13   Japanese plays, farces, dances, singing and musical instruments

1. Our autos ordinarily are performed at night; the Japanese almost always perform theirs during the day.

During Frois’ lifetime the term auto came to refer to any relatively brief, oneact play, including a large number of secular dramas written for the Portuguese court by the goldsmith-turned-dramatist Gil Vicente (1465–1537), considered the father of Portuguese theater.¹ The secular variety of the auto developed out of the auto sacramental, a one-act drama that generally was performed on holy days, particularly the Feast of Corpus Christi. Commissioned by Church or public officials, autos sacramentales reiterated religious “truths” or stories from the Bible, lives of the saints, or Christian oral tradition. By the mid-sixteenth century autos sacramentales often were accompanied by skits, dialogues, and singing and dancing that often were laced with satire and romance, all of which, according to critics, undermined the religious message of the auto itself.²

As Frois suggests, secular autos were performed at night, more often than not in the palaces of the nobility and royalty. (Autos sacremantales ordinarily were held during the day and frequently outdoors, as per #6 below.)

The Japanese analogue to the auto alluded to by Frois almost certainly is Noh, which was superficially similar to European drama (e.g. both involved almost exclusively male actors wearing masks, an audience, and a stage). Noh is distinctive, however, in that it consists of dialogue or prose as well as singing (by the actors individually and by a chorus off to the side of the stage), dancing (principally by the shite or protagonist) and instrumental music provided by three drums and a fife in the “orchestra section” at the rear of the stage. Moreover, whereas European drama sought mostly to mimic reality (e.g. realistic-looking sets, costumes and masks; moving dialogue and the linear unfolding of plot), Noh is seemingly more abstract. Many Noh are of the mugen variety and feature a masked principal actor who portrays a supernatural protagonist (shite). The shite comes and goes, taking various forms and interacting with supporting, non-masked characters (waki), often an antagonist in the form of a travelling monk, a warrior, or a farmer. A successful Noh performance is one in which the actors and audience find themselves lost in almost ineffable emotions and spiritual states.³ In this regard, Noh is not unlike chanoyu, which also captured the interest of warlords during the sixteenth century.⁴

As Okakura⁵ observed, Noh was performed on a stage of hard, unpainted wood, with a single pine tree somewhat conventionally portrayed on the background, thus suggesting “a grand monotony” to heighten the “infinite suggestiveness” of this short epic drama. Although one-act Noh are not unusual (e.g. Hagoromo or “Robe of Feathers”), the majority of Noh have at least two acts and many have three or more. One-act seldom went more than an hour without a comic interlude or kyôgen. Thus, a Noh performance could go on for a whole afternoon or evening (i.e. for five or six hours).

2. Among us, one actor wearing a mask slowly makes his way onto the stage; in Japan two or three actors without masks rush out onto the stage and face each other in the manner of cocks ready to fight.

The sixteenth century witnessed profound innovation in European theatre, fueled by a proliferation of great dramatists, formal acting companies, and the building of public theaters such as the Globe in London and the Corral de la Cruz in Madrid. And yet for all the dynamism, European theater remained true to Greek and Roman drama, including use of the prologue—an extended moment before a play when a masked actor appeared on stage to briefly explain or introduce the comedy or tragedy (signaled, respectively, by a smiling or sorrowful mask).

Frois’ comment in this distich about Japanese drama corresponds to the opening sequence in many Noh, in which the supporting actor and entourage come out and line up as described. The fact, however, that the actors are said to rush out on to the stage has prompted Okada to suggest that Frois is contrasting a European prologue to a kyôgen interlude, which typically separate acts of a Noh drama. Kyôgen are comic or light-hearted skits that often feature popular song and focus on simple truths or adventures such as travel to the city, or, in the case of city-dwellers, a trip out to the countryside.⁶ Most kyôgen feature a principal actor (shite) and two associates (ado); their comic intent is immediately made known either verbally or by exaggerated observance of rigid stage conventions.⁷ Eliza Scidmore⁸ described a kyôgen entrance as follows:

The actors enter at a gait that out—struts the most exaggerated stage stride ever seen, the body held rigid as a statue, and the foot, never wholly lifted, sliding slowly along the polished floor.

3. Our autos are in verse; theirs are all in prose.

Speakers of Romance languages found rhyming fairly easy because their languages had fewer phonemes to match and used a wide range of versification. Consider the following stanza from Gil Vicente’s Nao D’ Amores, first performed for Portugal’s João III in 1527:

Señora, yo vengo acá	My lady, I come here
con fatiga y passion tanta	tired but filled with a passion
cual nunca fue ni Será9	as never there was, nor ever will be

Japanese lacks the proper syntax for end rhyme, as Frois points out in Chapter 10 (#26). Moreover, as noted, Noh performances consist of more than dialogue or prose.

4. Ours often vary and others are reworked; theirs are predetermined in all aspects from the outset and do not vary.

This contrast bears some similarity to Frois’ comment about changing fashions in Europe and the lack therof in Japan (see Chapter 1, #3). With respect to Europe, certainly the sixteenth century was a time of significant change. Even though most works of drama, particularly autos, were formulaic and reiterated “old” themes (e.g. human frailty and God’s power and mercy), theatrical genres were constantly subverted and re-invented such that spectators both knew what to expect, and yet expected to be surprised.¹⁰

In Japan, Zeami, Noh’s Shakespeare, died ca.1443, a hundred years before the first Portuguese reached Japan.¹¹ By then, Noh had become the drama of Japan and most Japanese acting schools took their cue from Zeami, the actor, the playwright, and the theorist. Although critics and scholars often blame the Tokugawas for enforcing Hideyoshi’s law of 1591, which essentially fixed theatrical repertoires,¹² Frois’ comment here would seem to suggest that Noh drama had become prescriptive over a decade before that much-maligned era began.

