Anthology of Japanese Literature

by Donald Keene

  TRANSLATED BY RYDSAKU TSUNODA AND DONALD KEENE

  Footnotes

  1 Poem by an unknown Zen master. The last two lines may mean, "When life comes to an end the illusions of this world also break into pieces."

  2 Seami considered the Three Basic Roles to be those of the old person, the woman, and the warrior.

  3 Seami elsewhere discusses the relation between what the actor expresses with his body and what he knows but does not overtly express. At first an actor who has studied witha master does not know any more than what he has learned and what he expresses, but as he himself acquires mastery there are things which he comes to understand beyond what he has been taught, and which he suggests rather than expresses. The relation between the movements of the body and feet refers to a theory of Seami's that if the body and the feet move in the same manner the effect will be crude. Thus, in an agitated passage when the feet are stamping wildly, the movements of the body should be gentle or a disorderly effect will be produced which will mar the spectator's enjoyment.

  4 That is, their love of beauty makes them beautiful, irrespective of their station.

  PLAN OF THE NŌ STAGE

  SOTOBA KOMACHI

  by Kan'ami Kiyotsugu

  "Sotoba Komachi" concerns Ono no Komachi, a beautiful and heartless poetess of ancient Japan. One infatuated nobleman was refused a rendezvous until he should have come to her house in his chariot a hundred nights. He died just before completing his ordeal, but his unresolved love and passionate jealousy returned to possess Komachi when she was a wretched, withered old woman.

  Persons

  FIRST PRIEST SECOND PRIEST

  KOMACHI, as herself and as her former lover

  CHORUS

  BOTH PRIESTS : The mountains are not high on which we hide

  The mountains are not high on which we hide

  The lonely deepness of our hearts.

  FIRST PRIEST: I am a priest from the Koya Hills

  Coming down now to make my way to the city.

  SECOND PRIEST: The Buddha that was is gone away.

  The Buddha to be has not yet come to the world.

  BOTH PRIESTS: At birth we woke to dream in this world between.

  What then shall we say is real?

  By chance we took the forms of men

  From a thousand possibilities.

  We stumbled on the treasure of the holy law

  The seed of all salvation

  And then with thoughtful hearts we put our bodies

  In these thin and ink-black robes.

  We knew of lives before this birth

  We knew of lives before this birth

  And knew we owed no love to those who to this life

  Engendered us.

  We recognized no parents.

  No children cared for us.

  We walked a thousand miles and the way seemed short.

  In the fields we lay down

  And slept the night in the hills

  Which now became our proper dwelling place

  Our proper home.

  KOMACHI: "Like a root-cut reed

  Should the fide entice

  I would come

  I would come I know but no wave asks

  No stream invites this grief."

  How sad that once I was proud

  Long ago

  Proud and graceful

  Golden birds in my raven hair

  When I walked like willows nodding, charming

  As the breeze in spring.

  The voice of the nightingale

  The petals of the wood rose, wide stretched,

  Holding dew

  At the hour before their breathless fall:

  I was lovelier than these.

  Now

  I am foul in the eyes of the humblest creatures

  To whom my shame is shown.

  Unwelcome months and days pile over me

  The wreck of a hundred years

  In the city to avoid the eyes of men

  Lest they should say "Can it be she?"

  In the evening

  West with the moon I steal past the palace,

  Past the towers

  Where no guard will question in the mountains

  In the shadows of the trees

  None challenge so wretched a pilgrim as this

  To Love's Tomb

  The autumn hills

  The River Katsura

  Boats in the moonlight rowed by whom?

  I cannot see. . . .

  But rowed by whom!

  Oh, too, too painful. . . .

  Here on this withered stump of tree

  Let me sit and collect my senses.

  FIRST PRIEST: Come on. The sun is down. We must hurry on our way. But look! that old beggar woman sitting there on a sacred stupa. We should warn her to come away.

  SECOND PRIEST: Yes, of course.

  FIRST PRIEST: Excuse me, old lady, but don't you know that's a stupa there you're sitting on? the holy image of the Buddha's incarnation. You'd better come away and rest some other place.

  KOMACHI : The holy image of the Buddha you say? But I saw no words or carvings on it. I took it for a tree stump only.

  FIRST PRIEST: "Withered stumps

  Are known as pine or cherry still

  On the loneliest mountain."

  KOMACHI : I, too, am a fallen tree.

  But still the flowers of my heart

  Might make some offering to the Buddha.

  But this you call the Buddha's body. Why?

  FIRST PRIEST: The stupa represents the body of Kongosatta Buddha, the Diamond Lord, when he assumed the temporary form of each of his manifestations.

  KOMACHI: In what forms then is he manifested?

  FIRST PRIEST: In Earth and Water and Wind and Fire and Space.

  KOMACHI : The same five elements as man. What was the difference then?

  FIRST PRIEST: The form was the same but not the power.

  KOMACHI: And what is a stupa's power?

