University of Virginia Library

KAYOI KOMACHI[1]

The Scene is in Yamashiro

Characters

Shite, Shosho,

• the ghost of Ono no Komachi's
  lover.

Waki,

• or subsidiary character, a priest.

Tsure,

• Ono no Komachi.

Waki

I am a priest in the village of Yase. And
there's an odd little woman comes here every
day with fruit and fuel. If she comes to-day
I shall ask her who she is.

Tsure
(announcing herself to the audience)

I am a woman who lives out about Itchiharano.
There are many rich houses in Yase,
and I take fruit and wood to them, and there's
where I'm going now.

Waki

Then you are the woman. What sort of
fruit have you there?

Tsure

I've nuts and kaki and chestnuts and plums
and peaches, and big and little oranges, and
a bunch of tachibana, which reminds me of
days that are gone.

Waki

Then that's all right—but who are you?

Tsure

(To herself.)
I can't tell him that now.
(To him.)
I'm just a woman who lives out by
Ichihara-no-be, in all that wild grass there.

[So saying she disappears.

Waki

That's queer. I asked her her name. She
won't tell me. She says she's just a woman
from Ichihara, and then she's gone like a mist.
If you go down by Ichihara you can hear the
wind in the Susuki bushes as in the poem of
Ono no Komachi's, where she says, "Ono, no
I will not tell the wind my name is Ono, as
long as Susuki has leaves." I dare say it is
she or her spirit. I will go there the better
to pray for her.

Chorus
(announcing the action and change of scene)

So he went out of his little cottage in the
temple enclosure. He went to Ichihara and
prayed.

Tsure
(her voice heard from the furze bush, speaking
to the priest)

There's a heap of good in your prayers; do
you think you could bring me to Buddha?

Shite
(the spirit of Shosho)

It's an ill time to do that. Go back. You
move in ill hours.

Tsure

I say they were very fine prayers. I will
not come back without a struggle.

Shite

I've a sad heart to see you looking up to
Buddha, you who left me alone, I diving in
the black rivers of hell. Will soft prayers be
a comfort to you in your quiet heaven, you
who know that I'm alone in that wild, desolate
place? To put you away from me! That's
all he has come for, with his prayers. Will
they do any good to my sort?

Tsure

O dear, you can speak for yourself, but
my heart is clear as new moonlight.

Chorus

See, she comes out of the bush.

[That is, the spirit has materialized.]

Shite

Will nothing make you turn back?

Tsure

Faith is like a wild deer on the mountain.
It will not stop when you call it.

Shite

Then I'll be the dog of your Buddha; I
will not be beaten away from you.

Tsure

How terrible, how terrible his face is![2]

Chorus

See, he has caught at her sleeve.

Waki

(This apparently trivial speech of the Waki's
arrests them. It is most interesting in view of
the "new" doctrine of the suggestibility or
hypnotizability of ghosts. The Waki says
merely:)
Are you Ono no Komachi? And
you, Shosho? Did you court her a hundred
nights? Can you show this?

[Then they begin the dance of this Noh,
the image of the coming of Shosho.

Tsure

I did not know you had such deep thirst
for me.

Shite

You deceived me by telling me to drive
out a hundred nights. I thought you meant
it. I took my carriage and came.

Tsure

I said, "Change your appearance, or people
will see you and talk."

Shite

I changed my carriage. Though I had
fresh horses in Kohata, I even came barefoot.

Tsure

You came in every sort of condition.

Shite

It was not such a dark way by moonlight.

Tsure

You even came in the snow.

Shite

I can, even now, seem to be shaking it off
my sleeves.

[This movement is developed into a dance.

Tsure

In the evening rain.

Shite

That devil in your rain was my invisible
terror.

Tsure

On the night when there was no cloud—

Shite

I had my own rain of tears; that was the
dark night, surely.

Tsure

The twilight was always my terror.

Shite

She will wait for the moon, I said, but she
will never wait for me.

Chorus

The dawn! oh, the dawn is also a time of
many thoughts.

Shite

Yes, for me.

Chorus

Though the fowls crow, though the bells
ring, and though the night shall never come
up, it is less than nothing to her.

Shite

With many struggles—

Chorus

—I went for ninety-nine nights. And this
is the hundredth night. This night is the
longing fulfilled. He hurries. What is he
wearing?

Shite

His kasa is wretched; it is a very poor
cloak, indeed.

Chorus

His hat is in tatters.

Shite

His under-coat is in rags.

[All this refers both to Shosho's having
come disguised, and being now in but
the tatters of some sort of astral body.
Then presumably a light shows in his
spirit, as probably he had worn some
rich garment under his poor disguise.

Chorus

Shite

In a garment with many folds.

Chorus

The violet-coloured hakama. He thought
she would wait for his coming.

Shite

I hurried to her as now.

Chorus
(speaking for Shosho's thoughts)

Though she only asks me to drink a cup of

moonlight, I will not take it. It is a trick to
catch one for Buddha.

Chorus
(in a final statement)

Both their sins vanished. They both became
pupils of Buddha, both Komachi and Shosho.