Japanese Plays

by A. L. Sadler

  YOSHINO: Ah, and what did he do then?

  SHŌYU: I know nothing more about him. He’s disappeared and I don’t know what he’s doing.

  YOSHINO: And why don’t you forgive him?

  SHŌYU: That I cannot do. What would be the good of him if he came home? I want a man in my house, not a fool who doesn’t know how to live.

  YOSHINO: But if he were to become enlightened?

  SHŌYU: Well, even then there is another reason.

  YOSHINO: And that reason is—

  SHŌYU: That reason is–er–I’d rather not say what it is.

  YOSHINO: And how long will things remain like that?

  SHOYU: H’m. They’ll have to be left like that I’m afraid.

  YOSHINO: What, for the rest of his life?

  SHŌYU: You may think me hard-hearted perhaps, but that is the way of the world. If a man isn’t cultivated in his inner self he won’t be any good either to himself or his family. ’Tisn’t entirely that he wasn’t taught, but he had everything he wanted, and so he grew selfish and wayward and fell an easy prey to women’s attractions. Yes, I wonder what has become of him. I wonder whether he is still deluded or perhaps he now understands his folly. He may be mad or dead, for all I know. In the long autumn evenings, as the weather grows colder and colder, I lie awake and think of him, he may be wandering aimlessly about the city wretched and out-at-heels, or toiling painfully to keep body and soul together in some far-offprovince. Then when his strength and his hopes fail him there will be nothing to look forward to but a miserable old age. Ah, how many tears have I not shed in secret thinking of it (Wipes his eyes.) But I am ashamed of myself giving way to this selfish and querulous talk.

  YOSHINO: Pray don’t mention it. I quite sympathize with your feelings. It is very natural. Now please let me give you another cup (putting in some more tea)

  SHŌYU: Thank you very much.

  (Konoe’s retainer Gengo enters hurriedly.)

  GENGO: Are you the master here?

  SHŌYU: Oh no. I am but a chance-comer.

  GENGO: Where is he then?

  YOSHINO: He has just gone out for a while. Have you any business with him?

  GENGO: I should think so! You’d better produce him at once. Hurry!

  YOSHINO: Oh! What do you mean! What is it all about? I don’t understand.

  GENGO: Don’t try and deceive me! It’s about that Rikyu tea-bowl.

  YOSHINO: Oh?

  GENGO: Yes, you know very well! We ordered him to repair it carefully, and what does he do but make a copy of it and then deliberately break the original. I never heard of such an impudent rascal! Don’t bandy words with me! Bring him here at once!

  YOSHINO: Yes, it’s true enough that he broke it.

  GENGO: You admit it, do you? Why that only makes it worse! Such insolence is unpardonable! Think of it! A treasure among treasures like this that you couldn’t buy for a thousand or ten thousand pieces of gold. Do you think its being broken is a thing that can be by any means overlooked? Do you suppose I dare go and tell my lord that it has been broken? Certainly I must expiate my carelessness in the matter by cutting open my belly, and that I think nothing of, but that is not enough. If I don’t lay your husband’s head before my lord first his anger will hardly be appeased. So bring him out without more ado!

  YOSHINO: Yes, but he has not come back yet. Meanwhile let me give you a cup of tea.

  GENGO: D’you think this is a time to be drinking tea? What on earth led him to break it, eh?

  YOSHINO: That’s a difficult question.

  GENGO: You’d better tell the truth.

  YOSHINO: It’s not easy to say.

  GENGO: Then you refuse to tell me?

  YOSHINO: Why should I tell you lies?

  GENGO: Then why was it?

  YOSHINO: Well

  GENGO: Well?

  YOSHINO: Well

  GENGO: Well, if you have nothing to say, prepare yourself!

  YOSHINO (nodding assent): Very well, then, pray take me with you on the dark road.

  GENGO: What’s that?

  YOSHINO: The mistake was mine.

  GENGO: Yours?

  YOSHINO: If a life must be given, take my head instead of my husband’s, and so let atonement be made.

  GENGO: H’m, that’s a good resolution. Then sit up properly!

  (Draws.)

  YOSHINO (lifting up the tea-bowl): Just a last sip.

