The Noh Plays of Japan (14 page)

Listen! the evening bell to help me chimes;

But then tolls in

A heavy tale of day linked on to day,

CHORUS
(speaking for the
GARDENER
)

And hope stretched out from dusk

to dusk. But now, a watchman of the hours,

I beat The longed-for stroke.

GARDENER

I was old, I shunned the daylight,

I was gaunt as an aged crane;

And upon all that misery

Suddenly a sorrow was heaped,

The new sorrow of love.

The days had left their marks,

Coming and coming, like waves that beat on a sandy shore...

CHORUS

Oh, with a thunder of white waves

The echo of the drum shall roll.

GARDENER

The after-world draws near me,

Yet even now I wake not

From this autumn of love that closes

In sadness the sequence of my years.

CHORUS

And slow as the autumn dew

Tears gather in my eyes, to fall

Scattered like dewdrops from a shaken flower

On my coarse-woven dress.

See here the marks, imprint of tangled love,

That all the world will read.

GARDENER

I said "I will forget,"

CHORUS

And got worse torment so

Than by remembrance. But all in this world

Is as the horse of the aged man of the land of Sai;
*

And as a white colt flashes

Past a gap in the hedge, even so our days pass.
*

And though the time be come,

Yet can none know the road that he at last must tread,

Goal of his dewdrop-life.

All this I knew; yet knowing,

Was blind with folly.

GARDENER

"Wake, wake," he cries—

CHORUS

The watchman of the hours—

"Wake from the sleep of dawn!"

And batters on the drum.

For if its sound be heard, soon shall he see

Her face, the damask of her dress...

Aye, damask! He does not know

That on a damask drum he beats,

Beats with all the strength of his hands, his aged hands, But hears no sound.

"Am I grown deaf?" he cries, and listens, listens:

Rain on the windows, lapping of waves on the pool—

Both these he hears, and silent only

The drum, strange damask drum.

Oh, will it never sound?

I thought to beat the sorrow from my heart,

Wake music in a damask drum; an echo of love

From the voiceless fabric of pride!

GARDENER

Longed for as the moon that hides

In the obstinate clouds of a rainy night I

s the sound of the watchman's drum,

To roll the darkness from my heart.

CHORUS

I beat the drum. The days pass and the hours.

It was yesterday, and it is today.

GARDENER

But she for whom I wait

CHORUS

Comes not even in dream. At dawn and dusk

GARDENER

No drum sounds.

CHORUS

She has not come. Is it not sung that those

Whom love has joined

Not even the God of Thunder can divide?

Of lovers, I alone

Am guideless, comfortless.

Then weary of himself and calling her to witness of his woe,

"Why should I endure," he cried,

"Such life as this?" and in the waters of the pond

He cast himself and died.

(
GARDENER
leaves the stage.)
Enter the
PRINCESS.

COURTIER

I would speak with you, madam.

The drum made no sound, and the aged Gardener in despair has flung himself into the pond by the laurel tree, and died. The soul of such a one may cling to you and do you injury. Go out and look upon him

PRINCESS
(speaking wildly, already possessed by the
GARDENER'S
angry ghost, which speaks through her).
*

Listen, people, listen!

In the noise of the beating waves

I hear the rolling of a drum.

Oh, joyful sound, oh joyful!

The music of a drum.

COURTIER

Strange, strange!

This lady speaks as one

By phantasy possessed.

What is amiss, what ails her?

PRINCESS

Truly, by phantasy I am possessed.

Can a damask drum give sound?

When I bade him beat what could not ring,

Then tottered first my wits.

COURTIER

She spoke, and on the face of the evening pool

A wave stirred.

PRINCESS

And out of the wave

COURTIER

A voice spoke.

(The voice of the
GARDENER
is heard; as he gradually advances along the hashigakari it is seen that he wears a "demon mask," leans on a staff and carries the "demon mallet" at his girdle.)

GARDENER'S GHOST

I was driftwood in the pool, but the waves of bitterness

CHORUS

Have washed me back to the shore.

GHOST

Anger clings to my heart,

Clings even now when neither wrath nor weeping

Are aught but folly.

CHORUS

One thought consumes me,

The anger of lust denied

Covers me like darkness.

I am become a demon dwelling

In the hell of my dark thoughts,

Storm-cloud of my desires.

GHOST

"Though the waters parch in the fields

Though the brooks run dry,

Never shall the place be shown

Of the spring that feeds my heart."
*

So I had resolved. Oh, why so cruelly

Set they me to win

Voice from a voiceless drum,

Spending my heart in vain?

And I spent my heart on the glimpse of a moon that slipped

Through the boughs of an autumn tree.
*

CHORUS

This damask drum that hangs on the laurel-tree

GHOST

Will it sound, will it sound?

