you probably would not understand much of the picture. The titles, being in Japanese, you could no more read than you could read hen tracks in the sand. Besides, the story of those ancient days in Japan, with the queer customs and point of view the Japanese then had, would be very different from any American story. Yet probably it would be as familiar to the Japanese children in the audience as the story of Washington crossing the Delaware is to you, and they would understand it even if there were no titles at all.

Those same children, however, have almost as hard a time understanding the kind of film-stories Americans know so well as we would to understand theirs. There are now quite a number of Japanese makers of their own kind of motion pictures. But often, when there are not enough films on hand to fill out the evening, the manager puts on an American film or two. So thousands of Japanese children have seen our American movie stars. Since few of the audience can read the English titles of these films, a man usually stands at one side of the darkened stage and shouts out the story in Japanese as it goes along. But perhaps he also cannot read English, and is not very sure what some of the action in the picture means. In many little ways Americans act quite differently from Japanese, and all such things are puzzling to a Japanese audience when it sees them on the screen. For instance, the Japanese do not shake hands, but bow up and down to each other, rubbing their thighs. So the small boys in the audience wonder what in the world the strange people in this picture mean by grabbing one another by the hand. Perhaps they are going to wrestle! But no, they are smiling at each other, and look very friendly, and before long they let go, without either one having tried to throw the other.

The Japanese Do No Kissing

In Japan a man and woman, if well bred, do not speak to each other on the street; a wife would not take her husband’s arm in public and they certainly would not kiss each other good-by at the railway station. The Japanese do not kiss, anyway; a mother shows affection for her child by rubbing her cheek against his, and even that she does not do when strangers are looking. So you can imagine how odd American or European films seem to the Japanese, especially to the boys and girls, or to those grown-ups who have never traveled in other countries or read much about the ways of other people. Of all the motion pictures America sends abroad, the Japanese, and a great many other foreign peoples, seem to like best the Wild West films in which there is much horseback riding across rough and mountainous country. Perhaps this is because such films are easy to understand, as well as because any people as sturdy as the Japanese like what we sometimes call red-blooded action. It is interesting to know that such films are as popular in Japan as they are in America.

The Geisha Girls of Japan

Keystone View Co.

Geisha girls in their gay costumes on their way to entertain guests.
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When a Japanese business man wishes to entertain a client from another city, he does not invite him home to dinner, nor even to his club. Instead, he offers him an expensive meal at a restaurant or tea house, and has several _geisha_, or “accomplished persons,” in to help amuse his guest. The _geisha_ are a class of women who sing and dance and play on instruments such as the _koto_ and _samisen_, perform the elaborate tea ceremony that has come down from olden times in Japan, and do other things of that kind. Although they are, in a way, actresses, they do not appear on the stage, but at evening parties. The Japanese business man would almost certainly not bring his wife or daughters with him to the dinner he had arranged. He would, however, have at least one _geisha_ to do nothing but wait upon his guest, to pour out his tea or wine, help him to choose the best food from what the regular waiting-girls of the restaurant brought, and so on. Others would arrange the flowers, squat on their cushions and thrum the _samisen_, sing the queer music of Japan; some, probably the youngest and most lively, would dance.

A Tea-House Dinner

The same man who had his employee take us into his house invited my wife and me to a tea-house dinner in our honor. There were of course polite servants at the door to take our shoes, as well as our hats and coats. Soon we were all kneeling on cushions in a very fine room ten or twelve mats square, as the Japanese would say, and with beautiful paintings on the oiled paper walls. Three young women, in much more gay and costly kimonos than one sees on the streets or in the homes, at once began making us comfortable. They had their jet-black hair done up in the elaborate Japanese fashion, like a great Russian wool cap, with a few flowers in it. They showed much surprise at and interest in my wife, for Japanese wives do not come to dinners given for their husbands, and it seemed very strange to them that foreign women could. They stared a great deal, for that is not considered impolite in Japan, and they asked many questions about the foreign clothes that looked so queer to them. They wished to know whether there were _geisha_ in America also, and were very curious about all our customs.

While we ate, the oldest girl played and sang, the other two serving us tea and food. The head _geisha_ acts as hostess, and does her best to make her guests enjoy the evening. When the two younger ones began to dance, their dancing was not what we would call by that name at home. They moved slowly back and forth, squatted, bowed down to the ground, rose again, slipped to and fro across the matting in their foot-mittens, opened and closed and waved and turned a fan that each held in her hand. When it was time for us to go, all three saw us to the door, and kneeled to touch their hair to the floor as a way of saying _sayonara_, the Japanese good-by. Though we had not seen him do so, we knew that our host had given, or would give, them plenty of money for their evening’s entertainment. For though they had smiled and acted all the time we were there as if they were high-class ladies who took great pleasure in entertaining us, they make a business of hospitality.

Girls who are to become _geisha_ begin their training early, often when they are eight or ten. There are training schools for them, where they are usually taken by their parents. The head of the school pays for everything, but the _geisha_ girl must pay him back after graduation. It is often ten years or more before she has earned enough to be out of debt for her training and can begin to give money to her parents. The Japanese hold their fathers and mothers in great honor, and most of the girls who become _geisha_ do so either to save their parents from supporting them or in order to be able to take care of their parents in old age. So, under the smiles and the cheerful exterior of the _geisha_ who sings or dances for you, there may be deep sorrow. When their youth is gone and they are no longer attractive to hosts and guests, some of the _geisha_ marry and go back to their native village; others become head _geisha_, and help in the training and managing of the younger ones.

One of the favorite actors of the Japanese stage, in his most famous
role. In Japan, the old national legends are played over and over,
year after year, and the people never tire of them.
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