by Alan Spence
When I’d given my lecture, on the Five Ranks, the Real and the Unreal, the good doctor approached me and handed me a small printed handbill. It advertised a performance at the Bunraku puppet theatre. I turned the leaflet this way and that, read the title of the play. Love Suicides at Sonezaki. A tragic tale of love and loss. I looked at him, quizzical, raised an eyebrow.
?
It’s based on a true story, he said, about real people who lived not so long ago.
And?
It’s the latest drama by Chikamatsu, he said. I thought it might be of interest.
Ah, I said, looking more closely at the leaflet. Chikamatsu.
That puppet show I had seen as a boy, The Cauldron-Hat of Nisshin Shonin, had been written by Chikamatsu.
I owe him a great debt, I said.
Yes, said the doctor. That was why I thought . . .
I must have told him the story, more than once. The lamplit courtyard. The little figures utterly alive. The audience chanting the Daimoku.
I have a friend who works at the theatre, said Gentoku.
You have friends everywhere, I said.
I understand Chikamatsu himself will attend the performance.
Indeed? I peered more closely at the handbill.
Furthermore . . . said Gentoku.
I laughed. Why am I alarmed at this Furthermore. . . ?
In his own way, said Gentoku, he is a student of Zen.
In his own way.
He knows of your teaching and would be honoured to meet you.
I can see it now, I said. Word will fly along the Tokaido to Hara. Hakuin has fallen. He is in the floating world of Ukiyo, consorting with actors and dancers, geisha and courtesans. He worships at the temple of Bunraku, at the feet of master Chikamatsu.
No doubt, said Gentoku. However . . .
However, I said.
I was more than ever the village bumpkin, awed by the big city. Even on my other visits to Kyoto, or to Edo, I had never seen so many people crowding the streets. It made the Tokaido at Hara seem like a quiet country road.
So many, I said to Gentoku, turning my head, looking this way and that, taking it all in. So many.
The air was thick with cooking smells from wayside stalls, fish and seaweed, ginger and garlic and sesame oil, scallions and shoyu, pickles and noodle-broth, seared tofu and burned sugar. At one point I detected the scent of tororojiru and my mouth watered. Live octopus floundered in a vat of water. Further along, two men, stripped to the waist, raised wooden mallets and alternated, kept up a rhythmic beat, pounding rice into fleshy mochi to be stuffed with sweet bean paste. There was even a stall selling nothing but my favourite konpeito sugared sweets, heaps of them piled up in dishes on the counter, mountains of them, sparkling.
Simplicity and poverty, I told myself. Moderation in all things.
In a side street there were jugglers and acrobats. One man breathed fire, sent onlookers scattering. Another spun plates on thin bamboo sticks, balanced one on his forehead, one on each hand, one from his outstretched foot as he stood on one leg.
Gentoku laughed as I gawped, amazed. He kept having to tug at my sleeve, guide me through the crowds, down narrow alleyways towards the theatre.
Banners flapped outside the building, lanterns blazed, and as we stepped inside I was once more a child, overcome with excitement and anticipation.
The main stage reached out into the audience, and to the side was a smaller platform where two men sat, motionless, dressed in black robes. One played the samisen, its notes deeper than any I’d heard before. Its strings wailed and cried, a mournful overture. The other man listened, his face an impassive mask. Then he opened his mouth and began to chant, his voice an eerie, unearthly singsong, setting the scene, introducing the main characters, Tokubai, a merchant, and Ohatsu, a courtesan. The story was the tale of their doomed love. The samisen moaned.
Out of the shadows on the main stage two puppet figures appeared, the lovers, each one operated by three puppeteers, also dressed in black. At the sight of the puppets I was thrilled, transfixed, just as I’d been as a boy, watching Nisshin. In the slightest movement of the hand, the head, each puppet was utterly alive. The narrator gave them voice, deep and gruff for the man, high and melodic for the woman, and as I glanced across at him, his expression changed for each character, now intense and solemn, now anxious and alarmed. Then I forgot about him, forgot he was there, and I forgot about the puppeteers, forgot I was in a theatre at all and the whole thing was artifice. The characters drew me into their own world, their own realm of being.
As the story ended, as the lovers prepared to die, they chanted the Nembutsu, invoking the compassion of Amida Buddha, asking to be born into the Pure Land. I found myself silently mouthing the words, joining in the chant. Namu Amida Butsu. I folded my hands and bowed my head.
Well? said Gentoku as we left the auditorium.
I looked around as if in a dream. This world, the everyday. What passed for reality, ephemeral and transient as the little puppet-play we had seen unfold.
Illusion on illusion, I said. And yet . . .
The doctor led me backstage where a young woman ushered us into a small room, tatami on the floor, an elegant flower arrangement in a tokonoma alcove, woodblock prints on the wall depicting characters from Chikamatsu’s plays – a medicine pedlar, a warrior, the couple from the play that had just been performed. Seated in the corner of the room, propped up on cushions, sat Chikamatsu himself. He was old, close to seventy, gaunt and thin-shouldered, but still with a kind of aristocratic elegance, a refinement of bearing. In a deep red jacket he resembled a figure from one of the ukiyo-e prints, an aging actor, a court poet. I could only imagine how I must look to him in my old robes of coarse grey cloth. But he was the one who bowed, called me Sensei, said it was an honour to meet me.