  (Drinks calmly. To Shōyu)

  And after I am gone may I ask you to give my regards---

  SHŌYU: Oh, please, wait a moment! I don’t quite understand what it is all about, but, anyhow, surely there must be a way out of this without the necessity of giving a life in exchange for a broken Rikyu tea-bowl, however rare and precious? Can you not give some suitable explanation?

  YOSHINO: I don’t know exactly how it came about, but from what I heard I think it happened thus. The tea-bowl was so badly broken that if it were mended and a new bottom made of clay of a different period and quality, there would be no harmony in it any longer, so after saturating himself with its rhythm and form he made another in the same spirit, and thinking that the original was so damaged as to be useless, and might lend itself to deception, he smashed it to bits.

  SHŌYU: Well done! Capital! That’s just right! That shows the very spirit of the philosophy of tea. To drink in the feeling and rhythm of a famous tea-bowl and create another in the same inspiration, and then destroy the damaged original instead of cherishing the dead thing reverently, simply because it is the original, that is a thing worthy of one of the masters of the Zen philosophy, of one who understands that the only important thing in life is not to take it seriously, for all is illusion.

  (To Gengo)

  I don’t know who your honored lord may be, but I think that if you make report to him of all this as it is the matter may be settled peaceably.

  GENGO: The explanation seems to me rather obscure, but anyhow I will report it to my lord. And I will come back soon to tell you what his august opinion may be, so don’t hide or run away.

  YOSHINO: I am not likely to do any such cowardly thing.

  GENGO: Right. Then I shall have the honor again before long, I think.

  (Exit.)

  YOSHINO: It is by your kind aid that the consequences are not serious so far. I am indeed grateful.

  SHŌYU: Oh, that is nothing. But I am rather anxious as to what he will say when he returns, so if you will allow me I will come again to inquire. I trust you will conceal nothing from me.

  YOSHINO: I shall indeed be pleased to see you.

  SHŌYU: Ah, the weather has just cleared up. Well, I have never seen tea better served.

  (Goes out. The stage makes a half revolution and brings the window to the left side. There is a view of Mount Otowa. Ko-ētsu approaches.)

  KO-ĒTSU: Ah, Master Shōyu? And whither away!

  SHŌYU: Ah, Master Hon-ami! Now I wonder who he may be.

  KO-ĒTSU: And whom do you mean by he?

  SHŌYU (pointing to the window): The master of this house. A rough cottage, it is true, but what taste. And a wife who understands life and the tea-ceremony too and who treats her husband like a lover. Bless my soul, I never admired anything so much!

  KO-ĒTSU: Ha-ha-ha! And whom do you think?

  SHŌYU: The natural son of some great noble, perhaps; there is such an air of dignity about everything.

  KO-ĒTSU: Oh no; someone quite different.

  SHŌYU: Well, it might be some Ronin. Some exiled gentleman of the military class, if one might judge by the air of determination she wore.

  KO-ĒTSU: Wrong again.

  SHŌYU: Such elegance and grace indeed! She looked just as if she were taken out of some old picture of Court life. Can she be some beautiful apparition or changeling, I wonder?

  KO-ĒTSU: Ha-ha-ha! That’s Yoshino.

  SHŌYU: Eh? (Looks incredulous.)

  KO-ĒTSU: Yes. The lady your son is so much in love with.

  SHŌYU: Eh?
>
  (Stands in astonishment.)

  KO-ĒTSU: Well, what d’you think of her? You don’t dislike her do you?

  SHŌYU: Well, I never expected such a thing!

  KO-ĒTSU: You’d better revoke your sentence of disinheritance.

  SHŌYU: Well, well! A lady of such dignity! And a life of such elegant simplicity! My son’s ideas seem to have assumed some stability, but as to taking him back, there is still one thing—

  KO-ĒTSU: What Konoe will think? Set your mind at ease there. I have just been to his mansion, and he showed me a certain tea-bowl and asked my opinion of it. When I examined it I saw that it was something out of the common. If Rikyu himself saw it he would be satisfied. So I told him it was a splendid piece of craftsmanship. Then he remarked that it was your son’s work, and declared that his breaking the original and making a completely new one was most praise-worthy and showed the temper of a true artist. So you need not hesitate any longer.

  SHŌYU: Well, I am obliged to you. Then I have nothing more to say.

  KO-ĒTSU: Then you had better have another interview with her, I think. (Stage moves back again as before.) Yoshino Sama!

  (Goes in.)

