Just as the impulse back of shibai had been the need of the people to possess their own theatre, so the rise and development of Joruri during the Tokugawa period was but the spirit of the common people seeking expression in music.
Dignity, tranquillity, and refinement characterised the ancient Court music and the complicated measures of the flute and drum of the Nō stage. Something more cheerful, more stirring and gay, was necessary as refreshment for the people. The instrument that caused a revolution in the musical world of Japan was the samisen (lit., three strings), which opened the floodgates for the inundation of the three towns by the greatest variety of fushi, or tunes.
The samisen was not indigenous, and most accounts agree that it came to Japan from the Loo Choo Islands. Some authors seek a Western origin for the samisen, and think it was brought in by the Portuguese. One old writer believed it to be an instrument used by the savages of Loo Choo Islands, made from the skin of sea snakes. The ancestor of the samisen is to-day carried by strolling minstrels in all the odd corners of China, and must have been introduced into Japan by way of the southern islands where the inhabitants were largely Chinese. The difference that exists at present between the two guitar-like instruments of the Asiatic continent and the Island Empire lies in the bodies,—that of China covered with snake-skin in the natural colours, while white tanned cat-skin serves the same purpose in Japan. The performer in both cases uses a plectrum to strike the three strings and thereby produces a whole world of rhythms unfamiliar to the ears of the Occidental.
The Chinese instrument came to Japan by an indirect route, and was not accompanied by musicians skilled in its mysteries. When it reached the hands of the blind biwa players they were unacquainted with the deep experience behind it, and were obliged to grope for a way themselves. The samisen led to a period of the greatest musical creativeness the country had ever witnessed, and the wonder grows that this innocent little instrument produced in some remote time as a necessity of the Chinese soul should have been discovered by the people of the three towns and adapted to suit their musical requirements with such astonishing results. Perhaps the magic measures of the samisen may yet meet some need of the people in Western lands, and so in the fullness of time please the ear of the whole world.
The samisen was not in use when O-Kuni and Nagoya Sansaburo began their collaboration, for their musicians borrowed the flute and drum of the Nō. Towards the end of the O-Kuni Kabuki, the samisen player had taken up his position behind the dancers, and a new and livelier element had become apparent in the performances.
Up to the advent of the samisen which brought about a complete change in the music in vogue among the people, the musical forms of the country had come to be the monopoly of the higher classes. The gagaku, or music of the Imperial Court, could not be heard on ordinary occasions, but was reserved for the highest functions. Transplanted from China in the early days of intercourse between the two countries, it was so far removed from affairs of everyday life as to belong to some celestial land. After a thousand years this ancient music is still heard at entertainments at Court, or in connection with Buddhist or Shinto ceremonies, and its slow and stately cadences produce a serenity in the minds of moderns that carries them back into an age when hurry was unknown.
This music was too lofty, and beyond the grasp or enjoyment of the people, even if it had been accessible to them. Entertainment was afforded by the blind minstrels who played the biwa—an instrument not unlike a lute in shape. They sang and recited the melancholy adventures of the Heike, who were exterminated in their struggle with the Genji clan, in sad and tragic tones—sounding the very depths of negation. There was but little inspiration in this minstrelsy for the good people of the three towns hungering for romance.
Likewise the Nō was reserved for the intellectuals, whose inner life had been sufficiently cultivated to appreciate its rarefied atmosphere of the unreal. Inseparable from the words and movements of the Nō were the rhythms of drum and flute, full of mystery, Buddhism, asceticism, its warriors and ghosts far removed from the world and its ways.
Before the samisen’s supremacy, the minstrels who went about relating their stories scratched the ribs of their fans to form the beats necessary to their recitals, and priests who sang songs to popularise their scriptures beat their rhythms on the same metal gong as that employed by O-Kuni. So necessary was rhythm as an accompaniment to these ballads that the early minstrels shook a bundle of sticks, or waved a metal rod like a baton.
With the greatly improved rhythms of the samisen at their command, minstrels sprang up in all directions, the new style of music being called Joruri, since the first ballad to be composed to the strains of the samisen concerned the love adventures of Joruri-hime, or Princess Joruri. Abundant materials were at hand, and the minstrels competed with each other in depicting the life of the time. The songs sung at festivals, by sailors, horsemen, farmers, vendors, were eagerly seized,—stories of battles and love, even religious propaganda formed the theme set to the ripple of the samisen.
