Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the rural communities had, if one ignores
the bad years of famine, a higher standard of living than before, and one result of this, and
the improvement of communications that accompanied it, was the spread of the drama to
villages. We begin to read accounts of visits by professional actors to rural areas, including
typical contemptuous townsmen's stories of country audiences, of the stupidity of extras
recruited locally, and even anecdotes that can surely be matched all over the world of the
ill-behavior on the stage of a horse that the company had to use, because of shortage of
manpower, to replace the more predictable
kabuki
animal played by two actors. From this
period date the majority of the village stages that are known from the region of the Inland
Sea and from the mountainous areas behind Edo. They are usually built in the precincts of
the village shrine, and consist of a covered stage, complete with traps and revolving stage,
workedbymanpowerfromthedressingroombelow,knownasthe“underworld.”Technic-
ally,performancesonthemweregiventoamusethegodoftheshrine,buttheaudience,sit-
ting in the open for a performance lasting several hours, eating, drinking, laughing, crying,
feeding their babies, slipping back home to relieve themselves so as not to waste precious
fertilizer, obviously took their share of the pleasure. Performances might be of live actors
orpuppets,andweresometimesgivenbystrollingplayers,sometimesbylocalamateurtal-
ent. If the former, the local inhabitants had to be careful not to allow them to stay in their
homes for fear of official rebuke, but they could usually be found accommodation in the
temple precincts. The strolling puppeteers, often from the island of Awaji, but also from
Awa orKyūshū (the base ofsome wandering
kabuki
actors as well), were beneath the class
system, but tradition has it that the lords of domains used them as convenient sources of
intelligence about what was going on in the neighbors' lands. Some villages acquired sets
of puppets and put on their own shows, using playbooks and descriptions brought back by
villagers who had gone on pilgrimage.
In the early years of the Tokugawa period, farmers had usually not been allowed to
see plays because the authorities feared that the sight of luxurious living would make them
want to improve their standards, and also that time might thus be wasted, reducing their
rice-production. The growth of the rural drama was therefore symptomatic of the fact that
the grip of the warrior class on the country was slackening.