  YOSHINO (coming out): Hai-i-i-i. Oh, it is you—

  KO-ĒTSU: From now you are the real daughter of your husband’s family.

  YOSHINO: What? (Looks surprised.)

  (Enter Saburobei.)

  SABUROBEI (seeing Shōyu): Oh! Father!

  (Runs to him.)

  SHŌYU: Saburobei!

  KO-ĒTSU: You’re forgiven. Isn’t that fine?

  SABUROBEI: Is that really true? Thank you very much.

  SHŌYU: Not at all.

  (To Yoshino)

  This is your doing.

  KO-ĒTSU: Yoshino, like the cherry petals, has fallen to the ground, but may be said to have washed her robes quite white again in the surging billows of this world’s troubles.

  SABUROBEI: But in the home to which we now return she will find real peace of mind.

  YOSHINO: My former life has been a sinful one, I fear.

  SHŌYU: Ah well, the greater the contrast the greater the happiness. This life is nothing but a sudden shower of rain!

  (All smile happily. Curtain.)

  Footnotes

  * A girl attendant.

  * Dōfuku: an upper garment worn in private by Court nobles above the rank of Dainagon— superseded by the Haori—worn usually with a white hakama or “sashinuki.” Kugyo: Court nobles above third rank—Dayin, Dairagon, Chunagon, Sangi.

  * The original passage of the Noh “Benkei in the Ship” runs thus:

  Here will sword work naught avail

  Grasping his rosary

  Rattles the beads between his palms

  On the East Gosanze

  On the South Gudari Yasha

  On the West Dai Itoku

  On the North Kongo Yasha Mioō

  In the Middle Diashe Fudo Mioō

  He casts the bond around them

  He conjuring, they conjured

  The evil spirits

  Draw ever further from them.

  G. B. Sanson’s translation. Trans. As. Soc. Japan, vol. xxxviii, p. 3.

  * Tsushio Maru and Anju Hime, the children of an exiled noble, were sold to a landlord in Sado named Sansho Taiyu who treated them harshly and made them work at the hardest tasks—Ancient local tradition of Sado which has become the subject of Jōruri recitation.

  THE POTTER KAKIĒMON

  BY ENOMOTO TORAHIKO

  PERSONS OF THE DRAMA

  ARITAYA GOHEI PORCELAIN-DEALER OF IMARI

  O IMA HIS WIFE

  HEISABURO HIS SON

  OSHIGE HIS DAUGHTER

  YOKURU HIS CLERK

  DENROKU SHOPMEN

  TORASUKÉ

  EIKICHI

  O MAKU A MAIDSERVANT

  MATSUTARO AN APPRENTICE

  NAKASATO HYŌDAIYU A SAMURAI, FORMERLY RETAINER

  OF THE LORD MATSUURA

  ASAKAYA HIS WIFE

  O CHIYO HIS DAUGHTER

  SAKAIDA KAKIĒMON MASTER POTTER

  O TSU HIS ELDER DAUGHTER

  O TANÉ HIS YOUNGER DAUGHTER

  KURISAKU HIS PUPIL

  ZENGORO POTTERS

  RIEMON

  BUNZO

  TIME MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH

  CENTURY.

  ACT I

  The establishment of the wholesale porcelain-dealer, Aritaya Gohei, at Imari in Hizen. On the right of the stage is seen the front of a godown. Through its front and back doors, which are both open, is a distant view of the bright blue sea. To the left of the godown is a six-foot entrance with a shop-curtain hanging before it. Next to this is the raised and matted shop-front with shelves full of porcelain, and in the middle a desk with a lattice surround in Osaka style, while further round to the left are the sliding-doors of the entrance. On the mats are a brazier and cushions as usual. The shopman Denroku is sitting writing accounts in the shop while Eikichi and Torasuké are making up packages in front of the go-down. The curtain rises to the sound of the singing and piping that accompany a Matsuri or Shinto festival.

  EIKICHI: I say, Torasuké, do you hear the music? Everyone else is taking a holiday and we seem to be the only ones at work.

  TORASUKÉ: I suppose you arranged to go to the Matsuri with one of the girls over the way, so that’s why you keep on grumbling about it.

  EIKICHI: Dear me, no, nothing so romantic. It’s only because master never considers us, that I can’t help a growl slipping out.

  TORASUKÉ: Ah, well, better put up with it a little longer.

