JAPANESE DRAMA The Japanese drama seems to remain what in substance it has always been—an amusement passionately loved by the lower orders, but hardly dignified by literature deserving the name. Apart from its native elements of legendary or historical narrative and pantomime, it is clearly to be regarded as a Chinese importa tion ; nor has it in its more advanced forms apparently even at tempted to emancipate itself from the reproduction of the con ventional Chinese types. As early as the close of the 6th century Hada Kawatsu, a man of Chinese extraction, is said to have been ordered to arrange entertainments for the benefit of the country, and to have written as many as thirty-three plays. The Japanese, however, ascribe the origin of their drama to the introduction of the dance called Sambclso as a charm against a volcanic depression of the earth which occurred in 8o5. In 1108 lived a woman called Iso no Zenji, who is looked upon as "the mother of the Japanese drama." But her performances seem to have been confined to dancing or posturing in male attire (otokomai) ; and the introduc tion of the drama proper is universally attributed to Saruwaka Kanzaburo, who in 1624 opened the first theatre at Yedo.
The subjects of the serious popular plays are mainly mytho logical. The famous narrative of the feudal fidelity of the forty seven ronins, who about the year 1699 revenged their chief's judicial suicide upon the arrogant official to whom it was due, is stirring rather than touching in its incidents, and contains much bloodshed, together with a tea-house scene which suffices as a specimen of the Japanese comedy of manners. Besides tragic (No) plays (see JAPANESE LITERATURE), the Japanese have mid dle-class domestic dramas of a very realistic kind. The language of these, unlike that of Chinese comedy, is often gross and scurrilous. Fairy and demon operas and ballets, and farces and intermezzos, form an easy transition to the interludes of tumblers and jugglers.