5. Ours, being autos rather than tragedies, are not divided into acts; theirs are always divided into first, second, third, etc.

Autos were one-act plays that lasted anywhere from thirty to ninety minutes; generally they have only one setting or scene. For instance, Gil Vicente’s auto “The Boat to Hell” all takes place in the chamber of one Queen Maria. The queen’s chamber is the scene for a trial-like encounter between the devil and a host of sinful elites who enter the chamber only to be successively assigned a seat on the devil’s boat leaving for hell.¹³

Zeami argued that Noh should follow the principle of Jo, Ha and Kyû, which translate respectively as introduction or slow beginning, development or a buildup in dramatic tension, and then a rapid finish. In keeping with this principle, each act of Noh is divisible into smaller units (dan) with particular instrumental music, dialogue, poetry, and/or chorus.¹⁴ Thus, a two-act Noh would have at least six dan and, as noted, each act would be separated by a kyôgen interlude.

6. Our performers emerge onto the stage from a separate structure in which they cannot be seen; Japanese performers are near the theatre behind sail-like curtains.

Frois seems to be referring here specifically to autos sacramentales, which had their origins in the Feast of Corpus Christi (instituted in 1264 by Pope Urban IV). These autos often were the culmination of a procession that featured wagons (carros) with elaborate superstructures and tableaux that graphically and dramatically depicted religious truths or allegories. Usually the procession eventuated at an important or central plaza, where a pair of wagons was pulled up next to a temporary stage where the auto was performed.¹⁵ This may be what Frois is referring to when he speaks of performers emerging on stage from a “separate structure.”¹⁶

The stage for a Noh performance typically has a bridge (visible to the audience) leading from the back of the stage to a “green room” off to the left. Here the actors wait behind what Sakanishi describes as a “curtain of five colors.”¹⁷ Okada guesses that Frois’ odd expression “sail-like curtains” (cortinas de fune) meant an entrance curtain that was hoisted in the manner of a sail. Indeed, such a curtain is still used in Noh today. The curtain is raised from the bottom hem and has the visual effect of a billowing sail. As Komparu¹⁸ notes, before the curtain is raised the principal actor or shite actually begins his performance (apparently as a shadow behind the curtain), perhaps explaining Frois’ preoccupation in this distich with performers “off stage” who are visible (as opposed to those who are hidden, in the European case).

7. Our autos are performed through speaking; theirs are nearly always sung—or danced.

As Frois indicates, European drama was by and large a matter of spoken dialogue and soliloquy. In 1585 opera was still an emerging art form in Italy, spawned by experiments at recovering “authentic” Greek drama, which humanist scholars argued was primarily sung rather than spoken.

Although the first recognized performance of ka-bu-ki, or sing-dance-technique, did not take place until 1594, song and dance long had been a part of Japanese drama. In this regard, what perhaps distinguishes Noh from earlier drama is that is has more “telling” than dialogue per se and this “telling” is conveyed through “song” and dance. With regard to the “song,” Okakura found it full of what we now call sound effects, such as “the soughing of the wind amongst the pine boughs, the dropping of water, or the tolling of distant bells, the stifling of sobs, the clash and clang of war, echoes of the weavers beating the new web against the wooden beam, the cry of crickets, and all the manifold voices of night and nature, where pause is more significant than pitch.”¹⁹ During these extended moments of “semi-articulate sound,” actors could rest their voices and allow dance to tell, or rather suggest, the story.

8. We consider it disruptive and insulting to make noise during an auto; in Japan a performance is honored and praised if there are some people on the outside giving loud hoots and hollers.

Autos of both the secular (i.e. palace performances) and religious variety were pretty staid affairs. Autos sacramentales often were a dramatic portrayal of a theological statement about God’s enduring presence in the lives of Christians, realized especially through the Eucharist. Certainly for Catholics it was rude (if not “sinful”) to make noise or otherwise act disrespectfully during these particular autos.²⁰ However, theatergoers attending one of Cervantes’ plays, or spectators in Italy who crowded around street performers who pioneered the commedia dell’ Arte, were hardly quiet. Indeed, with the exception of the autos sacramentales, theatrical performance in sixteenth century Europe was all about the playwright and actors engaging the audience and making them part of the performance.²¹

At climactic moments of Kabuki, it is not unusual for audience members to yell out and cheer on actors, much as fans at an American baseball game yell insults or cheer for their favorite players when they are at bat.²² It is conceivable that in Frois’ time some Noh or Kyôgen interludes encouraged the audience to voice their approval of actors during a performance. Because Noh involve relatively little dialogue, audience participation was not likely to compete with the actors’ infrequent, slowly drawn out speech. In Japanese folk (festival and farm) singing, a sporadic musical accompaniment or a shrill chorus of voices, usually female, is often used to spice up the melody. Especially in festivals, this “sassy” sound works wonderfully to increase the total energy level of the performance, much in the way that “call backs” enrich the total sound effect of a Southern black Baptist congregation in America.

9. Our masks cover the entire jaw and beard; in Japan the masks are so tiny that if an actor is playing the role of a woman, his beard is always sticking out from under it.

Imagine the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet being played by a man with a beard! Sounds strange, but in much of Europe (Italy, Spain and France witnessed more exceptions) it was still common in 1585 (or 1594, when Shakespeare wrote) for men or boys to play female roles.²³ The Church and Europeans more generally frowned on women taking to the stage. Thus, Frois’ focus here on masks that succeeded or failed to hide the beards of male actors.