(He seizes the
PRINCESS
and drags her towards the drum.)

Try! Strike it!

CHORUS

"Strike!" he cries;

"The quick beat, the battle-charge!

Loud, loud! Strike, strike," he rails,

And brandishing his demon-stick

Gives her no rest

"Oh woe!" the lady weeps,

"No sound, no sound. Oh misery!" she wails.

And he, at the mallet stroke, "Repent, repent!"

Such torments in the world of night

Ab
ō
rasetsu, chief of demons, wields,

Who on the Wheel of Fire

Sears sinful flesh and shatters bones to dust.

Not less her torture now!

"Oh, agony!" she cries, "What have I done,

By what dire seed this harvest sown?"

GHOST

Clear stands the cause before you.

CHORUS

Clear stands the cause before my eyes; I know it now.

By the pool's white waters, upon the laurel's bough The drum was hung.

He did not know his hour, but struck and struck

Till all the will had ebbed from his heart's core;

Then leapt into the lake and died.

And while his body rocked

Like driftwood on the waves,

His soul, an angry ghost,

Possessed the lady's wits, haunted her heart with woe.

The mallet lashed, as these waves lash, the shore,

Lash on the ice of the eastern shore.

The wind passes; the rain falls

On the Red Lotus, the Lesser and the Greater.
*

The hair stands up on my head.

"The fish that leaps the falls

To a fell snake is turned,"
*

In the Kwanze School this play is replaced by another called The Burden of Love, also attributed to Seami, who writes (Works, p. 166): "The Burden of Love was formerly The Damask Drum." The task set in the later play is the carrying of a burden a thousand times round the garden. The Gardener seizes the burden joyfully and begins to run with it, but it grows heavier and heavier, till he sinks crushed to death beneath it.

I have learned to know them;

Such, such are the demons of the World of Night.

"O hateful lady, hateful!" he cried, and sank again

Into the whirlpool of desire.

N
OTE ON
A
OI
N
O
U
YE.

At
the age of twelve Prince Genji went through the ceremony of marriage with Aoi no Uye (Princess Hollyhock), the Prime Minister's daughter. She continued to live at her father's house and Genji at his palace. When he was about sixteen he fell in love with Princess Rokujo, the widow of the Emperor's brother; she was about eight years older than himself. He was not long faithful to her. The lady Y
Å«
gao next engaged his affections. He carried her one night to a deserted mansion on the outskirts of the City. "The night was far advanced and they had both fallen asleep. Suddenly the figure of a woman appeared at the bedside. "I have found you!" it cried. "What stranger is this that lies beside you? What treachery is this that you flaunt before my eyes?" And with these words the apparition stooped over the bed, and made as though to drag away the sleeping girl from Genji's side."
*

Before dawn Y
Å«
gao was dead, stricken by the "living phantom" of Rokujo, embodiment of her baleful jealousy.

Soon after this, Genji became reconciled with his wife Aoi, but continued to visit Rokujo. One day, at the Kamo Festival, Aoi's way was blocked by another carriage. She ordered her attendants to drag it aside. A scuffle ensued between her servants and those of Rokujo (for she was the occupant of the second carriage) in which Aoi's side prevailed. Rokujo's carriage was broken and Aoi's pushed into the front place. After the festival was over Aoi returned to the Prime Minister's house in high spirits.

Soon afterwards she fell ill, and it is at this point that the play begins.

There is nothing obscure or ambiguous in the situation. Fe-nollosa seems to have misunderstood the play and read into it complications and confusions which do not exist. He also changes the sex of the Witch, though the Japanese word,
miko,
always has a feminine meaning. The "Romance of Genji"
(Genji Monoga-tari)
was written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu and was finished in the year 1004
A.D.
Of its fifty-four chapters only seventeen have been translated.
*
It furnished the plots of many Noh plays, of which
Suma Genji
(Genji's exile at Suma),
No no Miya
(his visit to Rokuj
ō
after she became a nun),
Tamakatsura
(the story of Y
Å«
gao's daughter), and
Hajitomi
(in which Y
Å«
gao's ghost appears) are the best known.

There is some doubt about the authorship of the play. Seami saw it acted as a Dengaku by his father's contemporary In
Å«
o. He describes In
Å«
o's entry on to the stage in the role of Rukuj
ō
and quotes the first six lines of her opening speech. These lines correspond exactly with the modern text, and it is probable that the play existed in something like its present form in the middle of the fourteenth century. Kwanze Nagatoshi, the great-grandson of Seami, includes it in a list of Seami's works; while popular tradition ascribes it to Seami's son-in-law Zenchiku.

(PRINCESS HOLLYHOCK)
Revised By Zenchiku Ujinobu (1414-1499?)

PERSONS