The Noh Plays of Japan (21 page)

TRAVELER

No, that is not what I meant. But if we are to discuss this matter, I must be plain with you...I am a man of the Capital. Perhaps because of some ill deed done in a former life I have suffered many troubles. At last I could no longer build the pathway of my life, so I took my wife and child and set out to seek my friend who lives in the East. Pray let me go on my way.

PRIEST

Indeed, indeed you have cause for distress. But from ancient times till now

Parents have been taken
And countless beyond all knowing
Wives and husbands parted.

Call this, if you will, the retribution of a former life. But now come with us quickly to the shores of the Holy Pool.

(Describing his own actions.)

So saying, the Priest and acolytes went forward.

WIFE and DAUGHTER

And the wife and child, crying "Oh what shall we do?" clutched at the father's sleeve.

TRAVELER

But the father could find no words to speak. He stood baffled, helpless...

PRIEST

They must not loiter. Divide them and drive them on!

ACOLYTE

So he drove them before him and they walked like...

TRAVELER

If true comparison were made...

CHORUS

Like guilty souls of the Dead
Driven to Judgment
By fiends reproachful;
Whose hearts unknowing
Like dew in daytime
To nothing dwindle.
Like sheep to shambles
They walk weeping,
No step without a tear
Till to the Pool they come.

PRIEST

Now we are come to the Pool, and by its edge are ranged the Priest, the acolytes, the virgins, and dancing-boys.

CHORUS

There is one doom-lot; Yet those that are thinking "Will it be mine?" They are a hundred, And many times a hundred.

PRIEST

Embracing, clasping hands...

CHORUS

Pale-faced

PRIEST

Sinking at heart

CHORUS

"On whom will it fall?"
Not knowing, thick as snow,
White snow of winter fall their prayers
To their clan-gods, "Protect us"...
Palm pressed to palm.

PRIEST

At last the Priest mounted the dais, raised the lid of the box and counted the lots to see that there was one for each to take.

CHORUS

Then all the people came forward
To draw their lots.
And each when he unfolded his lot
And found it was not the First,
How glad he was!
But the traveler's daughter,
Knowing her fate,
Fell weeping to the earth.

PRIEST

Are there not three travelers? They have only drawn two lots. The First Lot is still undrawn. Tell them that one of them must draw it.

ACOLYTE

I listen and obey. Ho, you travelers, it is to you I am speaking. There are three of you, and you have only drawn two lots. The Priest says one of you must draw the First Lot.

TRAVELER

We have all drawn.

ACOLYTE

No, I am sure the young girl has not drawn her lot. Look, here it is. Yes, and it is the Doom-lot!

WIFE

The First Lot! How terrible!

Hoping to rear you to womanhood, we wandered blindly from the City and came down to the unknown country of the East. For your sake we set our hearts on this sad journey. If you are taken, what will become of us? How hideous!

DAUGHTER

Do not sob so! If you or my father had drawn this lot, what should I have done? But now it has fallen to me, and it is hard for you to let me go.

TRAVELER

What brave words! "If you or my father had drawn this lot..." There is great piety in that saying.
(To his
WIFE.
)Come, do not sob so before all these people. We are both parents and must have like feelings. But from the time I set out to this holy lottery something told me that of the three of us one would be taken. Look! I am not crying.

WIFE

I thought as you did, yet...

It is too much! Can it all be real?

TRAVELER

The father said "I will not show weakness," yet while he was speaking bravely

Because she was his dear daughter
His secret tears
Could not be checked.

WIFE

Is this a dream or is it real?

(She clings to the daughter, wailing.)

PRIEST

Because the time had come
The Priest and his men
Stood waiting on the shore

CHORUS

They decked the boat with ribands
And upon a bed of water-herbs
They laid the maiden of the Pool.

PRIEST

The priest pulled the ribands
And spoke the words of prayer.

[In the second part of the play the dragon of the Pool is appeased and the girl restored to life.]

PERSONS

EVENING MIST,
a servant girl

A LADY,
the Abbot's daughter

TWO NOBLE LADIES

THE SOUL OF THE BIRD HATSUYUKI
("Early Snow")

CHORUS

SCENE:
The Great Temple at Izumo.

SERVANT

I am a servant at the Nyoroku Shrine in the Great Temple of Izumo. My name is Evening Mist. You must know that the Lord Abbot has a daughter, a beautiful lady and gentle as can be. And she keeps a tame bird that was given her a year ago, and because it was a lovely white bird she called it Hatsuyuki, Early Snow; and she loves it dearly.

I have not seen the bird today. I think I will go to the bird-cage and have a look at it.

(She goes to the cage.)

Mercy on us, the bird is not there! Whatever shall I say to my lady? But I shall have to tell her. I think I'll tell her now. Madam, madam, your dear Snow-bird is not here!

LADY

What is that you say? Early Snow is not there? It cannot be true.

(She goes to the cage.)

It is true. Early Snow has gone! How can that be? How can it be that my pretty one that was so tame should vanish and leave no trace?

Oh bitterness of snows
That melt and disappear!
Now do I understand
The meaning of a midnight dream
That lately broke my rest.
A harbinger it was
Of Hatsuyuki's fate.

(She bursts into tears.)

CHORUS

Though for such tears and sighs
There be no cause,
Yet came her grief so suddenly,
Her heart's fire is ablaze;
And all the while
Never a moment are her long sleeves dry.
They say that written letters first were traced
By feet of birds in sand
Yet Hatsuyuki leaves no testament.