This great activity culminated in the Joruri of Takemoto Gidayu who, gathering up all the existing materials, concentrated them in his little doll-theatre, the Takemoto-za of Osaka. Here Chikamatsu Monzaemon collaborated with him, by writing the plays for the marionettes that moved to the voice of minstrel and samisen accompaniment. Gidayu Joruri, or the balladry of Takemoto Gidayu, in turn had an overwhelming influence upon Kabuki.
It was Kineya Kisaburo who first introduced the samisen into the orchestra of Yedo Kabuki. Kisaburo was the grandson of Kineya Kangoro, a younger brother of Saruwaka Kansaburo, the founder of Yedo Kabuki. Kangoro was an expert in the O-Kuni Kabuki, and when young was attached to the Saruwaka-za as an actor. He had two actor sons, Kisaburo and Rokuzaemon. Later on Kisaburo gave up acting, and took up the samisen as his specialty. The name Kineya, or rice pounder, came from the crest chosen by Nakamura Kangoro. Thus it came about that this family of Kabuki musicians and singers were firmly established and have continued until the present day.
The Kineya genealogy is extremely complicated, but the headship of the house has been handed down from father to son. When there was a failure in blood relation, the best pupil succeeded. The present Kineya Rokuzaemon is the fourteenth in descent, a young man in the twenties. He is at the head of the Kineya musicians attached to the Imperial Theatre of Tokyo, possesses a good voice, and has appeared since he was a lad, growing up, as it were, in the service of the stage.
At the time of the fifth Kineya, the theatre music in which the family specialised became known as Nagauta (long poem or song). Before this, the Kineya singers had entertained with short pieces, but their art developed into something more important, for they furnished the accompaniment of drum, flute, and samisen, also the singing to which the actors danced in the music-posture dramas, or shosagoto, the most characteristic productions of Kabuki.
This style of theatre music originating in Yedo, it has always been distinguished as Yedo Nagauta. The music is reminiscent of the Nō, from which it has taken much of its technique. The large number of Nō dramas that have been popularised in order to suit Kabuki requirements have received special treatment at the hands of different members of the Kineya family, who possess some two hundred compositions.
There are several branches to Kineya—offshoots of the main line a hundred or more years ago—such as Yoshizumi, Fujita, and Yoshimura. The last two companies of musicians are chiefly attached to the Kabuki-za of Tokyo, although they occasionally appear at other theatres. Tokyo critics consider Yoshizumi Kosaburo to possess the best voice, but it is not strong, and his activities are confined to entertainments given in small halls or private residences. He is a ronin among the musicians, and is not a regular member of a theatre company. The two most popular Kineya singers at present are Yoshimura Ejuro, of the Imperial Theatre, and Fujita Utazo, of the Kabuki-za. Kineya Rokuzaemon, although young, has proved himself worthy to assume the responsibilities as head of this old family.
After Nagauta, the most popular theatre music is Tokiwazu. It belongs to Joruri, or balladry set to the samisen, one of the innumerable streams of this music of the people. The minstrel who founded this line was Miyakoji Bungojo, and his tune was styled Bungo-bushi. This became all the rage in Yedo, for the words that went with the new airs were highly sentimental, treating of love adventures, elopements, and kindred subjects. It had an unwholesome effect upon society, however, the Bungo-bushi inducing men and women to step out of the prescribed paths of virtue. The authorities did everything in their power to suppress it, but without success. It was but a reaction against the Puritanic rule in force, and the themes of Bungo-bushi—adultery, elopement, suicide, and gambling—were but an expression of dissatisfaction on account of the rigid feudal laws which continually interfered with the people, and caused them to break loose by way of protest.
Miyakoji Bungojo lived the life of which he sang, for he was the victim of an unhappy love affair and committed shinju, or double suicide, with a young woman. His adopted son, Mojidayu, succeeded to and completed his father’s work. When Bungo-bushi was forbidden, Mojidayu founded his own school. He was afraid that his new style of music might suffer the same fate as Bungo-bushi and made great changes. In order that it might survive he took all the life and sensation out of it, so that it now gives an impression of stiffness and repression.
When Mojidayu looked about for a name for his music, he hit upon one that offended the authorities. It was considered much too assuming and high-sounding, and was taken away from him in consequence. As Mojidayu lived near one of Yedo’s bridges, the Tokiwa-bashi, or Evergreen-Bridge, not far from the modern Bank of Japan, he selected Tokiwazu, and by this name his music has been known ever since. The present Mojidayu is the seventh in succession. Kiyomoto, another branch of Gidayu, is closely allied to Tokiwazu, and a great variety of these tunes may be heard among the people.
Shibai has faithfully preserved the most characteristic musical elements, and it is within the theatre that Japanese music is best represented. Gidayu Joruri, Yedo Nagauta, Tokiwazu, and Kiyomoto, with a variety of minor styles, form the musical settings for Kabuki productions.