  DENROKU: Eikichi! The Daikoku Maru is sailing tonight. Sorry to trouble you, but please go down and tell them that we still have some more packages left to go to Nagasaki.

  EIKICHI: All right, I'll see to it.

  (He shoulders a package and goes out through the godown. The servant O Maru comes out through the shop-curtain and is going across to the interior behind the shop, when Denroku stops her.)

  DENROKU: The guests don’t seem in any hurry to go, do they?

  O MARU: Indeed they don’t. The master and mistress seem as though they can’t do enough for them. I expect they won’t go home till this evening.

  (Vanishes into the house.)

  TORASUKÉ: And who may these very particular guests be then?

  DENROKU: Oh, Nakasato Hyōdaiyu Sama, formerly a retainer of high rank in the service of the Lord Matsuura of Hirado. Accompanied by his wife and his daughter, so help me.

  TORASUKÉ: Ah, then that long-sleeved young miss is to be the wife of the young master, I’ll be bound.

  (Enter the apprentice Matsutaro.)

  MATSUTARO: Jolly nice, isn’t it? The young master to drink the marriage cup with that sweet plump little long-sleeved maiden! Makes you envious, doesn’t it, Denroku San?

  DENROKU: Yah! What are you babbling about now? Envious! What is it to me?

  MATSUTARO: Well, then, you can take O Tsu San. Pleasant disposition and quite nice-looking. Would make a very good wife, I think. The only question is: Would she consent? That’s what you can’t be quite certain about.

  DENROKU: Look here! Who put you up to all this saucy nonsense?

  TORASUKÉ: Bah! You can’t do anything with children these days. They say what they like. This young imp is forever trying to get the better of me too. But I say, Denroku San, it may be very nice for him to marry this young lady, but what about O Tsu San.

  DENROKU: Yes, that’s just it. It’s awfully hard on her. You know the master must have intended to make her his son’s wife or he wouldn’t have got Kakiēmon to let her come and live here like that. But now he’s got on in the world a bit, he naturally looks for something higher than an artisan’s daughter.

  MATSUTARO: That’s a damned reason, isn’t it? Take it all round, the guv’nor’s an outrageous old man, isn’t he? (His voice rises involuntarily.) Oh! Don’t let it go any farther!

  (Runs out holding his mouth with his hand. Just then O Im
a is heard calling inside the house.);

  O IMA: O Tsu! O Tsu! Whatever is O Tsu doing?

  TORASUKÉ: Ah, there’s that noisy mistress shouting about the house again!

  DENROKU: Well, that’s nothing new. I say, lend us a hand.

  (The two of them carry the package into the godown. Enter O Ima from the door on the left with her daughter O Shigé. She is a woman of some forty-five or six, and is dressed as such. Her manner is fidgety.)

  O IMA: O Tsu! O Tsu! Where can O Tsu have got to? And I so busy with my guests too.

  SHIGE: I expect she’s seeing to things in the kitchen. There’s no need for you to call out like that, mother.

  O IMA: What can she be doing? I can’t think. O Tsu! O Tsu!

  (Enter O Tsu from the curtained entrance. She is dressed in a striped kimono with an apron and her hair is done in Shimada style.)

  O TSU: Yes, here is O Tsu.

  O IMA: Well, that’s something anyhow. But why can’t you be a little sharper. Can’t you see there’s more to do on a Matsuri than on ordinary days. Ah, well, servants are all alike. And now go on into the house and wait on the guests.

  (Hustles her off. Just then Heisaburo comes in from the house. He is dressed like a young merchant, and wears haori without hakama.)

  HEISABURO : O Tsu is not a servant, mother.

  O IMA: How absurd you are, Heisaburo. If O Tsu is not a servant in this house, what is she then, I should like to know?

  HEISABURO: She is the honored daughter of Kakiēmon to whom this house is very much beholden, and she must be treated exactly the same as O Shigé.

  O IMA: What do you mean? O Shigé is the daughter of the house. How can they be treated alike?

  HEISABURO: Suppose she is. I think it’s rather too bad of you, mother. You seem to forget to whom it is we are indebted for this fortune of ours.

  (O Ima is at a loss for a reply. O Tsu comes forward.)

  O TSU: Oh no, it was my fault. I was so stupid, and the mistress naturally got irritated with me. I don’t at all mind going and waiting on the guests. Really I don’t.