Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1877 — A Japanese Theater. [ARTICLE]

A Japanese Theater.

The interior of a Japanese theater resembles our own in many respects, but in many others is quite original and peculiar. The house is similarly planned—that is, with the money-taker’s bureau and the vestibule for clogs and coat at the door, a gallery running round, in which are private boxes, ana the cheapest scats running round the pit. The roof is festooned with quaintly-figured lengths of gaudily-col-ored cloth, and the lighting of the house proper is effected by huge lanterns, symbolically painted, suspended at intervals. All else is entirely peculiar to the country and the people. From the stage, running through the midst of the audience to the passage between, passes a platform known as the Hana Michi, or “ flower path,” along which the most important actors make their exits and entrances; processions pass, and traveling litters or sham animals are introduced. Above the stage, in a cage with blinds, are the orchestra—singers, fife, drum, cymbal, guitar and gong players. The stage itself is a marvel of ingenuity and handiness. That parton which the actors are is circular, and works on a windlass beneath; thus the hurry and confusion so inseparable flrom shifting flies and scenes is obviated by the simple expedient of turning the stage round, so that the half hitherto behind appears as the new scene. Though peculiar in their ideas of perspective and the harmony of.colors, the Japanese are wonderful scenic artists. Borne of the effects produced, notably the favorite weird, solemn, midnight scenes preluding a fragedy or a romantic event, are really excellent; for realism the Japanese are not enthusiastic, hut in their imitations of nature they are generally very happy. No one who has witnessed Japanese juggling and slight-of-hand can wonder that In the science of ** stage-trickism’’ they are adepts. Without half the ingenious, mechanical appliances used in our London pantomimes, the Japanese actors, by swiftness and cunning of hand, can produce an endless variety of startling illusions, and the spectator cannot help, sometimes, wondering whether what he has seen has really taken place, or whether his eyes have played him false. Within the last four or five yeais gas has been introduced into <me or two of the big theaters of the capital, but until the year 1878 the means of illumination were feeble. Three tallow flambeaux stuck into sconces served as footlights, and even with these it was necessary that each leading performer should be followed by a boy draped in black, so as to simulate invisibility, holding a long bamboo, at the end of which flickered a candle, within a few inches of the actor’s nose, so that every distortion and play of feature might be observed by thsau-diencc.-*AU the Tear Round.