In Noh men also played both male and female roles and wore small masks carved from cypress wood.²⁴ Because Frois noted that it was unusual for any Japanese man to have a beard (see Chapter 1, #5), he is probably referring in this distich to the fact that Noh masks were not “full-face” masks intended to actually cover and disguise the actor’s face, and thus if a Japanese man were to have a beard, the beard would be apparent. Noh masks generally bespeak an archetypal figure (shite), whose emotional/spiritual state is conveyed by the actor through dialogue, song, dance, and gesture. Japanese three-dimensional “art” could be very realistic (e.g. statues showing each pore of the skin, with carefully implanted real hair). The Noh mask bespeaks an aesthetic choice for an icon with more typological rather than explicit meaning.²⁵ European drama, much like Renaissance art, aimed for mimetic credulity, using backdrops and other props that were realistic and often cost a small fortune.

10. Our comedies or tragedies feature gentle musical instruments; in Japan they use small kettledrums shaped like goblets, a larger kettledrum played with two sticks, and a bamboo flute.

Frois is generally correct that European drama featured music that served as aural background rather than conveying significant meaning and thus being integral to a performance. Arguably, the Japanese used their instruments (two different drums and a flute) to create what is analogous to a modern-day movie soundtrack: the music could get very intense and often conveyed as much or more meaning than the dialogue or movements of the actors.

The first drum mentioned by Frois is called a ko tsuzumi, and it is played by hand. It looks like a long hourglass, with percussive membranes on each end that are laced together with chords that can be squeezed as one strikes the drum membranes. Striking the membranes while squeezing the chords results in what is essentially a “talking-drum.”

The second type of drum (taiko) is just a drum; when hit on the head it gives a good solid drum sound. Note that the sticks that Frois mentions spend most of their time hitting the wood on the side of the drum. Both drums were used to emphasize and harmonize with the telling and the action of the play, mostly in a temporal rather than tonal way.

The bamboo flute is more like a “fife.” The naturally shrill quality of the instrument, which makes it a favorite for military bands in the West, achieves a new level in the sound world of the Japanese. While the Japanese fife is capable of a soft and gentle sound in the low range, it more frequently is used to produce a blasting sound. This blasting has two characteristics not often found in Western music. First, it is not always worked up to in the Western manner where sounds crescendo, but often begins in its full fury. That is to say, it is explosive. It hits as strong gusts of wind often do. Second, the fifer does not stop when the sound threatens to break, but enjoys blasting it up and over its limits. This critical break is played upon like a surfer riding a wave, and the thrill to the initiated—or those with an ear for it—is pretty much the same.

11. In our dances, the dancers move to the sound of the tambourine, but they do not sing; Japanese dancers must always sing to the sound of the drum.

Frois’ mention here of the tambourine suggests he had in mind folk dances or even courtly dances (danzas de sarao) that were performed by local dancers in conjunction with autos or religious feasts.²⁶

It is difficult to know the Japanese referent in this distich. The hourglass-shaped drum (ko tsuzumi) that is part of the Noh ensemble (see #10 above) was very popular in Japan at the time Frois wrote. It served as accompaniment for all manner of performers and party-goers, including samurai on picnics or flower-viewing outings.²⁷ Music was a regular feature of daily life in Japan and one can well imagine that Frois might also have witnessed Japanese peasants singing (and dancing) while sowing rice to the accompaniment of a drum and perhaps the fife mentioned above.²⁸

12. Our performers move about upright, with rattles; in Japan they carry fans and always move about [stooped over]²⁹ or like people looking down at the ground in search of something they have lost.

Rattles figure prominently in the folia, a traditional dance of Portuguese peasants that underwent “refinement” in Iberian royal courts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The name for the dance derived from folle, which means crazy, apparently suggested by the seemingly chaotic sound produced by the dancers wielding their rattles.³⁰

For Japan, Frois presumably was referring to the popular Buddhist dances (odori), such as the present day bon odori, which is performed in late July through September as part of a joyous festival of the dead (ultimately rooted in Chinese Buddhism). The bon odori is a circle dance of sorts, except that individuals do not hold hands (as in Europe), but rather progress individually in a counter-clockwise fashion, with everyone synchronously moving forward and back, and then left and right, making a bent over or swooping movement. Japanese performers do indeed look like they might be searching the ground for a lost item.

13. Our dances are performed during the day; theirs, nearly always at night.

Most Iberian folk dancing took place during weddings, feast days, harvest festivals, etc., which mostly took place outdoors and in the afternoon (or before dark).³¹ Such dances are commensurate with the Japanese bon odori,³² which, as noted above, is a festive dance held each year in late summer or early fall.

14. European dance involves many [different] movements by the feet; Japanese dance is more solemn and for the most part is done with the hands.

This is one of the few distichs where Frois explicitly speaks of Europe as opposed to the more ambiguous “ours” or “we.” Europeans, be they from the north or the south, Catholics or Protestants, let their feet and legs do the talking when it came to dance.³³ The galliard, which was popular throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, typically had five steps to a measure and featured leaps and jumps.

From the Japanese perspective people who are possessed or otherwise experiencing an altered state of consciousness whirl about and leap wildly, as Europeans were wont to do. An actor performing the lion dance (shishimai) might also become exuberant. However, generally speaking, Japanese dance is restrained and stylized, as is the case with Japanese music, where silence between notes is as meaningful as the notes themselves. “Doing nothing” or non-movement is integral to Japanese dance.³⁴

15. Our music, with its multi-part harmonies, is gentle and full; in Japan, since they all screech, singing a one-part melody, it is the most horrendous music possible.

The European music that Frois knew, presumably polyphonic masses, motets, and some of the secular cantigas of the period,³⁵ made a big deal of harmony (multiple layers of sound that formed a complex background to a primary melody).