I laughed. You bow to this old bag of bones, draped in sackcloth!
Doctor Gentoku has told me a great deal about you, he said. He gave me a book of your writings.
Poison drool, I said. I can’t imagine a man of your sophistication lapping it up.
It tastes of Zen, he said.
Ah, I said. Zen.
I let the word hang there, left a silence which he broke by clapping his hands, calling for tea. In an instant, it seemed, the tea had been placed before us by three young women moving as swiftly and unobtrusively as the invisible puppeteers on stage. They also left a dish of the konpeito I loved.
I see the good doctor has also told you of my weakness for these sweets.
Please, said Chikamatsu, indicating the dish.
I took a handful of the sweets, popped them one by one in my mouth, crunched them to sweet grit.
Exquisite, I said, as he poured the tea.
You are in Kyoto to give a lecture, he said, at Myoshin-ji.
On the Unreal and the Real.
The Five Ranks, he said. I have read Tozan’s verses.
Indeed? I said, remembering old Shoju driving me to understand these words, the suffering and austerity I underwent for month after month on the road, in all weathers, frozen and starving, sick, battering, battering, battering at the gates. The moment of kensho when I saw it clear. The current of ordinary life . . . He comes back to sit among the dust and the ashes. Now I sat here in the Floating World, eating sugared sweets.
It’s my understanding, said Chikamatsu, that art lies in the thinnest gap between the real and the unreal.
He had honed the thought, polished the words till they shone, an aphorism.
I threw back my head and laughed.
Spew it up, I said. I’ll add it to my vat of poison!
His lips formed a thin smile. He was shrewd enough to know I was paying him a backhanded compliment. His eyes were world-weary, amused, but I saw there a flickering of insight, an intense awareness of transience, of his own mortality.
We all die, I said.
And then?
Perhaps you’ll be a monk in your next life.
An
d perhaps you’ll be a playwright.
And would that be progress?
Perhaps, he said, and I laughed again.
There are those who say, I continued, that when Zen teaching is flourishing, it has little to do with art. But when the teaching is in decline, the reliance on the arts increases. So instead of monks we produce poets and painters and tea masters.
So all of this . . . He waved a languid hand, indicating the posters on the wall . . . is simply a diversion, a distraction?
Everything is illusory, I said. But some illusion leads to liberation, some just leads deeper into the mire.
And what about this illusion? He waved the hand again, towards the poster for the play we had just seen.
I was enchanted by the performance, I said. It told a timeless story of giri and nijo, duty and desire. But at the end, when the lovers chanted the Nembutsu and offered everything up, it became something more. It transcended the telling, and I must say I found it deeply affecting.
He gave the slightest bow. Thank you.
The doctor, I believe, has mentioned my own debt of gratitude to you. When I was a small boy, my mother took me to see your play on Nisshin Shonin, and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life, a kind of awakening. So, this is what art can do.
But you won’t be encouraging your followers to come and enjoy the pleasures of the Floating World?
I want to produce monks, monks, monks, not aesthetes, not geisha!
But you yourself are here.
Indeed! I said, thanks to our good friend the doctor.
Gentoku bowed, gave a little exaggerated flourish.
I have a story to tell the monks, I said, if they should ask how I could visit such a place.
I am listening, said Chikamatsu.
In ancient times, I said, there was a great king who also happened to be a spiritual seeker.
What is it they say? asked Chikamatsu. A memory of the spiritual life often haunts the throne.
I have heard the same, I said. Great seekers who just fail to attain realisation are often reborn in auspicious circumstances as an emperor, a great ruler, so they can do good in the world.
I fear they don’t always succeed.
Too many distractions? I said.
Please continue, said Chikamatsu.
In the case of this particular king, I said, there was no contradiction. Although he lived in a palace, his life was disciplined and his meditation was profound. His rule was wise and benign.
But one day a young monk came to the palace to see this enlightened ruler for himself, and unfortunately the young man was horrified. All he saw was luxury and opulence. He looked around at the beautiful surroundings, the servants and handmaidens, musicians and dancing girls, and he denounced the king. How can you live like this, he said, and claim to see the truth?
The king listened to his outburst, then summoned the young man to his quarters where he set him a task. He filled a small bowl with oil, right to the brim, and he handed it to the young man.
I want you to carry this the whole length of the palace and back, said the king, and return it to me without spilling a drop.
By this time the young man thought the king was quite mad. But he thought it best to humour him, so he took the bowl and set off to fulfil his task. After quite some time he returned. With tremendous effort he had managed to keep his hand steady and not spill the oil. He returned the bowl to the king who took it from him and set it down.
You have done well, said the king. You have learned how to concentrate. But as you walked through the palace, what did you see?
I saw nothing, he said. Only the bowl, and the oil in it, and my hand holding it.
You didn’t drink in the opulence and beauty of your surroundings? You weren’t distracted by the music or the dancing girls?
I didn’t even notice them, he said.
