2
70. A Sweet-stuff Stall 184
71. A Canal in Osaka 188
72. Umbrellas and Commerce 190
73. Playfellows 194
74. Youth and Age 202
75. Lookers-on 204

ART AND THE DRAMA

[Illustration: AN ACTOR]

CHAPTER I

ART AND THE DRAMA

I always agree with that man who said, "Let me make the nation's songs
and I care not who frames her laws," or words to that effect, for, in my
opinion, nothing so well indicates national character or so keenly
accentuates the difference between individuals and nations as the way in
which they spend their leisure hours; and the theatres of Japan are
thoroughly typical of the people's character. It would be utterly
impossible for the Japanese to keep art out of their lives. It creeps
into everything, and is as the very air they breathe. Art with them is
not only a conscious effort to achieve the beautiful, but also an
instinctive expression of inherited taste. It beautifies their homes and
pervades their gardens; and perhaps one never realises this
all-dominating power more fully than when in a Japanese theatre, which
is, invariably, a veritable temple of art. But here with us in the West
it is different. We have no art, and our methods merely lead us to
deception, while we do not begin to understand those few great truths
which form the basis of oriental philosophy, and without which
perfection in the dramatic art is impossible. For example, the
philosophy of balance, of which the Japanese are past masters, is to us
unknown. The fact that Nature is commonplace, thereby forming a
background, as it were, for Tragedy and the spirit of life to work, has
never occurred to us; while the background of our Western play is not by
any means a plan created by a true artist upon which to display the
dramatic picture as it is in Japan, but simply a background to advertise
the stage-manager's imitative talent. The result is, of course, that the
acting and the environment are at variance instead of being in harmonic
unity. But we in the West have not time to think of vague things, such
as balance and breadth and the creating of pictures. What we want is
realism; we want a sky to look like a real sky, and the moon in it to
look like a real moon, even if it travels by clock-work, as it has been
known to