As Tamba explains, Japanese singing as encountered in Noh reflects a different esthetic (as compared with Western singing) and a whole host of vocal skills and techniques, including, for instance, pronounced use of the pharynx (the very back of the mouth, just above the vocal chords) rather than the nasal or oral cavity.³⁶ Most Westerners seemingly lack the ear to comprehend the complex Japanese voice and hear it instead as primitive cacophony. Isabella Bird was perhaps an exception. Despite finding a Japanese vocal performance “most excruciating” and even complaining that the minor scale was “a source of pain” (an ebullient Christian, she was no doubt into major keys), Bird gamely kept her ears uncovered long enough to offer one of the better descriptions of Japanese traditional singing, one that includes what Frois’ contrast misses:

It seemed to me to consist of a hyena-like howl, long and high (a high voice being equivalent to a good voice), varied by frequent guttural, half-suppressed sounds, a bleat, or more respectfully, “an impure shake,” which is very delicious to a musically educated Japanese audience which is both scientific and highly critical, but eminently distressing to European ears.³⁷

16. Vibrato exists in all the nations of Europe; among the Japanese there is no one who uses vibrato.

Frois is apparently still talking about singing (as opposed to instrumental music), in which case his observation about vibrato (a tremulous effect imparted by slight and rapid variations in pitch) is interesting, inasmuch as music scholars disagree about the prevalence of vibrato in sixteenth century vocal music. Although Frois seems to imply that vibrato was widely used in Europe, the question remains as to whether it was used with discretion or as an incessant “disfigurement” of musical performance.³⁸

Westerners such as Frois apparently have difficulty recognizing Japanese vibrato because the fluctuation in pitch that characterizes vibrato in Noh strays beyond the narrow frequency implied by a Western definition of vibrato.³⁹

17. Among us, music played on the clavichord,⁴⁰ viola, flute, organ, doçaina,⁴¹ etc. is considered extremely gentle; the Japanese find all our instruments harsh and unpleasant.

While the Japanese generally disliked European music, and vice versa, some very prominent Japanese found European music engaging. Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), the top rulers of Japan, reportedly listened with pleasure to performances of Western music.⁴² Also, Frois’ friend and fellow Jesuit, Organtino, wrote to the Jesuit Father General in Rome that if he had organs and other musical instruments and plenty of missionaries he could convert all of Miyako [Kyoto] and Sakai in a year.⁴³ Reading this, and knowing that many Japanese and Japanese-Americans perform today in symphony orchestras around the world, one cannot help but wonder if Western music would have made significant inroads in Japan had Japan not isolated itself from the West during the Tokugawa period. Sadly, it seems less certain that European attitudes toward Japanese instruments and music would have changed given more exposure. Writing in 1890, Chamberlain dismissed the idea of Japanese music:

Music, if that beautiful word may be allowed to fall so low as to denote the strummings and squeals of Orientals, is supposed to have existed in Japan ever since mythological times.⁴⁴

18. We hold the harmony and symmetry of polyphonic⁴⁵ music in high esteem; the Japanese find it noisy and clamorous⁴⁶ and do not enjoy it at all.

Not all Europeans, educated or otherwise, were excited about polyphonic music; some felt that it was a “big noise” that paled in comparison with the beauty of a solo voice.⁴⁷ Japan had never known polyphonic music, so one could well imagine that many Japanese had difficulty appreciating polyphony. However, the Japanese did have one type of inadvertent or unconscious harmony created by Buddhist sutra chanting. In a large temple with fifty or more people sing-songing the sutra in their natural tone of voice-each pausing to take his or her breath whenever they naturally run out and perhaps partially synchronizing this subconsciously to the periodic chime-an effect is incidentally or accidentally achieved that is similar to the staggered singing of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

19. Ordinarily among us the music of the nobility is gentler than that of the common folk; we cannot stand to listen to the music of the Japanese nobles, but we find their sailors’ music acceptable.

As is apparent from the two previous contrasts, Europe’s nobility generally took pride in supporting choral and chamber music. In 1585, the nobility in Japan was basically the military class, which embraced the relatively stark music found in Noh. The “sailors’ music” that Frois and other Europeans found acceptable was probably the working chants mentioned in Chapter 12 (#10). Frois may also have heard honest-to-goodness folk-songs or sea chanteys:

The sailors in rowing their boats back and forth in the harbour have a peculiar song entirely unlike the sailors’ songs further south [i.e. Yokohama, Kobe and other mainland ports in Japan]. It is musical and catchy … the curious chant as it comes over the water is very pleasant.⁴⁸

Morse wrote this in Hakodate, at the southern tip of the northernmost island now known as Hokkaido. In a footnote he added something that suggests exactly what Frois heard:

In the extreme southern part of Japan I heard the identical song sung by the sailors of Kagoshima Gulf, and on my return to America a Russian troupe which visited Salem sang a piece called a Volga sailor’s song strongly suggesting the Hakodate song. Such an air might easily spread through northern Russia to Kamchatka and find its way to Yezo [Hokaido] through the Kurile Islands.

Because Frois likely predates Russian influence, a more likely source is the Koreans, who have many lullabies that are considered sweet to the ears.⁴⁹

20. In Europe boys sing an octave higher than men; in Japan they all screech out the same note, the one on which the treble clef rests [on the staff].⁵⁰

European Children at a very early age used song to memorize prayers (e.g. Ave Maria, Pater noster), litanies, hymns, and Church teachings/canons, which often were performed in distinctive registers at school, church, or during processions.⁵¹ The sixteenth century also was a time when cathedrals across Europe combined boys’ and mens’ choirs to perform polyphonic music (with pre-pubescent boys and some men assigned the alto parts).⁵²

As noted, the Japanese do not harmonize but rather sing a single melody, in a single key. Frois’ usage (screech) once again reveals his inability to “walk the walk” of cultural relativism.

