B. H. CHAMBERLAIN AND NOH (YOKYOKU)

Abstract

B. H. Chamberlain was the first to acknowledge the Noh play as an authentic genre of Japanese literature; previously it had been regarded merely as a form of entertainment. He saw in Noh a lyric drama, distinctly indigenous to Japan both in its form and in its treatment and choice of themes.B. H. Chamberlain came to Japan in 1873 and took up an abode at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Near his residence lived an old samurai, Shigeru Araki, who had served the Tokugawa Shogunate. Chamberlain became his private teacher of English. It was through Araki that Chamberlain was introduced to the Noh play. The Noh play had been patronized by the Shogunates since the time of Yoshimitsu Ashikaga. After the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the performance of the Noh play became an indispensable event on ceremonial occasions. An old retainer of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Araki had great pride in Noh, considering it as a glorious symbol of Japanese art. In the course of his frequent visits to the Noh theatre with Araki, Chamberlain must have been attracted by the Noh play texts, YOKYOKU, as well as by the theatrical performance itself.In the tradition of the Noh play, a text with few references to the lines from such famous anthologies as the Manyoshu or the Kokinshu was considered to be mediocre and lacking overtones. The Noh play is inseparably interwoven with the tradition of Japanese poetry. Not only are many poems embedded in the dialogue, but also there are many instances of a Noh play whose theme derives from waka. Thus it was through Noh plays that Chamberlain entered the world of Japanese classical poetry.About this time he was introduced to an aged poetess who had many associates among people of refined taste of the upper class. He owed his elegant and well-accented Japanese to her and her circle. Chamberlain expressed his thanks to her in the preface to THE CLASSICAL POETRY OF THE JAPANESE as follows;“… the necessary preliminary studies would never have been successfully carried through but for the kind encouragement of the aged poetess Tachibana-no-Toseko.” She published the waka anthology MEIJI-KASHU in which she included Chamberlain's wakas under the pen name Odo. He was also an associate of the Japanese comedian (kyogen-shi), Nohara, who copied twenty volumes of comedy texts for him.Chamberlain shared his Japanese studies with Ernest Satow, an English diplomat in Tokyo. They were good friends. Satow gave to Chamberlain one hundred volumes of yokyoku which he had collected in 1870s.After seven years of devoted studies, Chamberlain published THE CLASSICAL POETRY OF THE JAPANESE in London in 1880. It contains poems from the Manyoshu, the Kokinshu, and four Noh plays i.e. The Robe of Feathers, The Death-Stone, Life is A Dream, andNakamitsu, and also two Kyogen plays i.e. Ribs and Skin (Hone Kawa) andAbstraction (Za-Zen).Chamberlain was probably the first translator of Noh plays. Dr. Sanki Ichikawa praised B. H. Chamberlain for introducing the Noh play to the world as early as the opening years of the Meiji Era.