XIXSARDOU AND KAWAKAMI“WHO is author of the play that Sada Yacco is playing?” a writer friend asked me one day.“Kawakami, her husband.”“Really. Well, then he ought to belong to the Society of Authors.”And we proposed his name.On the appointed day I took him to the Society of Authors. I was quite surprised to note that the gentlemen of the committee had turned out to a man to receive him.We were ushered into the committee room, where these gentlemen awaited us, seated round a large table.Sardou, who presided, received us with a very appropriate address. He greeted Kawakami as the man who first forged a literary bond between France and Japan. He warmly congratulated Kawakami on having been the first manager who had the courage to bring a company from his distant native land to a city where no one understood a word of Japanese. Hecomplimented Kawakami and complimented him again, and ended by calling him his “dear comrade.”After which he sat down.There was silence, and I knew that they were expecting some response from Kawakami. But he seemed in no wise to suspect that he had furnished the theme for the discourse just ended. He remained calmly in his seat and surveyed the gentlemen one by one.I realised the necessity for immediate action. Some one must sacrifice himself. In the present crisis, cost what it may, it devolved on me to intervene. Turning toward Kawakami, I asked, in pantomime: “Do you understand?”He shook his head to say no.Thereupon M. Sardou added:“Speak to him, Miss Fuller. Translate to him what has just been said.”Finally, since there was nothing else for it, I summoned all my strength, and at some length I explained in good English to Kawakami, who did not understand a syllable of it, that this speech Sardou had prepared expressly for him because he was a Japanese author, and because the French were greatly pleased that he had brought his Japanese company to Paris, and that the Society of Authors received him with pleasure. I then explained to Kawakami, with the indispensable assistance of appropriate gestures, thatthe time had arrived for him to get up and say something in Japanese.Was it not the essential fact that these gentlemen believed that M. Sardou’s words had been translated?Kawakami immediately arose and delivered an address which must have been most carefully thought out. To judge from the seriousness of the orator’s aspect, and from the length of his harangue Kawakami is a great political orator. When he had finished he sat down, while everybody looked at him admiringly, with beaming faces.No one, however, had understood a single word of what he said. I, naturally, was in the same plight as the others. There ensued a second somewhat painful silence, broken by Sardou asking:“What did he say, Miss Loie?”That was a poser. For there was no reason why I should understand Japanese any better than these gentlemen of the Society of Authors.As, however, I had a feeling that I was a little responsible for what took place, in order not to cause them any disappointment I screwed my courage up again, rose and began to make a speech. Those who know me can fancy what this speech was like. It was in French, but I would take my oath that it was as hard to understand as Kawakami’s Japanese. However, I managed to ring the changes on the words “Japanese gratitude,Japanese pride,” and I did my best to paint in glowing colours Kawakami’s joy at having established a bond between the theatrical worlds of the two countries.My speech was only a bad imitation of what M. Sardou had said, and what I had vaguely understood of Kawakami’s views. I tried, in fact, to say what Kawakami would have said in my place and, with as much emphasis and big sincere words, I came to a close. Then before sitting down I asserted once more: “There, gentlemen, that is what he said.”My role of being an interpreter without understanding the language was finished. There was a storm of hurrahs and the ice was broken. The conversation became general, and the meeting ended in being a great success so far as Kawakami was concerned. It was Kawakami’s day. As for me, I was not in it.The result of this meeting was that Kawakami played Sardou’sLa Patriein Japan, obtaining for this work a success as great as for the Shakespearean plays he likewise represents there, and whose parts he plays with such truth that he is called at home, “the Japanese Mark Antony.”He brought to the theatres of his native land certain modifications, which have radically changed their dramatic methods. It is customary in Japan to begin a play at nine or ten o’clock in the morning and to make it last at least untilmidnight. One lunches and dines at the theatre during the intervals, which, it is needless to say, are interminable.Kawakami changed that condition of things by beginning at half-past six or at seven o’clock in the evening and ending