21. Our violas have six strings, except the double-stringed ones,⁵³ and they are plucked using the fingers; the Japanese viola has four strings and is played with a kind of comb.

The violas mentioned here by Frois are unlike the four-stringed bowed instrument that today forms a regular part of string sections or quartets (accompanying two violins and a cello). The six-stringed instrument is a viola da gamba, which looks somewhat like a modern cello (or miniature base) and is played with a bow, although the bow hairs are relatively loose and the bow itself is held with the palm up, rather than down, as with a modern cello bow. The plucked, “double-stringed” viola mentioned by Frois is the viola braguesa,⁵⁴ which was descended from the Spanish vihuela (a guitar-like instrument).

The four-stringed Japanese instrument is a biwa, a beautiful, teardrop-shaped lute with a round back and flat front, sound-holes modeled after heavenly bodies, and a neck that bends obliquely back at the top. Like the folk samisen, it is powerfully plucked, or perhaps better said, struck, for a biwa player is called a biwa-uchi or “biwa-striker.” This is accomplished with an enormous plectrum, usually made of ivory, with the size and shape of a thin hatchet head. (Frois wrote “comb” because combs used to be very high-backed and the over-all shape resembles the plectrum.) A large and heavy pick is indeed about as far as one can get from delicate fingertips. It sounds astounding, but it actually has three clear advantages over a smaller one or simply using the fingertips. First, it prevents almost any acoustic leakage: the vibration that would be lost with a lighter pick is all saved to produce a higher volume. Second, its length translates a small movement of the wrist into a large one at the end of the pick. And third, it can serve as a defensive weapon—against a snowball in a haiku by Issa, but more commonly (at least in pulp literature and “Easterns”!) to cut the throat of another or oneself in defense of virtue. Apparently the large plectrum is a purely Japanese invention, for the Chinese, from whom the biwa was adopted, pluck with their fingers.

22. Among us, the nobility take pride in playing the viola; in Japan, it is an occupation for the blind, like concertina⁵⁵ players in Europe.

If Japanese noblemen and samurai were expected to be proficient at composing poetry, the tea-ceremony and swordsmanship, Portuguese nobility were expected to master the troubadour’s art of singing one’s own poems or romanceiros (ballads) while plucking the viola [braguesa].⁵⁶ The popularity of ballads in Portugal is suggested by their publication as inexpensive broadsides and in book-sized collections, beginning around 1548.⁵⁷ In his Book of the Courtier (1528) Castiglione remarked, “… singing poetry accompanied by the viola seems especially pleasurable, for the instrument gives the words a really marvelous charm and effectiveness.”⁵⁸

As regards blind concertina players, today in Portugal or Spain one is likely to encounter gypsies playing the concertina; the blind often sell lottery tickets.

In Japan, the lute was indeed identified with blind musicians, who were called biwa-houji or priests of the biwa-h shi, and they seem to have been particularly active in and around Kyoto. Although they were rarely actual Buddhist priests, they assumed a religious guise (i.e. costume and shaved head). Unlike the Portuguese nobility, the specialty of the biwa players was not love songs or hymns, but legend, and mostly the Heike-monogatari, which tells of the tragic downfall of a beloved, highly aesthetic noble clan.⁵⁹ However, it is apparent that the biwa was played by more than the biwa-houji. When Saris visited Nagasaki twenty-eight years after Frois penned the Tratado, he was paid a courtesy call by the “King of Hirado” who brought some women with him who played the biwa in a manner of a samisen (a three-string banjo introduced to Japan from the Philippines a century later):

The kings women seemed to be somewhat bashful, but he willed them to bee frolicke. They sang diuers songs, and played vpon certain instruments (whereof one did much resemble our lute) being bellyed like it, but longer in the necke, and fretted like ours, but had only foure gut strings. Their fingring with the left hand like ours, very nimbly, but the right hand striketh with an iuory bone, as we vse to playe upon a citterne with a quill. They delighted themselues much with their musicke, keeping time with their hands.⁶⁰

23. Our clavichords have four strings and are played with keys; the Japanese ones have twelve strings and are played with wooden picks made for this purpose.

The clavichord was a small (less than four feet long), free-standing or tabletop keyboard that was very popular with middle class families in Europe as well as lesser nobles. It also was a favorite of music schools attached to monasteries and cathedrals.⁶¹ Around the time Frois was growing up, his hometown of Lisbon had twelve clavichord makers.⁶² While four strings may not seem like a lot, fretted clavichords had multiple keys and associated tangents that struck each string in a different location. Also, unlike the piano, which produces a relatively finite sound when the keys are depressed, the clavichord is more like a guitar in that one can depress the keys with differential force and correspondingly engage the strings in such a way as to allow for variation in sound.

The Japanese koto is a long zither that is invariably played using a tubular pick that fits completely over the end of the finger. (The verb hamaru, used to indicate donning a pick, is also used for putting on a ring.) By the mid-nineteenth century the koto had thirteen rather than twelve strings. Arguably it was the one instrument that most attracted Westerners, for it makes a sweet tinkling or harp-like sound far sweeter than Japanese lutes and softer than Japanese flutes. Despite the considerable strength needed to depress the strings and carry the koto, traditionally it has been the instrument of “proper” young women. During the Edo era that followed Frois, senryû joked about the koto being an instrument played and appreciated by women who grew up as guarded young virgins. Yet this cloying quality is not intrinsic to the instrument, which some Japanese and Korean women play with the fervor of a blues guitarist.