(They mourn.)

CHORUS
("kuse" chant, irregular verse accompanied by dancing)

How sad to call to mind
When first it left the breeding-cage
So fair of form
And colored white as snow.
We called it Hatsuyuki, "Year's First Snow."
And where our mistress walked
It followed like a shadow at her side.
But now alas! it is a bird of parting
*
Though not in Love's dark lane.

LADY

There's no help now.
(She weeps bitterly.)

CHORUS

Still there is one way left. Stop weeping, Lady,
And turn your heart to him who vowed to hear.
The Lord Amida, if a prayer be said—
Who knows but he can bring
Even a bird's soul into Paradise
And set it on the Lotus Pedestal?
*

LADY

Evening Mist, are you not sad that Hatsuyuki has gone?...But we must not cry any more. Let us call together the noble ladies of this place and for seven days sit with them praying behind barred doors. Go now and do my bidding.

(
EVENING MIST
fetches the
NOBLE LADIES
of the place
).

TWO NOBLE LADIES
(together)

A solemn Mass we sing
A dirge for the Dead;
At this hour of heart-cleansing
We beat on Buddha's gong.

(They pray.)

NAMU AMIDA BUTSU

NAMU NYORAI

Praise to Amida Buddha,
Praise to Mida our Saviour!

(The prayers and gong-beating last for some time and form the central ballet of the play.)

CHORUS
(the bird's soul appears as a white speck in the sky)

Look! Look! A cloud in the clear mid-sky!
But it is not a cloud.
With pure white wings beating the air
The Snow-bird comes!
Flying towards our lady
Lovingly he hovers,
Dances before her.

THE BIRD'S SOUL

Drawn, by the merit of your prayers and songs

CHORUS

Straightway he was reborn in Paradise.
By the pond of Eight Virtues he walks abroad:
With the Phoenix and Fugan his playtime passing.
He lodges in the sevenfold summit of the trees of Heaven.
No hurt shall harm him
Forever and ever.
Now like the tasselled doves we loose
From battlements on holy days A little while he flutters;
Flutters a little while and then is gone
We know not where.

INTRODUCTION

T
HE
Chinese poet Po Ch
Å«
-i, whom, the Japanese call Haku Rakuten, was born in 772
A.D.
and died in 847. His works enjoyed immense contemporary popularity in China, Korea, and Japan. In the second half of the ninth century the composition of Chinese verse became fashionable at the Japanese Court, and native forms of poetry were for a time threatened with extinction.

The Noh play
Haku Rakuten
deals with this literary peril. It was written at the end of the fourteenth century, a time when Japanese art and literature were again becoming subject to Chinese influence. Painting and prose ultimately succumbed, but poetry was saved.

Historically, Haku Rakuten never came to Japan. But the danger of his influence was real and actual, as may be deduced from reading the works of Sugawara no Michizane, the greatest Japanese poet of the ninth century. Michizane's slavish imitations of Po Ch
Å«
-i show an unparalleled, example of literary prostration. The plot of the play is as follows:

Rakuten is sent by the Emperor of China to "subdue" Japan with his art. On arriving at the coast of Bizen, he meets with two Japanese fishermen. One of them is in reality the god of Japanese poetry, Sumiyoshi no Kami. In the second act his identity is revealed. He summons other gods, and a great dancing-scene ensues. Finally the wind from their dancing-sleeves blows the Chinese poet's ship back to his own country.

Seami, in his plays, frequently quotes Po Ch
Å«
-i's poems; and in his lament for the death of his son, Zemparu Motomasa, who died in 1432, he refers to the death of Po Ch
Å«
-i's son, A-ts'ui.

PERSONS

RAKUTEN
(a Chinese poet)

AN OLD FISHERMAN, SUMIYOSHI NO KAMI,
who in Act II be-comes the God of Japanese Poetry

ANOTHER FISHERMAN

CHORUS OF FISHERMEN

SCENE:
The coast of Bizen in Japan.

HAKU

I am Haku Rakuten, a courtier of the Prince of China. There is a land in the East called Nippon.
*
Now, at my master's bidding, I am sent to that land to make proof of the wisdom of its people. I must travel over the paths of the sea.

I will row my boat towards the rising sun,

The rising sun;

And seek the country that lies to the far side
Over the wave-paths of the Eastern Sea.

Far my boat shall go,

My boat shall go—

With the light of the setting sun in the waves of its wake
And a cloud like a banner shaking the void of the sky.
Now the moon rises, and on the margin of the sea

A mountain I discern.

I am come to the land of Nippon,

The land of Nippon.

So swiftly have I passed over the ways of the ocean that I am come already to the shores of Nippon. I will cast anchor here a little while. I would know what manner of land this may be.

THE TWO FISHERMEN
(together)

Dawn over the Sea of Tsukushi,

Place of the Unknown Fire.

Only the moonlight—nothing else left!

THE OLD FISHERMAN

The great waters toss and toss;

The grey waves soak the sky.

THE TWO FISHERMEN

So was it when Han Rei
*
left the land of Etsu

And rowed in a little boat

Over the misty waves of the Five Lakes.
How pleasant the sea looks!
From the beach of Matsura
Westward we watch the hill-less dawn.
A cloud, where the moon is setting,
Floats like a boat at sea,