  FIRST PRIEST: "He that has once looked upon a stupa shall for all eternity avoid the three worst catastrophes."

  KOMACHI : "One sudden thought can strike illumination." Is that not just as good?

  SECOND PRIEST: If you've had such an illumination, why are you lingering here in this world of illusion?

  KOMACHI : Though my body lingers, my heart has left it long ago.

  FIRST PRIEST: Unless you had no heart at all you wouldn't have failed to feel the presence of a stupa.

  KOMACHI : It was because I felt it that I came perhaps.

  SECOND PRIEST: In that case you shouldn't have spread yourself out on it without so much as a word of prayer.

  KOMACHI : It was on the ground already. . . .

  FIRST PRIEST: Just the same it was an act of discord.

  KOMACHI : "Even from discord salvation springs."

  SECOND PRIEST: From the evil of Daiba

  KOMACHI : Or the love of Kannon.

  FIRST PRIEST: From the folly of Handoku

  KOMACHI: Or the wisdom of Monju.

  FIRST PRIEST: What we call evil

  KOMACHI : Is also good.

  FIRST PRIEST: Illusion

  KOMACHI : Is Salvation.

  SECOND PRIEST: "Salvation

  KOMACHI: Cannot be watered like trees."

  FIRST PRIEST: "The brightest mirror

  KOMACHI: IS not on the wall."

  CHORUS: Nothing is separate.

  Nothing persists.

  Of Buddha and man there is no distinction,

  At most a seeming difference planned

  For the humble, ill-instructed men

  He has vowed from the first to save.

  "Even from discord salvation springs.''

  So said Komachi. And the priests:

  "Surely this beggar is someone beyond us."

  Then bending their heads to the ground

  Three times did they do her homage

  The difficult priests

  The difficult priests


  Who thought to correct her.

  FIRST PRIEST: Who are you then? Give us your name; we wdl pray for your soul.

  KOMACHI: For all my shame I will tell you. Pray for the wreck of Komachi, the daughter of Yoshizane of Ono, Lord of Dewa.

  BOTH PRIESTS: HOW sad to think that you were she.

  Exquisite Komachi

  The brightest flower long ago

  Her dark brows arched

  Her face bright-powdered always

  When cedar-scented halls could scarce contain

  Her damask robes.

  KOMACHI : I made verses in our speech

  And in the speech of the foreign court.

  CHORUS : When she passed the banquet cup

  Reflected moonlight lay on her sleeve.

  How was ever such loveliness lost?

  When did she change?

  Her hair a tangle of frosted grass

  Where the black curls lay on her neck

  And the color lost from the twin arched peaks

  Of her brow.

  KOMACHI : "Oh shameful in the dawning light

  These silted seaweed locks that of a hundred years

  Now lack but one."

  CHORUS: What do you have in the bag at your waist?

  KOMACHI : Death today or hunger tomorrow.

  Only some beans I've put in my bag.

  CHORUS: And in the bundle on your back?

  KOMACHI: A soiled and dusty robe.

  CHORUS: And in the basket on your arm?

  KOMACHI: Sagittaries black and white.

  CHORUS : Tattered coat

  KOMACHI: Broken hat

  CHORUS: Can scarcely hide her face.

  KOMACHI : Think of the frost and the snow and the rain.

  I've not even sleeves enough to dry my tears.

  But I wander begging things from men

  That come and go along the road.

  When begging fails

  An awful madness seizes me

  And my voice is no longer the same. . . .

  Hey! Give me something, you priests!

  FIRST PRIEST: What do you want?

  KOMACHI: To go to Komachi!

  FIRST PRIEST: What are you saying? You are Komachi!

  KOMACHI : No. Komachi was beautiful.

  Many letters came, many messages

  Thick as rain from a summer sky

  But she made no answer, even once,

  Even an empty word.

  Age is her retribution now.

  Oh, I love her!

  I love her!

  FIRST PRIEST: You love her! What spirit has possessed you to make you say such things?

  KOMACHI : Many loved her

  But among them all

  It was Shosho who loved her deepest

  Shii no Shosho, the Captain.

  CHORUS: The wheel turns back.

  I live again a cycle of unhappiness

  Riding with the wheels

  That came and went again each night.

  The sun.

  What time is it now?

  Dusk.

  The moon will be my friend on the road

  And though the watchmen stand at the pass

  They shall not bar my way.

  KOMACHI (recostumed as her lover): My wide white skirts hitched up

  CHORUS: My wide white skirts hitched up

  My tall black hat pulled down

  And my sleeves thrown over my head

  Hidden from the eyes of men on the road

  In the moonlight

  In the darkness coming, coming

  When the night rains fell

  When the night winds blew the leaves like rain

  When the snow lay deep

  KOMACHI : And the melting drops fell

  One by one from the rafters

  CHORUS: I came and went, came and went

  One night, two nights, three,

  Ten (and this was the Harvest Night)

  And did not see her.

  Faithful as a cock that marks each dawn

  I came and carved my mark upon the pillar.