24. Among us the blind are very pacific; in Japan they like to fight and they go about with canes and daggers⁶³ and are very amorous.

Europeans viewed blindness as punishment from God, particularly for lustful behavior.⁶⁴ Thus it is not surprising that the blind were pacific, accepting alms or playing the concertina for passersby.

The Japanese had a somewhat similar attitude toward the blind, believing that blindness was karmic or an expression of a prior sinful existence. Blind singer-prostitutes, the goze, are usually beaten in senryû. Superstition said it was good luck to hit the goze that one slept with!

And yet the blind also were understood as privileged vis-à-vis the unseen world, particularly the world of the dead.⁶⁵ The blind in Japan have a long history of working as musicians, masseurs, pimps and money-lenders. Many became extremely wealthy in the latter capacity. During the Edo era some even bought—that is to say, freed—high-level courtesans, something that cost the equivalent of millions of dollars today. But perhaps the most striking thing about the blind was how they organized themselves during the centuries prior to the arrival of the Jesuits. In 1548, there were two blind “sects,” and like most Buddhist sects, each sect did not hesitate to guard its turf. And if sect violence was not enough, the blind had a reputation for being sharply tempered and for nursing a grudge. With all their money and women to protect, their canes came in handy, especially in the dark when they were the only one who could “see” what was happening.

25. Noblemen in Europe sleep at night and have their entertainments during the day; Japanese noblemen sleep by day and have their parties and amusements at night.

In the following chapter (14) Frois implies that only women and children in Europe were afraid of the night. Arguably, most sensible Europeans stayed home after sundown, owing to thieves and sociopaths.⁶⁶ Elites entertained themselves during the day at cock matches, horse races, gambling houses, taverns, pleasure gardens, banquets,⁶⁷ and occasionally by mixing it up with commoners at fairs, where people occasionally delighted in such things as cat burning.⁶⁸

In ancient times, Japanese noblemen used to play the roving tom at night. This contrast suggests the upper class still had a generally nocturnal lifestyle.

26. In Europe, it is not customary to eat and drink during [theatrical] soirées,⁶⁹ plays and tragedies; in Japan they never have such events without wine and appetizers.⁷⁰

Nowadays in towns and cities across the United States (e.g. New York’s Central Park) or in Europe (e.g. Verona) people bring a picnic to operas and classical music performances. You might say “we” have developed a Japanese sensibility for mixing food with performance, particularly during the summer.

27. Among us, it is customary for there to be jumping about and tambourines raised in the air during merrymaking⁷¹ ; they find this very strange and consider us mad or barbaric.

As one of the Japanese ambassadors to Europe noted, Japanese dancers jumped and whirled about to depict someone possessed of a demon or spirit (see #14 above). The Japanese infrequently “jumped for joy,” except perhaps when drinking (and singing) or in response to certain festival music. Reading this distich one wonders who put on such a show for the Japanese. Presumably Portuguese sailors rather than Jesuits did the merrymaking.⁷²

28. Among us it would be considered mad and barbaric for a great nobleman to ride bareback and with his head uncovered; in Japan it is customary for them to go about in this manner.

This distich would seem better suited to Chapter 1 on men or Chapter 8, on horses, as it has no obvious tie to drama, dance, etc. Apparently having discussed how European merrymaking looked foolish to the Japanese, Frois felt compelled to concoct a contrast that said, “Hey, you Japanese do things that are foolish too.” In a Europe that was preoccupied with civility,⁷³ the thought of a nobleman riding a horse without a hat or a saddle was shocking. As regards the Japanese, Morse remarked:

An illustration of the tolerance of the people and the good manners of the children is shown in the fact that no matter how grotesque or odd some of the people appear in dress, no one shouts at them, laughs at them, or disturbs them in any way. I saw a man wearing for a hat the carapace of the gigantic Japanese crab. This is an enormous crab found in the seas of Japan, whose body measures a foot or more in length and whose claws stretch on each side four or five feet. Many looked at this man as he passed and smiled. It was certainly an odd thing to wear upon the head when most of the people go bareheaded.⁷⁴

29. In Europe, plowing is done by one man with a pair of oxen; in Japan, plowing is done by one ox with two men.

No drama or dance here either. Evidently, after proceeding from “foolish in dance to foolish with horse,” Frois recalled how surprised he was to observe two men plowing with an ox in Japan. The Japanese did not generally goad their oxen (poking them forward with a stick) but rather led them using a nose ring. One could well imagine a Japanese farmer and his son plowing a field with one in front and the other in back. Actually, one could imagine a similar scene in Europe, particularly as an Anglo-Saxon manuscript from England shows two men plowing with two oxen (one goads the oxen forward and the other guides the plow)!⁷⁵ The Japanese apparently used both shallow and deep tillage plows,⁷⁶ depending on the land being farmed (cows and even people might pull a shallow tillage plow in “soft” soil; one or more oxen might be used to pull a deep tillage plow or to break hard-packed soil).

1  A complete collection of Vicente’s works first appeared in 1562. Gil Vicente, Auto Da Barca Da Glória, Nao D’Amores, ed. Maria Idalina Resina Rodrigues (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1995), 61–62.

2  Melveena McKendrick, Theatre in Spain 1490–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 39; Jonathan Thacker, A Companion to Golden Age Theatre (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007), 162.

