University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

The story, as I understand it, is that the
"Court Lady Awoi" (Flower of the East) is
jealous of the other and later co-wives of
Genji. This jealousy reaches its climax, and
she goes off her head with it, when her carriage
is overturned and broken at the Kami festival.
The play opens with the death-bed of Awoi,
and in Mrs. Fenollosa's diary I find the statement
that "Awoi, her struggles, sickness, and
death are represented by a red, flowered
kimono, folded once length-wise, and laid at
the front edge of the stage."

The objective action is confined to the
apparitions and exorcists. The demon of
jealousy, tormenting Awoi, first appears in
the form of the Princess Rakujo, then with the
progress and success of the exorcism the jealous

quintessence is driven out of this personal
ghost, and appears in its own truly demonic
("hannya") form—"That awful face with
its golden eyes and horns revealed." The
exorcist Miko is powerless against this demon,
but the yamabushi exorcists, "advancing
against it, making a grinding noise with the
beads of their rosaries and striking against it,"
finally drive it away.

The ambiguities of certain early parts of
the play seem mainly due to the fact that the
"Princess Rokujo," the concrete figure on the
stage, is a phantom or image of Awoi no
Uye's own jealousy. That is to say, Awoi is
tormented by her own passion, and this passion
obsesses her first in the form of a personal
apparition of Rokujo, then in demonic form.

This play was written before Ibsen declared
that life is a "contest with the phantoms of
the mind." The difficulties of the translator
have lain in separating what belongs to Awoi
herself from the things belonging to the ghost
of Rokujo, very much as modern psychologists
might have difficulty in detaching the personality
or memories of an obsessed person
from the personal memories of the obsession.
Baldly: an obsessed person thinks he is
Napoleon; an image of his own thought

would be confused with scraps relating perhaps
to St. Helena, Corsica, and Waterloo.

The second confusion is the relation of the
two apparitions. It seems difficult to make it
clear that the "hannya" has been cast out of
the ghostly personality, and that it had been,
in a way, the motive force in the ghost's actions.
And again we cannot make it too clear that
the ghost is not actually a separate soul, but
only a manifestation made possible through
Awoi and her passion of jealousy. At least
with this interpretation the play seems moderately
coherent and lucid.

Rokujo or Awoi, whichever we choose to
consider her, comes out of hell-gate in a
chariot, "because people of her rank are
always accustomed to go about in chariots.
When they, or their ghosts, think of motion,
they think of going in a chariot, therefore they
take that form." There would be a model
chariot shown somewhere at the back of the
stage.

The ambiguity of the apparition's opening
line is, possibly, to arouse the curiosity of the
audience. There will be an air of mystery,
and they will not know whether it is to be
the chariot associated with Genji's liaison with
Yugawo, the beautiful heroine of the play

Hajitomi, or whether it is the symbolic chariot
drawn by a sheep, a deer, and an ox. But I
think we are nearer the mark if we take Rokujo's
enigmatic line, "I am come in three chariots,"
to mean that the formed idea of a chariot is
derived from these events and from the mishap
to Awoi's own chariot, all of which have combined
and helped the spirit world to manifest
itself concretely. Western students of ghostly
folk-lore would tell you that the world of spirits
is fluid and drifts about seeking shape. I do
not wish to dogmatize on these points.

The Fenollosa-Hirata draft calls the manifest
spirit "The Princess Rokujo," and she attacks
Awoi, who is represented by the folded kimono.
Other texts seem to call this manifestation
"Awoi no Uye," i.e. her mind or troubled
spirit, and this spirit attacks her body. It will
be perhaps simpler for the reader if I mark her
speeches simply "Apparition," and those of
the second form "Hannya."

I do not know whether I can make the
matter more plain or summarize it otherwise
than by saying that the whole play is a dramatization,
or externalization, of Awoi's jealousy.
The passion makes her subject to the demon-possession.
The demon first comes in a disguised
and beautiful form. The prayer of

the exorcist forces him first to appear in his
true shape, and then to retreat.

But the "disguised and beautiful form"
is not a mere abstract sheet of matter. It is
a sort of personal or living mask, having a
ghost-life of its own; it is at once a shell of
the princess, and a form, which is strengthened
or made more palpable by the passion of Awoi.