Well then, said the king. This is how I can dwell here, in the midst of distraction, and not be distracted. My concentration on what is real is total and absolute.
The young monk understood, and returned home a little wiser.
Chikamatsu laughed and applauded.
An excellent tale, he said. It would make a wonderful puppet show. Perhaps I shall turn it into a play.
Then I will come and see it!
Once more he clapped his hands together and once more the young women were in the room and clearing away the tea things and replacing them with a wooden box, inlaid with a dragon design.
He said he would smoke a pipe and invited us to join him. Gentoku nodded and I said I would be delighted, it would be the perfect way to round off a day of indulgence. He took the clay pipes and a jar of tobacco from the box, and we lit up with a flint and sat content, wreathed in fragrant fumes.
There was a tap at the shoji screen and it slid open. A middle-aged man sat there, carrying the puppet figures of Tokubai and Ohatsu, the two lovers. I didn’t recognise the man till he stepped into the room. He was the tayu, the narrator of the play. He had changed into a lighter-coloured yukata, but his features had also changed as he reinhabited his everyday self. He bowed to us, smiling.
Please, said Chikamatsu, and the man placed the puppets on a low seat opposite me, and sat down beside them.
The puppets wanted to bid you farewell, said Chikamatsu, and he nodded to the man and took the puppet Tokubai from him. They sat for a moment then the man began to chant in the singsong voice of Ohatsu, and once again his face transformed as he became the courtesan and gave voice to her emotions. My heart thudded as the little figure moved. Then the voice changed, and the tayu became Tokubai, and the other figure also moved. And I knew the two men were operating the puppets, but the figures were alive, conscient. The tayu, possessed, sang in one voice then the other, a song of parting, ending with the Nembutsu, invoking compassion. The two little figures faced me, looked at me. The little hands, folded in supplication, were shaking. The little heads bowed, and it was over.
Between the real and the unreal, said Chikamatsu.
I bowed to him, and to the tayu, and I bowed to each of the little figures as if they were sentient beings.
SIX
IS THAT SO?
I
had seen the girl a few times in the village. Her parents owned a stall at the market, selling fruit and vegetables, and the girl worked there, serving the customers. She worked with a quiet courtesy, a deference, her manner brisk and efficient. But once or twice I saw a look in her eyes, a glimmer, a spark. There was a fire in her that might illumine or consume, and no way of knowing which it would be.
She was pretty, with a natural gracefulness about her, a lightness. It was there even in the smallest of gestures, the way she weighed the vegetables on an old scale, wrapped them and handed them over, took the money, gave change. I heard her father call her Kazuko.
I had gone into the market one day with one of the young monks, Taku. He had asked with great earnestness about the aphorism Your everyday mind is the way. He found it difficult to understand, and I thought down there among the sights and sounds and smells of the marketplace he might catch a glimpse.
We stopped at the stall to buy vegetables – I picked out a few radishes and leeks and the girl placed them in a sack Taku had brought with him. Everything on the stall was laid out just so, the fruits and vegetables piled high. Right in the centre was a basket of persimmons, perfect and ripe. I could smell their sweetness. I told Taku to choose one and he asked the girl which was the best.
She bowed to him and smiled.
They are all the best, she said.
I laughed and slapped Taku on the back.
You see, Taku, I said. This young woman has a deep understanding of Zen!
The girl laughed too, but politely, covering her mouth with her hand. There was still a faint smile in her eyes as she picked up one persimmon, cupped it in both hands and handed it to him.
This one, she said.
He took it and bowed, said Thank you, but he was flust
ered, as much by her smile as by my testing him. He blushed as bright as the persimmon. I would have to remind him what Shakyamuni said about women. However beautiful, they were still only bags of guts and blood and bone.
Nevertheless.
The next time I saw the girl was one evening near the temple. I had gone outside for a walk as it grew dark, and I saw her standing there quite still, distracted, staring into the distance.
At first I didn’t recognise her and I asked who she was.
I am nobody, she said. Just a girl.
Then I saw she was the girl from the market.
I know you, I said. You taught us persimmon Zen. Every one is the best!
I am nobody, she said again. Leave me alone.
She turned away and hurried into the dusk, moving with quick short steps as the temple bell rang, its single note resonating, long.
It was some time later – a few days, a week. I had been absorbed in re-reading the Lotus Sutra, chanting the Daimoku, when I heard a commotion at the gate, a man’s voice, rough and guttural, angry.
I stepped forward, spoke to him quietly.
Who is making this noise?
You know why I am here, he said, lips tight, jaw clenched.
You think I have magic powers? I asked him. You think I can read your mind?
You call yourself a master, he said, but you’re useless.
No doubt, I said. But how does my uselessness concern you?
I could see he was controlling himself with great difficulty.
This is about my daughter, he said.
I recognised him then as the girl’s father.
Ah, I said. Yes.
She is pregnant, he said. At first she refused to name the father. My wife pleaded, I threatened. The girl is stubborn, but eventually she could take no more and she blurted out the truth. She said your name.
The monks could not believe what they were hearing. They were ready to seize the man and bundle him out the door, but I raised my hand, restraining them, and let him continue.