The Players from Japan

Selections from Japanese drama currently played in Manhattan by native mimes will inevitably be compared with the Chinese drama simultaneously presented in Manhattan by the greatest of Chinese actors, Mei Lan-Fang (TIME, Feb 17)-, Any comparison must take into account the fact that Mei Lan-Fang acts the century-old, traditional drama of China, as quaint and stylized as a sketch on a box of tea, whereas the Japanese company gives examples of the Ken-Geki or sword-drama, a 10-year-old popular departure from the formal, aristocratic Kabuki and No dramas of ancient Japan.

The Ken-Geki is far easier for Occidentals to understand than the hoary dramatic rituals of China, in which scarcely any scenery is employed and such an apparently unimportant factor as the shape of a false beard may indicate the character of its wearer. In Koi-No- Yozakura (Romance in Cherry Blossom Lane) a sculptor creates the image of a dancing girl which comes to life and dances with him when he places a mirror, the Japanese symbol of a woman's soul, next to her heart. The speech is naturally modulated, emotions are patent on the faces, the scenery is as realistic as a vaudeville backdrop. In Kage-No-Chikara (The Shadow Man) a provincial lord steals the fiancee and murders the father of a peasant. This lad then learns the art of fighting and, with the aid of a sinister friend of his father's known as "The Shadow Man," wreaks revenge on the noble. This play exhibits the dueling which is a characteristic element of the Ken-Geki. It consists of fearsome attitudes struck with long, glittering blades, followed by angry swipes which usually miss their mark. An Occidental fencer who indulged in such waste motion would be speedily punctured, but these mimic wars, accompanied by grunts and gnashings, are undeniably picturesque. Matsuri (Festival) is a ballet in which four men disguised as two horrifically red-faced lions cavort before artificial peony bushes, fall asleep. In the finale the entire company make rippling patterns with silken streamers.

The Ken-Geki apparently make their appeal to Eastern lovers of blood, thunder and lurid display. Their psychology seems about as complex, to untutored Western eyes, as that of The Perils of Pauline or Shenandoah. The actors produce sobs and choked voices as easily as did the rural players of the '905 when informed that the dour gentleman in hip boots was about to foreclose the mortgage. Principal among the actors is Tokyjiro Tsutsui of Kyoto. Osaka and Nagoya, who stalks about in the dark robes of "The Shadow Man" and finally commits harakiri with a four-foot knife.

Tsutsui is the originator of the Ken-Geki. Son of a lumber merchant, he experienced Japan's compulsory military service, became a proficient swordsman. Later he entered the theatre, acting in the Kabuki dramas, but enlisted in the artillery at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. He received two bayonet wounds, one of which permanently scarred his right cheek. After the war his dramatic success was great; he headed a company of 60 players. In 1921 he broke away from tradition, organized his own theatre in which, instead of having a singer to explain the actors' feelings, the actors spoke for themselves. Inasmuch as the feelings were often of a violent nature, sword play was frequent. The public, which liked this strange, new, active form of drama, quickly called it Ken-Geld (Ken = sword, geki -- drama).

When its novelty no longer holds him and he has become familiar with its Nipponese beauties, the Western theatregoer finds in the Ken-Geki only the most rudimentary fantasy and melodrama. Hence he may be pardoned if he is bored.

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