3  Shelly Fenno Quinn, Developing Zeami: The Noh Actor’s Attunement in Practice (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 3–18; Donald Keene and Thomas Rimer, “The Vocabulary of Japanese Aesthetics II,” In Sources of Japanese Tradition, Second Edition, Volume One: From Earliest Times to 1600, eds. Wm. Theodore de Bary, D. Keene, G. Tanabe, and P. Varley, pp. 364–387 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 369; Andrew J. Perarik, “Noh Masks.” In Japan’s Golden Age: Momoyama, ed. Money L. Hickman, pp. 291–30 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 291; Shio Sakanashi, Kyôgen: Comic Interludes of Japan (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1938); Kunio Komparu, The Noh Theater, Principles and Perspectives (New York: Weatherhill, 1983).

4  Noh reached the peak of its popularity during the reign of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), who was himself fond of performing. George Elison, “Hideyoshi, The Bountiful Minister,” In Warlords, Artists, and Commoners, eds. George Elison and Bardwell L. Smth, pp. 223–245 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1981), 242; Perarik,“Noh Masks,” 291.

5  Kakuzo Okakura, The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (New York: IGG Muse Inc., 2000[1904]), 183.

6  Frank Hoff. “City and Country: Song and the Performing Arts in the Sixteenth Century.” In Warlords, Artists, and Commoners, Japan in the Sixteenth Century, eds. George Elison and Bardwell Smith, pp. 133–163 (Honolulu: The University of Hawai’i Press, 1981), 134–137.

7  Sakanashi, Kyôgen, 19.

8  Jinrikisha Days in Japan (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897), 98.

9  Vicente, Auto Da Barca Da Glória, 107. As this quote indicates, Vicente wrote in Spanish as well as Portuguese.

10  Thacker, A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, 145.

11  Quinn, Developing Zeami; Eta Harich-Schneider, A History of Japanese Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 420–422.

12  Akira Tamba, The Musical Structutre of Noh, trans. Patricia Matoré (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1981), 17.

13  Vicente, The Boat Plays, 24–45.

14  Tamba, The Musical Structutre of Noh, 22–27; Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, 436.

15  Brown, History of Theatre, 162–163.

16  Autos sacramentales also were performed indoors in the palaces and homes of the nobility. Gil Vicente, for instance, staged plays in the palace of João II and his wife Queen Leonor, as did Juan del Encina for the Duke of Alba in his palace near Salamanca. It is not clear what the “separate structure” would be in this case, although Frois’ larger point seems to be that the audience, in any case, cannot see actors waiting to take the stage.

17  See Sakanishi, Kyôgen, xiv–xv.

18  The Noh Theater, 140.

19  Kakuzo Okakura, The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (New York: IGG Muse Inc., 2000[1903]), 184.

20  This was especially true given that Catholics and Protestants were literally killing each other over the Catholic belief that the consecrated host was truly God incarnate.

21  Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage, License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 48–49.

22  Mira Felner, The World of Theater, Tradition and Innovation (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2006), 32.

23  During the second half of the sixteenth century (Frois left Europe in 1548) women increasingly appeared on stage in Spanish theaters, perhaps as result of the example set by Italian touring companies.

24  Perarik,“Noh Masks,” 291.

25  Ibid., 292. Perarik suggests that the masks are not altogether typological in that an experienced actor can convey different feelings or emotions by lifting a mask or tilting it in various directions.

26  Lynn Matluck Brooks, The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2003), 24–26.

27  See Kanõ Hideyori’s screen painting “Maple Viewing at Mount Takao” (Ca. 1577). Money L. Hickman, “Painting.” In Japan’s Golden Age, Momoyama, ed. Money L. Hickman, pp. 93–181 New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 114–115.

28  William P. Malm, “Music Cultures of Momoyama Japan.” In Warlords, Artists, and Commoners, Japan in the Sixteenth Century.eds. George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith, pp. 163–186 (Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1981), 166, 175–176.

29  The Portuguese original is missing a word or two; “stooped over” would seem to be implied by the remainder of the distich.

30  Rui Vieira Nery, História da Música (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1991); Brooks, The Art of Dancing, 138–139.

31  Gayle Kassing, History of Dance: An Interactive Arts Approach (Champaign, IL.: Human Kinetics, 2007),77–79; Rodney Gallop, “The Folk Music of Portugal: I.” Music & Letters 14(1933):220–230.

32  In their Japanese-language edition of the Tratado, Matsuda and Jorissen have taken issue with this contrast, citing numerous instances of night dancing in Europe. However, it seems that Frois is talking about formal as opposed to social dancing.

33  Not that all European dance featured leaps and jumps; for instance, during circle dances such as the ballo Sardo (Sardinian dance) the feet stay close to the ground.

34  William E. Deal, Handbook of Life In Medieval And Early Modern Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 268.

35  Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 259–260, states that there is no evidence of the use of polyphony in Portugal before the fifteenth century. There are a number of extant collections of Portuguese cantigas or songbooks from the sixteenth century, including the Cancioneiro de Elvas, which was compiled around 1560. The Elvas songbook has sixty-five songs written in three-part harmony. Manuel Morais, Cancioneiro Musical d’Elvas (Lisbon, Fundacão Calouste Gulbenkian, 1977).

36  Tamba, The Musical Structure of Noh, 35–37.

37  Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987[1880]), II, 210.

38  James Stark, Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 123–124.

39  Tamba, The Musical Structure of Noh, 37–39.

40  Cravo. The perhaps more familiar harpsichord (espineta in Portuguese) is older and smaller than the cravo. Portuguese also has the word clavicórdio, which refers to an instrument that is similar to the cravo, yet somehow different. Antônio Houaiss, Mauro de Salles Villar, and Francisco Manoel de Mello Franco, eds., Dicionário Houaiss Da Língua Portuguesa. (Rio de Janiero: Objetiva, 2001).

41  The doçaina was a reed instrument belonging to the oboe family that was very popular in Europe from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Houaiss et al., Dicionário Houaiss, 1068.

