The Japanese Theatre and the Story of the Thunder Cat. Treating also of the Quiet Places and the Dead Man in the Street
TO the theatre we went, through the mud and much rain. Internally it was nearly dark, for the deep blue of the audience’s dress soaked up the scanty light of the kerosene lamps. There was no standing room anywhere except next to the Japanese policeman, who in the cause of morals and the Lord Chamberlain had a corner in the gallery and three chairs all to himself. He was quite four feet eight inches high, and Napoleon at St. Helena could not have folded his arms more dramatically. After some grunting — I fear we were upsetting the principles of the Constitution — he consented to give us one chair, receiving in return a Burma cheroot which I have every reason to believe blew his little head off. A pit containing fifty rows of fifty people and a bonding-layer of babies, with a gallery which might have held twelve hundred, made up the house. The building was as delicate a piece of cabinet work as any of the houses; roof, floor, beams, props, verandahs, and partitions were of naked wood, and every other person in the house was smoking a tiny pipe and knocking out the ashes every two minutes. Then I wished to fly; death by the auto-da-fe not being anywhere paid for in the tour; but there was no escape by the one little door where pickled fish was being sold between the acts.
‘Yes, it’s not exactly safe,’ said the Professor, as the matches winked and sputtered all round and below. ‘But if that curtain catches that naked light on the stage, or you see this matchwood gallery begin to blaze, I’ll kick out the back of the refreshment-buffet, and we can walk home.’
With this warm comfort the drama began. The green curtain dropped from above and was whisked away, and three gentlemen and a lady opened the ball by a dialogue conducted in tones between a ‘burble’ and a falsetto whisper. If you wish to know their costumes, look at the nearest Japanese fan. Real Japs of course are like men and women, but stage Japs in their stiff brocades are line for line as Japs are drawn. When the four sat down, a little boy ran among them and settled their draperies, pulling out a sash bow here, displaying a skirt-fold there. The costumes were as gorgeous as the plot was incomprehensible. But we will call the play ‘The Thunder Cat, or Harlequin Bag o’ Bones and the Amazing Old Woman, or The Mammoth Radish, or The Superfluous Badger and the Swinging Lights.’
A two-sworded man in the black and gold brocade rose up and imitated the gait of an obscure actor called Henry Irving, whereat, not knowing that he was serious, I cackled aloud till the Japanese policeman looked at me austerely. Then the two-sworded man wooed the Japanese-fan lady, the other characters commenting on his proceedings like a Greek chorus till something — perhaps a misplaced accent — provoked trouble, and the two-sworded man and a vermilion splendour enjoyed a Vincent Crummles fight to the music of all the orchestra — one guitar and something that clicked — not castanets. The small boy removed their weapons when the men had sufficiently warred, and, conceiving that the piece wanted light, fetched a ten-foot bamboo with a naked candle at the end, and held this implement about a foot from the face of the two-sworded man, following his every movement with the anxious eye of a child intrusted with a typewriter. Then the Japanese-fan girl consented to the wooing of the two-sworded man, and with a scream of eldritch laughter turned into a hideous old woman — a boy took off her hair, but she did the rest herself. At this terrible moment a gilded Thunder Cat, which is a cat issuing from a cloud, ran on wires from the flies to the centre of the gallery, and a boy with a badger’s tail mocked at the two-sworded man. Then I knew that the two-sworded man had offended a Cat and a Badger, and would have a very bad time of it, for these two animals and the Fox are to this day black sorcerers. Fearful things followed, and the scenery was changed once every five minutes. The prettiest effect was secured by a double row of candles hung on strings behind a green gauze far up the stage and set swinging with opposite motions. This, besides giving a fine idea of uncanniness, made one member of the audience seasick.
But the two-sworded man was far more miserable than I. The bad Thunder Cat cast such spells upon him that I gave up trying to find out what he meant to be. He was a fat-faced low comedian King of the Rats, assisted by other rats, and he ate a magic radish with side-splitting pantomime till he became a man once more. Then all his bones were taken away,— still by the Thunder Cat,— and he fell into a horrid heap, illuminated by the small boy with the candle — and would not recover himself till somebody spoke to a magic parrot, and a huge hairy villain and several coolies had walked over him. Then he was a girl, but, hiding behind a parasol, resumed his shape, and then the curtain came down and the audience ran about the stage and circulated generally. One small boy took it into his head that he could turn head-over-heels from the Prompt side across. With great gravity, before the unregarding house, he set to work, but rolled over sideways with a flourish of chubby legs. Nobody cared, and the polite people in the gallery could not understand why the Professor and I were helpless with laughter when the child, with a clog for a sword, imitated the strut of the two-sworded man. The actors changed in public, and any one who liked might help shift scenes. Why should not a baby enjoy himself if he liked?
A little later we left. The Thunder Cat was still working her wicked will on the two-sworded man, but all would be set right next day. There was a good deal to be done, but Justice was at the end of it. The man who sold pickled fish and tickets said so.
‘Good school for a young actor,’ said the Professor. ‘He’d see what unpruned eccentricities naturally develop into. There’s every trick and mannerism of the English stage in that place, magnified thirty diameters, but perfectly recognisable. How do you intend to describe it?’
‘The Japanese comic opera of the future has yet to be written,’ I responded grandiloquently. ‘Yet to be written in spite of the Mikado. The badger has not yet appeared on an English stage, and the artistic mask as an accessory to the legitimate drama has never been utilised. Just imagine The Thunder Cat as a title for a serio-comic opera? Begin with a domestic cat possessed of magic powers, living in the house of a London tea-merchant who kicks her. Consider ——’
‘The lateness of the hour,’ was the icy answer. ‘To-morrow we will go and write operas in the temple close to this place.’
. . . . .
. . . . .
To-morrow brought fine drizzling rain. The sun, by the way, has been hidden now for more than three weeks. They took us to what must be the chief temple of Kobé and gave it a name which I do not remember. It is an exasperating thing to stand at the altars of a faith that you know nothing about. There be rites and ceremonies of the Hindu creed that all have read of and must have witnessed, but in what manner do they pray here who look to Buddha, and what worship is paid at the Shinto shrines? The books say one thing; the eyes, another.
The temple would seem to be also a monastery and a place of great peace disturbed only by the babble of scores of little children. It stood back from the road behind a sturdy wall, an irregular mass of steep-pitched roofs bound fantastically at the crown, copper-green where the thatch had ripened under the touch of time, and dull greyblack where the tiles ran. Under the eaves a man who believed in his God, and so could do good work, had carved his heart in............