• No results found

J45) duration of their stay, as at the Takigi No Q

The appointment of high-ranking priests as Dengakuto for the festival was doubtless a result of the responsibilities of the office in having to raise funds with which to pay the

players and provide them with gifts. Whereas the Dengaku players were not formally bound to the temple and had to be fully rewarded the obligation of the Yamato schools to attend the festival meant that there was no need to pay them. When this apparently #iore generous treatment of the Dengaku groups is considered beside the precedence allowed Sarugaku in the festival procession, it seems possible that the change in the order of the procession which apparently took place by 1190 niay have been due to the establishment of some formal connection between the Kofuku-ji

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an d a group or groups of Sarugaku players . Once such a group became officially attached to the temple, it would be natural

for it to take precedence over similar but independent groups - in this case, the Dengalcu za - although it wpuld not receive immediate, material rewards as they did.

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Among the Sarugaku and Dengaku players of the Muro- maehi period were some who had scant regard for the religious

significance and importance of their performances at shrines and temples. Zeami complained that !Some /players/ put religious

ceremonies aside because they are travelling in other districts, and either come late or miss the ceremonies at the Kasuga Shrine altogether;...Even when asked to perform such pieces as Qkina at religious ceremonies, they do it in a slipshod way. They just

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dance a little- and collect their hundred mon.1 Where there was a formal connection between & temple and the players, the priests had the means to check any extensive neglect of their

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duties by the players . But something has been shown above of the eagerness of various groups of priests and temple officials to win for themselves a major share of the performances given

during festivals and ceremonies and to arrange other non-religious performances of No, and this may give rise to doubts about the motives of the clerics themselves in providing entertainments of

this kind for the enjoyment of the gods.

It would, however, be wrong to ascribe anything less than complete sincerity to the great majority of those concerned in these performances. The pleasure which Dengaku and Sarugaku undoubtedly gave the priests can only have served to make them appear all the more essential in any programme of entertainment for the gods. And the absence of players from religious, ceremonies was sometimes hardly their fault: it has already been pointed out how impossible it was for them to wait indefinitely when ceremonie

were liable to toe delayed toy as much as several months. Mention has toeen made, too, of how the Kanze group required its members

to return for religious performances in Yarnato fi*om an area covering no less than eight other provinces. Of Zeami’s own attitude, there can toe no doubt. It is shown tooth toy his condem­ nation of those who neglected performances "before the gods and toy the numerous references he made to the religious associations

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of Sarugaku. He described the entertainment as Kagura and, although his explanation of the origin of the word Sarugaku as toeing the same as Kagura ■f'f without the left-hand part of

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the first character was probably no more than a rationalizat­ ion of his desire to have the name written ^ * to tell of

A* Uit

pleasure’ , instead of <)•& -rn ’monkey music’, the connection with Kagura was valid enough at the time. Sarugaku was as much a part of Kagura as the characters Zeami used for it were part of the other word* The dances known as Shiki samtoan. the fore­ runners of the present Okina, were more directly sacred than other pieces in that they introduced representations of three

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Buddhas and had a long history as religious dances* As a result, in the time of Zeami, they were not given except at

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religious performances. Waki-no also represented gods, so that they too stood apart to some extent from the other plays. The special standing of these pieces meant that -they were not per-

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formed toy any player who was in disgrace and, since it was considered an honour to perform the opening god-play in a programs quarrels sometimes arose over this when more than one group was

177 -

talcing part in a performance; the traditional right of the Kom- paru group to give the walei-no at ceremonies in Nara, for example? was challenged by the other Yamato groups and the rivalry continued despite the attempt to stop it by having the groups draw lots for

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the honour * Other types of plays were not inherently religjous; their only claim to he 'religious plays1 lay in their "being per­ formed at shrines and temples to entertain the deities. It was sincerely believed at the time that the gods appreciated these performances. Zeami expalins the performances of Takipci No at

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the Kofuku-ji as being 'a prayer for peace in the land* , and relates two or three stories of divine pronouncements in which he was concerned, including one in which he performed ten No to

save a man*s life as required by the god Inari, speaking through (57)

a medium • Such reguests from the gods were hot to be ignored. In the eight moon of 1278, for example, a performance of Dengaku was arranged at the ICasuga shrine in i*esponse to a revelation. from one of the gods there, The people of the time therefore

found it hard to understand why rain should sometimes be sent at the time of a performance for the gods and would write in their

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diaries 'What can the gods be thinking ?* But the sincerity of the priests and others concerned with arranging performances of No at shrines is best illustrated by their provision of the entertainment even when this entailed very real hardship, There was such a case in'.iUj.21, when the yearly performances at G-o-ko no Miya were at first abandoned because of starvation in the land, but were later given as usal because T experience‘has shown, that it