42  Michael Cooper, The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582–1590 (Kent UK: Global Oriental, 2005), 158. See also Harich-Schneider, History of Japanese Music, 445–486.

43  Josef Franz Schütte, S.J., Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan, Volume I, Part II, trans. John J. Coyne, S.J. (St. Louis: Institute for Jesuit Sources, 1985), 117.

44  Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected With Japan. Fourth edition (London: John Murray, 1902), 248.

45  Canto d’orgão. Houaiss et. al., Dicionário Houaiss Da Língua Portuguesa, 614.

46  Caxi maxi (kashimashi), a word that refers to noise made by the inclusion of too many elements. To use modern idiom, “cacophonous.” It is often written with a Chinese character (despised by Japanese feminists) for three women.

47  Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 129.

48  Edward S. Morse, Japan Day By Day, 1877, 1878–1879, 1882–1883. 2 Vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), I, 422.

49  Peter H. Lee, The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry, edited by Peter H. Lee (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Hoff, “City and Country.”

50  The second half or Japanese part of this contrast has stumped many of Frois’ translators, particularly “… em que o tipre estaa descansado.” The Portuguese word is, in fact, tiple, which means treble or soprano. Treble is the name assigned to one of the clefs in which music can be composed, the other most common one being bass clef. ‘Treble clef’ in Portuguese is clave de soprano (= tiple), or clave de sol na segunda linha, which means that the clef symbol rests on the second line of the musical staff, representing the note sol or G. Frois’ text says em que o tipre esta descansado, meaning ‘the note on which the treble rests,’ which means the line on the staff around which the curl of the treble clef is centered, hence our translation as rendered.

51  Kate van Orden, “Children’s Voices: Singing and Literacy in Sixteenth-Century France.” Early Music History 25(2006):209–256.

52  Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 221–222.

53  Dobradas.

54  Houaiss et. al., Dicionário Houaiss, 2865, note that the viola braguesa (from the Braga region in northwestern Portugal) was plucked rather than bowed and had five or six pairs of strings, which were tuned in the same manner as a guitar.

55  Sanfonineiros.

56  Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 259. In his A History of Song (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), 20, Denis Stevens seemingly takes issue with Frois, suggesting that many or most troubadours were from the upper class.

57  Manuel da Costa Fontes, “Between Ballad and Parallelistic Song: A Condessa Traidora in the Portuguese Oral Tradition.” In Medieval and Renaissance Spain and Portugal, eds. Martha E. Schaffer and Antonio Corijo Ocaña, pp.182–196 (Rochester: Tamesis, 2006), 182.

58  Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin Books, 1967[1528]), 120.

59  Shelley Fenno Quinn, “Oral and Vocal Traditions of Japan,” In Teaching Oral Traditions, ed. John M. Foley, pp. 258–266 (New York: Modern Language Association, 1998), 262; Helen Craig McCullough, trans., The Tale of the Heike, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).

60  Quoted in Henry Davenport Northrop and John Ruseell Young, eds., The Flowery Kingdom and the Land of the Mikado or China, Japan and Chorea (J.H Moore and Company, 1894), 486.

61  Bernard Brauchli, The Clavichord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 54.

62  Ibid., 54.

63  Vaqizaxis [wakizashi = dagger(s)].

64  Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe (London: Routledge, 2006), 78.

65  In Korea, too, the blind were not thought of as handicapped and a burden for others. Specifically, in Korea shamanism (fortune-telling, exorcism and benediction all in one) was “big business” and one of the two principle classes of shamans was blind. In China as well, blind men often found work turning power-wheels for mills, while blind women became prostitutes (as was often the case in Japan).

66  Roger Ekrich, At Day’s End: Night in Times Past (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005).

67  George Irving Hale, “Games and Social Pastimes in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age.” Hispanic Review: 8(1940):219–241. See also Alessandro Arcangeli, Recreation in the Renaissance (London: Palgrave, 2003).

68  Norbert Elias, The History of Manners (New York: Pantheon, 1978 [1939]), 203–204; Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 543.

69  Serões, which does indeed translate as ‘soirées.’ However, most contemporary English speakers think of a soirée as an evening party that does not involve a theatrical presentation. We believe Frois had the latter in mind and thus our qualifying bracket [theatrical].

70  Sacana (sakana).

71  Nas fulias. Note the plural rather than the singular, which is why we have rendered it as ‘merrymaking,’ rather than as the old Portuguese dance known as the fulia. It is actually this former sense that has come to be associated with the singular fulia in Portuguese today.

72  According to James Murdoch, A History of Japan. 3 Vols. (New York: Ungar Publishing, 1964), II, P.I, 79, the Jesuits bitterly complained about the scandalous behavior of Portuguese seamen and merchants who began arriving in Japan after c. 1585; previously they had been well behaved.

73  Dilwyn Knox, “Disciplina: The Monastic and Clerical Origins of European Civility,” In Renaissance Society and Culture, John Monfasani and Ronald G. Musto, eds., pp. 107–137 (New York: Italica Press, 1991).

74  Edward S. Morse, Japan Day By Day, 1877, 1878–1879, 1882–1883. 2 Vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), I, 128.

75  See Paul Lacroix, Manners, Customs and Dress During the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Ebook 10940, 2004; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ploughmen_Fac_simile_of_a_Miniature_in_a_very_ancient_Anglo_Saxon_Manuscript_published_by_Shaw_with_legend_God_Spede_ye_Plough_and_send_us_Korne_enow.png).

76  Morse, Japan Day by Day, I, 139. See also Jiro Iinuma, “The Meiji System: The Revolution of Rice Cultivation Technology in Japan.” Agricultural History: 43 (1969): 289–296.