The Gidayu Joruri in vogue in shibai is taken bodily from the Doll-theatre, and is used whenever a drama written originally for the marionettes is produced. In these masterpieces the actors are responsible for the dialogue, while the minstrel sings the descriptions to the accompanying rhythms of the samisen, giving the players an opportunity to posture and gesture to their hearts’ content. The Gidayu minstrel and samisen player kneel on cushions on a raised rostrum to the right of the stage, a silver or gold screen behind them. In front of the minstrel is a lacquered book-rest, where lies the ballad book (joruri-bon) in which the passages of the play are written by hand in large, bold characters. Sometimes the minstrel enters into the conversation, when he scolds or weeps, laughs or pleads, according to the emotion of the moment.
The difference between Gidayu and Nagauta is that the first is balladry and requires both recitation and song, conversation and description, while Nagauta is but a series of songs, solo or chorus, interspersed with sustained orchestral effects of samisen, drum, and flute in complicated rhythms. A full Nagauta corps, composed of many singers and samisen players, all in ceremonial stage costume, kneeling in a row on a red-covered dais across the stage, with the drummers grouped below, forming a background for the gorgeous characters of the music-drama, is an unforgettable and truly representative Kabuki picture.
In Nagauta the singers commit the words to memory, or have a small book close beside them. Like the chorus of the Nō stage, they carry a closed fan which is taken up in one hand as they sing, and placed in front of them at the end of their song. Tokiwazu and Kiyomoto partaking of the nature of Gidayu, the singers kneel behind the lacquered stands supporting their books, and are generally stationed on a high platform to left or back of the stage, the only instrument being the samisen. The movable platforms on which the musicians and singers sit are pushed on and pulled off as the exigencies of the descriptive dance require. Sometimes a curtain is held up in order that they may make good their escape from the stage.
As Nagauta had an affinity with the Nō, and treated of poetic and mystical subjects, the upper classes patronised the Kineya family, and it has therefore always enjoyed a superior position. These singers and musicians were regarded in the theatre as guests of honour, who had condescended to accept the hospitality of shibai. They were never classed so low in the social strata as the yakusha, but had a recognised rank and place.
With the members of the Gidayu, Tokiwazu, and Kiyomoto companies it was different. Their patrons were the wealthy merchants and tradespeople. And because Tokiwazu and Kiyomoto were so closely related to shibai, they came to be considered as something low class and vulgar. In addition, as the whole world of popular songs and short dances that formed the accomplishment of the geisha were associated with the samisen, this instrument was never heard in the homes of persons of taste and breeding, or those who valued their position of respectability.
One of the greatest defects of the samisen music is that it is divided into so many schools, each guarding jealously its traditions. When some new expression of the people’s will is necessary these separate elements may be concentrated to form a new musical force, just as Takemoto Gidayu recognised the value of the Joruri of his day and, combining them, established the balladry of the Doll-theatre on a firm foundation. Moreover, however much criticism may be levelled at the samisen for the trivial and superficial matter with which it is often related, it remains none the less the national music.
The samisen differs so largely from Western instruments that comparisons are useless. This is because samisen music depends almost completely on rhythm, rather than melody, to interpret emotion. Sound is inexhaustible, and by groupings of sounds in changing rhythms the samisen musicians gain the effects they desire. Western ears are so accustomed to harmony, that a departure from its stereotyped combinations causes bewilderment and irritation. Any other use of sound and rhythm than that to which their ears have grown familiar fails to affect them. The music of shibai presents a whole world of uncharted music material.
Ripple-clang-bang; smoothness, roughness, villainy, tranquillity; falling snow, a flight of birds, wind in the tree-tops; skirmish and fray, the peace of moonlight, the sorrow of parting, the rapture of spring; the infirmity of age, the gladness of lovers,—all these and much more the samisen expresses to those who are able to look beyond the curtain that shuts this musical world away from Western ears because of its baffling conventions of sound rather than melody.
Symbol of the despised yakusha, and in use in the none-too-irreproachable geisha world, the samisen has been held in disfavour by the upper classes. Left to their own devices, the people created their own theatre, music, and art. There was no impetus from the aristocracy, who held themselves aloof from the mass of the people. The samurai had little to do with the creative spirit, the scholars steeped in Chinese philosophy and literature looked backward to the glorious past of Japan’s great continental neighbour,—it was the people of the three towns, unaided, without guide or inspiration from their betters, who produced the music of shibai, the plebeian legacy of the Tokugawa age.