before midnight. And how do you suppose he managed to prevent people eating between the acts? for that was the most difficult innovation. He made the intervals so short that there was no time even to go to the refreshment-room. It was really an easy thing to compel the public to alter its habits. Instead of appealing to people’s reason, Kawakami simply made it impossible for them to continue doing what they had previously done.European theatres are now building in Japan, in order that actors from Europe may go there and produce their plays. The Nipponese public is learning to give them a more favourable reception.All that is due to Kawakami and to his sympathetic reception at the Society of Authors. I cannot refrain from congratulating myself on this, for, after all, it was I who “translated” the addresses and thus sealed in words this newentente cordiale.That brings to mind a little story.It happened at the Athénée in 1893. We were rehearsing the “Salome” of Armand Silvestre and Gabriel Pierné. Behind the scenes one day I encountered a man with an enormous muffler,which went several times around his neck, and a tall hat of a style that came down over his ears. I chatted with him in the indifferent French I had at command, and this without knowing who he was. While talking to him I noticed a hole in his shoe. He was aware of my discovery, I suppose, for he said to me:“I had that hole made expressly. I prefer a hole in my shoe to a pain in my foot.”This man was Victorien Sardou.A word more about my Japanese friends.Kawakami has a son who was five years old when I first saw him. He passed his time drawing everything around him.I observed in his simple childish drawings a very peculiar manner he affected in representing people’s eyes. They were always drawn like billiard balls emerging from the face. I asked Kawakami:“Don’t you think that it is an odd way to draw eyes?”“Yes, but it is because the European eye is quite like the eye of a fish,” the father replied.That aroused in me a desire to know more intimately his impressions of our race, and I asked him what Europeans look like from the Japanese point of view.“All Europeans,” he said, “resemble pigs. Some of them look like dirty pigs, some like clean pigs; but they all look like pigs.”I never said anything about this to M. Sardou.
“WHO is author of the play that Sada Yacco is playing?” a writer friend asked me one day.
“Kawakami, her husband.”
“Really. Well, then he ought to belong to the Society of Authors.”
And we proposed his name.
On the appointed day I took him to the Society of Authors. I was quite surprised to note that the gentlemen of the committee had turned out to a man to receive him.
We were ushered into the committee room, where these gentlemen awaited us, seated round a large table.
Sardou, who presided, received us with a very appropriate address. He greeted Kawakami as the man who first forged a literary bond between France and Japan. He warmly congratulated Kawakami on having been the first manager who had the courage to bring a company from his distant native land to a city where no one understood a word of Japanese. Hecomplimented Kawakami and complimented him again, and ended by calling him his “dear comrade.”
After which he sat down.
There was silence, and I knew that they were expecting some response from Kawakami. But he seemed in no wise to suspect that he had furnished the theme for the discourse just ended. He remained calmly in his seat and surveyed the gentlemen one by one.
I realised the necessity for immediate action. Some one must sacrifice himself. In the present crisis, cost what it may, it devolved on me to intervene. Turning toward Kawakami, I asked, in pantomime: “Do you understand?”
He shook his head to say no.
Thereupon M. Sardou added:
“Speak to him, Miss Fuller. Translate to him what has just been said.”
Finally, since there was nothing else for it, I summoned all my strength, and at some length I explained in good English to Kawakami, who did not understand a syllable of it, that this speech Sardou had prepared expressly for him because he was a Japanese author, and because the French were greatly pleased that he had brought his Japanese company to Paris, and that the Society of Authors received him with pleasure. I then explained to Kawakami, with the indispensable assistance of appropriate gestures, thatthe time had arrived for him to get up and say something in Japanese.
Was it not the essential fact that these gentlemen believed that M. Sardou’s words had been translated?
Kawakami immediately arose and delivered an address which must have been most carefully thought out. To judge from the seriousness of the orator’s aspect, and from the length of his harangue Kawakami is a great political orator. When he had finished he sat down, while everybody looked at him admiringly, with beaming faces.