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is inauspicious to put off the Sarugaku • ' Whereas, until the end of the Kamakura period

(1192-1336), most of the Dengaku and Sarugaku performances of which we have any record were connected with shrines and temples, with the fourteenth century performances in private residences became more and more common* From an early date priests had

taken advantage of players being present in the temples for religious ceremonies to arrange extra performances for their own entertainment and these were , it is true,'a type of private performance. But the most important kind of private performance arose after Dengaku and Sarugaku attracted the patronage of rich and powerful lords. It became the fashion among the great daimyo and the nobility, from the Begents and shogun downwards, to lavish gifts and money on some particular player or players and to have them sing and dance at banquets in their houses. When, as often happened, a lord was attracted as much by the physical charms of one of the young men or boys who were always to be found in a troupe as by the artistic skill of the players, the favoured one often became a kind of privileged retainer in the service of the lord. As the power of the great temples gradually decreased in the course of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the importance of their protection to th§ Dengaku and Sarugaku groups grew correspondingly less and was replaced by the patronage of great families until, by the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), the players had become virtually entirely dependent on their popul­ arity among this class.

179 -

The private performances given by various players before important personages from the emperor down ranged from

short songs and dances given spontaneously at the request of a patron to full-scale entertainrnents for which much preparation was required. When the Umewaka players performed in the palace of the retired emperor in 1420, a stage and dressing-rooms were

(

60

)

specially built , Then, in 1432, a group of women players were invited to perform in the shogun* s palace, and two years later Sarugaku was given as part of the entertainment provided for a

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Chinese embassy . Performances such as these raised no special problems for the players, but it was not so easy when they were

suddenly asked to perform before a private gathering. Zeami

points out that, in such circumstances, it was essential to judge the mood of those present and to suit one's performance accord-

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ingly . The player should also maintain his composure and not (63)

show unseemly haste in beginning his dance . Even when pre­ arranged performances of No were given for a private party, the players had perforce to bow to the wishes of their audience. One of the difficulties to which this led was in the matter of the number of plays pex’formed and the balance of the programme as a whole. Players were sometimes required to give anything up to

ten pieces in all and this destroyed the progression through - (6^)

introduction, development, and climax (jo-ha-kyu) which

experience had shown was most effectively produced by the tradit­ ional programme of five pieces, consisting of three true No plays with two Kyogen in between . The players were clearly not to

— 1 8 0 •*

blame if the performance as a whole did not come quite up to expectations, but their reputations were nevertheless likely to suffer in the eyes of their audience, who were unaware of the real reason for any disappointment they might feel. The players had also to be careful that nothing in their words or actions offended the tastes of the nobility. This was no easy matter for those who were accustomed only to the less exacting conditions of performances outside the capital and Komparu Gon-no-kami, for one, did himself more harm than good by his performance in the re si- :

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dence of one of the great lords . Sometimes, too, there were personal reasons for a player not wanting to appear on a particular occasion, but these can seldom have excused him once he was

summoned. Juhi-goro found this when, as already mentioned, he finally had to perform with On-ami before the shogun Yoshinori despite his distaste for such an appearance because of the great debt he owed Zeami.

Such reluctance must, however, have been rare indeed, Few players can have realised, even in those troubled times, that

some degree of personal oppx*ession and, possibly, danger could ensue from patronage when political conditions changed, and there can have been few occasions when any of them gave thought to the possible disadvantages of private performances. Most performers must have seen these appearances before the great ones of the land only as a means of winning for themselves rich rewards, more fame, and powerful patrons.

- 181 - Notes To Chapte r V I. » I J i r ' . ^ l n —I... *»*-- ■■■■.,■ . , mi l ' ii J - iMmiTT, I. * SD', TZN 3 5 1 . ' 2* JogakRl. qtd. NS 11. 3. 'Kadensho', TZN 9.

4. Kamiiongyolci, qtd. NS 101.|-m-ntTnrrrmmTiiT~ni r i f nni>i w

5. ' S D ' , TZN 351 and ’EH', KJ 113-5.

6. See NO 254-82 for discussion of this and other points con- cerning TalciRi No,

7. Qtd. OBG; 69. 8* T2N 350. 9. ’EH’, KJ 113. 10. ihid. 113-4. I I . ’ SD’ , TZN 351. 12. TZN 344-5.

13. The record is translated as App. 2. The departure of the professional Dengaku players is mentioned on p. 389 .

* *

1k. m

6k-5.