Abstract
Captain Richard Cocks, head of the English factory in Japan and one of the country's early European visitors, attended a theatre performance in Hirado, which to his great astonishment was given 'by the Kings themselves, with the greatest Noblemen and Princes. [. . .] The matter was of the valiant deeds of their Ancestors, from the beginning of their Kingdome or Common-wealth, untill this present, with much mirth mixed among, to give the common people content' . And he concluded appreciatively: 'I never saw Play wherein I noted so much, for I see their policie is great in doing thereof, and quite contrary to our Comoedies in Christendome, ours being but dumbe shewes, and this the truth it selfe, acted by the Kings themselves, to keep in perpetuall remembrance their affaires.'1 A contemporary of Shakespeare and thus accustomed to royal performances,2 Cocks discerned the meaning of such theatricalities of power, though he was unaware of the dramatic genre, which was n-that is, lyric masked drama interspersed with song and dance, and accompanied by instrumental music and a chorus-alternating with kygen-comic sketches. To be more accurate, what the captain saw was amateur n played by warriors. More than two centuries had passed since actor-authors like Kan'ami Kiyotsugu (1334-1384) and his son, Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1444?), brought sarugaku n (later called n) to a first bloom. Meanwhile, the genre had turned from a 'beggars' occupation' (as one fourteenth-century courtier described it) of troupes affiliated with Buddhist temples and Shint shrines, into a refined stage art. Patronised by the military elite, n not only absorbed the iconography and rhetoric of aristocratic literature, but also adopted courtly deportment on stage. During the