No one, however, had understood a single word of what he said. I, naturally, was in the same plight as the others. There ensued a second somewhat painful silence, broken by Sardou asking:
“What did he say, Miss Loie?”
That was a poser. For there was no reason why I should understand Japanese any better than these gentlemen of the Society of Authors.
As, however, I had a feeling that I was a little responsible for what took place, in order not to cause them any disappointment I screwed my courage up again, rose and began to make a speech. Those who know me can fancy what this speech was like. It was in French, but I would take my oath that it was as hard to understand as Kawakami’s Japanese. However, I managed to ring the changes on the words “Japanese gratitude,Japanese pride,” and I did my best to paint in glowing colours Kawakami’s joy at having established a bond between the theatrical worlds of the two countries.
My speech was only a bad imitation of what M. Sardou had said, and what I had vaguely understood of Kawakami’s views. I tried, in fact, to say what Kawakami would have said in my place and, with as much emphasis and big sincere words, I came to a close. Then before sitting down I asserted once more: “There, gentlemen, that is what he said.”
My role of being an interpreter without understanding the language was finished. There was a storm of hurrahs and the ice was broken. The conversation became general, and the meeting ended in being a great success so far as Kawakami was concerned. It was Kawakami’s day. As for me, I was not in it.
The result of this meeting was that Kawakami played Sardou’sLa Patriein Japan, obtaining for this work a success as great as for the Shakespearean plays he likewise represents there, and whose parts he plays with such truth that he is called at home, “the Japanese Mark Antony.”
He brought to the theatres of his native land certain modifications, which have radically changed their dramatic methods. It is customary in Japan to begin a play at nine or ten o’clock in the morning and to make it last at least untilmidnight. One lunches and dines at the theatre during the intervals, which, it is needless to say, are interminable.
Kawakami changed that condition of things by beginning at half-past six or at seven o’clock in the evening and ending before midnight. And how do you suppose he managed to prevent people eating between the acts? for that was the most difficult innovation. He made the intervals so short that there was no time even to go to the refreshment-room. It was really an easy thing to compel the public to alter its habits. Instead of appealing to people’s reason, Kawakami simply made it impossible for them to continue doing what they had previously done.
European theatres are now building in Japan, in order that actors from Europe may go there and produce their plays. The Nipponese public is learning to give them a more favourable reception.
All that is due to Kawakami and to his sympathetic reception at the Society of Authors. I cannot refrain from congratulating myself on this, for, after all, it was I who “translated” the addresses and thus sealed in words this newentente cordiale.
That brings to mind a little story.
It happened at the Athénée in 1893. We were rehearsing the “Salome” of Armand Silvestre and Gabriel Pierné. Behind the scenes one day I encountered a man with an enormous muffler,which went several times around his neck, and a tall hat of a style that came down over his ears. I chatted with him in the indifferent French I had at command, and this without knowing who he was. While talking to him I noticed a hole in his shoe. He was aware of my discovery, I suppose, for he said to me:
“I had that hole made expressly. I prefer a hole in my shoe to a pain in my foot.”
This man was Victorien Sardou.
A word more about my Japanese friends.
Kawakami has a son who was five years old when I first saw him. He passed his time drawing everything around him.
I observed in his simple childish drawings a very peculiar manner he affected in representing people’s eyes. They were always drawn like billiard balls emerging from the face. I asked Kawakami:
“Don’t you think that it is an odd way to draw eyes?”
“Yes, but it is because the European eye is quite like the eye of a fish,” the father replied.
That aroused in me a desire to know more intimately his impressions of our race, and I asked him what Europeans look like from the Japanese point of view.
“All Europeans,” he said, “resemble pigs. Some of them look like dirty pigs, some like clean pigs; but they all look like pigs.”
I never said anything about this to M. Sardou.