  I was to come a hundred nights,

  I lacked but one. . . .

  KOMACHI: Oh, dizziness . . . pain. . . .

  CHORUS: He was grieved at the pain in his breast

  When the last night came and he died

  Shii no Shosho, the Captain.

  KOMACHI : It was his unsatisfied love possessed me so

  His anger that turned my wits.

  In the face of this I will pray

  For life in the worlds to come

  The sands of goodness I will pile

  Into a towering hill.

  Before the golden, gentle Buddha I will lay

  Poems as my flowers

  Entering in the Way

  Entering in the Way.

  TRANSLATED BY SAM HOUSTON BROCK

  BIRDS OF SORROW

  [Utō] by Seami Motokiyo

  The original title of the play, "Utō," is usually written in Japanese with three ideographs which may be loosely translated as "virtue-knowing bird." The utō or utōyasukata of early legends is a species of sea bird found in northern Japan and widely hunted for the delectability of its flesh. According to tradition, the parent bird of the species hides its young so well in the sand that even it cannot find them and, when bringing them food, calls them with the cry " Utō," to which they reply with the cry "Yasukata." Hunters catch both parent birds and the young by imitating these cries. It is also said that the parent birds weep tears of blood upon seeing their young taken, and that hunters must wear large hats and raincloaks to protect themselves from the falling tears, the touch of which causes sickness and death. Because of its traits the bird becomes an apt symbol for the Buddhist tenet that the taking of life in any form whatsoever is a sin.

  Persons

  A BUDDHIST MONK

  THE GHOST OF A DEAD HUNTER

  THE HUNTER'S WIFE

  THE HUNTER'S CHILD

  A VILLAGER

  CHORUS

  PART I

  Place: Tateyama, a high mountain in Central Honshu, near the Sea of Japan.

  Time: The month of April.

  (The stage is completely bare. Two drummers and a flute player come through the curtain and, passing down the Bridge, take their usual seats at the rear of the stage. They are followed in silence by the Wife and Child. The Wife wears the mask wig of a middle-aged woman; her inner kimono is the color of dried autumn leaves, over which is a kimono with a small pattern and a long outer kimono in somber colors which trails behind her on the floor. The Child, apparently six or eight years of age, wears a hakama and a brightly embroidered outer kimono over a scarlet inner kimono. They seat themselves near the Waki's Pillar. The Monk enters, accompanied by the introductory flute music. He is wearing a dark kimono a peaked cowl of brocade which flows down over his shoulders, and carries a rosary. He passes down the Bridge onto the stage, where he stops at the Name-Saying Seat and, facing the audience, introduces himself.)

  MONK: I am a wandering monk, making a pilgrimage throughout the provinces. I have never yet visited the village of Soto no Hama in Michinoku. Thinking on this, I was recently minded to go to Soto no Hama. And as the occasion is indeed favorable, I am planning to stop in passing and practice religious austerities upon Tateyama.

  (Takes two steps forward, indicating he has arrived at the foot of the mountain.)

  Coming swiftly along the road, already I have arrived here at Tateyama. With serene and reverent heart I now shall visit the mountain.

  (Goes to center of stage, indicating he has climbed to the summit.)

  But lo! upon arriving here on Tateyama, my eyes do indeed behold a living Hell. And the heart of even the boldest man must quail before this fell sight, more frightful even than demons and fiends. Here the coundess mountain trails, grim and precipitous, split asunder as if to lead down into the Realm of Ravenous Ghosts, and down into the Realm of Bestiality.

  (Describing his actions.)
So saying, he is overcome with the memory of his past sins and for a time is unable to restrain the starting tears. Then, penitent, he descends to the foot of the mountain ... to the foot of the mountain, penitent . . .

  (The Monk goes toward the Chorus, indicating he has returned to the foot of the mountain. He turns and faces the Bridge. The curtain is swept back and a voice is heard from the blackness of the Mirror Room beyond the curtain. It is the Ghost of the Dead Hunter who speaks, calling out as though he has been running after the Monk.)

  HUNTER: Hallo-o! Hallo-o! Wait, O worthy monk, for I must speak with you.

  MONK.: What is it you want with me?

  (The Hunter enters. He is seen now in his mortal form, wearing the mask of a pleasant old man and a white wig. He wears a plain, tea-colored outer kimono of rough weave over garments of solid brown and light green. He moves slowly down the Bridge as he speaks.)

  HUNTER: If you are going down to Michinoku, pray take a message there. I am one who was a hunter of Soto no Hama and who died in the past year's autumn. I beseech you to visit the home of my wife and child and to tell them to offer up for me the cloak of straw and the sedge-hat which are there.

  MONK: This is a strange request that I hear. To carry the message is a simple thing, but if I address her thus without any proof, like the falling of sudden rain from an empty sky, is it likely that she will believe?

  HUNTER: Indeed, you are right. Without some certain sign or token, it would surely be of no avail.