Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

Along Broadway complaints have been heard during recent years of the almost dishonest brevity of some plays. Of all the things that may be said against theatrical performances in Japan, that would be the most unreasonable. I pride myself on a certain amount of endurance, in any good cause, but I confess to a kindly feeling toward that Tokyo friend who did not take me to the "Meiji-za" until the show was half over. Not that it was so far beyond me, or that I am incapable of appreciating, even of enjoying at times, things wholly foreign to our American point of view; but even Fred Stone, I fancy, would begin to grow wearisome if he cavorted about the stage almost incessantly from two until midnight.

By the time we had checked our shoes in one of the adjoining tea-houses-for to do so at the door of the theater itself means a long and severe struggle to recover them-and were shown to a box six inches deep and furnished with cushions and a tray of tea, most of the crowded house had already had four and a half hours' worth of the admission fee. For most of them it was supper-time, and scores of men and boys flitted back and forth along the "aisles," level with the tops of patrons' heads, serving meals contained in lacquered boxes, the inevitable tea, and white vase-like bottles of warm _sake_. Unshod and experienced, they caused little or no annoyance, especially to an audience accustomed to see actors often enter or leave the stage by these same polished wooden runways. In the gently sloping balcony the rice-fed multitude, gathered in family groups in similar square, shallow, mat-floored inclosures, piled about them the plentiful waste of their lunches without for a moment letting their attention waver from the stage.