The Noh Plays of Japan

The Noh Plays
of Japan

Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759 USA and 61 Tai Seng Avenue, #02-12, Singapore 534167

© 1921 by Arthur Waley
© 1976 personal reminiscence and poem,
The Locked Cemetery
by Alison Waley

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 75-28969
ISBN 978-1-4629-0363-4 (ebook)

First Edition, 1921, by Unwin, London
First Tuttle edition, 1976

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KEY TO PLANS
ix, x
PLANS
ix, xi
INTRODUCTION
xvii-xxix
NOTE ON BUDDHISM
xxx-xxxii

C
HAPTER
I
ATSUMORI
2-11
IKUTA
12-17
TSUNEMASA
18-23

C
HAPTER
II
KUMASAKA
28-37
EBOSHI-ORI
38-51
BENKEI ON THE BRIDGE
52-57

C
HAPTER
III
KAGEKIYO
60-70
HACHI NO KI
71-84
SOTOBA KOMACHI
85-97

C
HAPTER
IV
UKAI
101-107
AYA NO TSUZUMI
108-115
AOI NO UYE
117-127

C
HAPTER
V
KANTAN
131-142
THE H
ō
KA PRIESTS
143-153
HAGOROMO
155-164

C
HAPTER
VI
TANIKO
167-173
IKENIYE
174-180
HATSUYUKI
181-184
HAKU RAKUTEN
185-193

C
HAPTER
VII
SUMMARIES
219-235

C
HAPTER
VIII
FARCE (KYOGEN)
238-242
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
243-244
APPENDICES
245-252

To D
ō
ami

YOUNG WOMAN'S MASK
Frontispiece
YOUNG MAN'S MASK 40
DEMON MASK 128
THE ANGEL IN
HAGOROMO
154
IZUTSU 196
THE DEAGON LADY IN
AMA
214
Y
Å«
YA READING THE LETTER 219
YAMAUBA (THE LADY OF THE MOUNTAINS) 229

KEY TO PLAN I

T
HEATRE SET UP IN THE RIVER-BED AT
K
YOTO IN 1464;
O
NAMI'S TROUPE ACTED ON IT FOR THREE DAYS "WITH IMMENSE SUCCESS
."

A The Sh
ō
gun.

B His attendants.

C His litter.

D His wife.

E Her ladies.

F Her litter.

G Auditorium.

H Stage.

I Musicians.

J
Hashigakari.

K
Gakuya,
served as actors' dressing-room and musicians' room.

KEY TO PLAN II

M
ODERN
S
TAGE

For this new edition of Arthur Waley's
The Noh Plays of Japan,
the publishers are privileged to include some personal reminiscences and a very moving poem,
The Locked Cemetery,
by Alison Waley.

In 1929 I came 12,000 miles to England: a student who burnt all letters of introduction, took a bare office room at its gates and lived her days in the British Museum. In those days heads were bent over books, eyes unseeing, the air charged like a dynamo with private, individual minds at work—Havelock Ellis, Axel Munthe, James Joyce, the little James Stephens, Monro of the Poetry Bookshop...all absorbed, each with his esoteric thinking...the air electric...almost audibly ticking.

At "break" we sat on steps, fed pigeons with our crumbs and talked the world about and about.

But there was one figure in the come and go; diffident, monosyllabic, evasive.

I took the hand of my nameless, and constant, companion.

"Shall I show you the three things that matter, to me, most?"

"Yes."

We stood before a framed painting in the small Korean Gallery. It depicted a gentleman of great dignity seated on the raised platform before his frail-seeming house while, at a long, low table, delicacies were being placed before him by his servitors. Was it a portrait? I wondered.

"Do you know it?"

"Yes."

We stood before the glass case in the Egyptian Room where lay the mummified figure of a young girl—a girl of perhaps 12—an "UNKNOWN PERSON—30
B.C.
": her frail hands, each finger braided with gold, lifted palm upward as though she were about to rise.

"Is she not more alive than anyone, here, agape, in this Gallery? Than you, than me?"

"Not, I think, than you."

We stood before a display case behind the glass of which stood the darkened figurine of an ancient woman.

"This," I am saying, "is my best thing. The most beautiful. Her name is Komachi."

"When she was young," he murmurs, "she was more beautiful than Narihira..."

I looked in surprise.

"I don't know about Narihira. Only that she could never have been more beautiful than she is now, in age. This small image haunts me."

He came to my bare room, took from his pocket a book and began to read. I sat on the floor on my heels as was my habit.

"Like a root-cut reed,
Should the tide entice,
would come, I think; but now
No wave asks; no stream stirs.
Long ago I was full of pride...
I walked like a young willow delicately wafted
By the winds of Spring."

His voice runs on, scarcely lifting. And I am in trance.

". . . lovelier than the petals of the wild-rose open-stretched In the hour before its fall. But now...

Westward with the moon I creep
From the cloud-high City of the Hundred Towers...

I too am a poor withered bough.
But there are flowers at my heart...

It is my body that lingers...

The cup she held at the feast
Like gentle moonlight dropped its glint on her sleeve.
Oh how fell she from splendour,
How came the white of winter
To crown her head?"

Tears moved slowly down my cheeks.
He paused, his book still open on his knee.

"I think you are the most sensitive person I have ever met," he said.

I took it as reproof.

"You should not read me things so beautiful..."

It was six weeks before, by a curious accident of circumstance, I came to know his name—and read it on the cover of the book from which he read:
The Noh Plays of Japan.