 | "Noh", or, Accomplishment : |  |
I. PART I
INTRODUCTION
The life of Ernest Fenollosa was the romance
par excellence of modern scholarship. He went
to Japan as a professor of economics. He
ended as Imperial Commissioner of Arts. He
had unearthed treasure that no Japanese had
heard of. It may be an exaggeration to say
that he had saved Japanese art for Japan, but
it is certain that he had done as much as any
one man could have to set the native art in its
rightful pre-eminence and to stop the apeing
of Europe. He had endeared himself to the
government and laid the basis for a personal
tradition. When he died suddenly in England
the Japanese government sent a warship for
his body, and the priests buried him within
the sacred enclosure at Miidera. These facts
speak for themselves.
His present reputation in Europe rests upon
his "Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art."
In America he is known also for his service to
divers museums. His work on Japanese and
the scholars. It forms, I think, the basis for
a new donation, for a new understanding of
"the East." For instance, as I look over that
section of his papers which deals with the Japanese
Noh, having read what others have written
in English about these plays, I am in a position
to say definitely that Professor Fenollosa knew
more of the subject than any one who has yet
written in our tongue.
The Noh is unquestionably one of the great
arts of the world, and it is quite possibly one
of the most recondite.
In the eighth century of our era the dilettante
of the Japanese court established the tea
cult and the play of "listening to incense."[1]
In the fourteenth century the priests and
the court and the players all together produced
a drama scarcely less subtle.
For "listening to incense" the company
was divided into two parties, and some arbiter
burnt many kinds and many blended sorts of
perfume, and the game was not merely to know
which was which, but to give to each one of
them a beautiful and allusive name, to recall
by the title some strange event of history or
some passage of romance or legend. It was
to the art of polyphonic rhyme, developed in
feudal Provence four centuries later, and now
almost wholly forgotten.
The art of allusion, or this love of allusion
in art, is at the root of the Noh. These plays,
or eclogues, were made only for the few; for
the nobles; for those trained to catch the
allusion. In the Noh we find an art built upon
the god-dance, or upon some local legend of
spiritual apparition, or, later, on gestes of war
and feats of history; an art of splendid posture,
of dancing and chanting, and of acting that is
not mimetic. It is, of course, impossible to
give much idea of the whole of this art on
paper. One can only trace out the words of
the text and say that they are spoken, or half-sung
and chanted, to a fitting and traditional
accompaniment of movement and colour, and
that they are themselves but half shadows.
Yet, despite the difficulties of presentation, I
find these words very wonderful, and they
become intelligible if, as a friend says, "you
read them all the time as though you were
listening to music."
If one has the habit of reading plays and
imaginning their setting, it will not be difficult
to imagine the Noh stage—different as it is
stages—and to feel how the incomplete speech
is filled out by the music or movement. It is
a symbolic stage, a drama of masks—at least
they have masks for spirits and gods and young
women. It is a theatre of which both Mr.
Yeats and Mr. Craig may approve. It is not,
like our theatre, a place where every fineness
and subtlety must give way; where every
fineness of word or of word-cadence is sacrificed
to the "broad effect"; where the paint must be
put on with a broom. It is a stage where every
subsidiary art is bent precisely upon holding
the faintest shade of a difference; where the
poet may even be silent while the gestures consecrated
by four centuries of usage show meaning.
"We work in pure spirit," said Umewaka
Minoru, through whose efforts the Noh survived
the revolution of 1868, and the fall of
the Tokugawa.
Minoru was acting in the Shogun's garden
when the news of Perry's arrival stopped the
play. Without him the art would have perished.
He restored it through poverty and
struggle, "living in a poor house, in a poor
street, in a kitchen, selling his clothes to buy
masks and costumes from the sales of bankrupt
companies, and using 'kaiyu' for rice."
The following prospectus from a programme
of one of his later performances (March 1900)
will perhaps serve to show the player's attitude
toward the play.
Programme Announcement
Our ancestor was called Umegu Hiogu no Kami
Tomotoki. He was the descendant in the ninth
generation of Tachibana no Moroye Sadaijin, and
lived in Umedzu Yamashiro, hence his family name.
After that he lived in Oshima, in the province of
Tamba, and died in the fourth year of Ninwa
Moroye's descendant, the twenty-second after Tomotoki,
was called Hiogu no Kami Tomosato. He
was a samurai in Tamba, as his fathers before him.
The twenty-eighth descendant was Hiogu no Kami
Kagehisa. His mother dreamed that a Noh mask
was given from heaven; she conceived, and Kagehisa
was born. From his childhood Kagehisa liked
music and dancing, and he was by nature very
excellent in both of these arts. The Emperor
Gotsuchi Mikado heard his name, and in January
in the 13th year of Bunmei he called him to his
palace and made him perform the play Ashikari.
Kagehisa was then sixteen years old. The Emperor
admired him greatly and gave him the decoration
(Monsuki) and a curtain which was purple above
and white below, and he gave him the honorific
ideograph "waka" and thus made him change his
name to Umewaka. By the Emperor's order,
Ushoben Fugiwara no Shunmei sent the news of
Emperor, given at that time, is still in our house.
The curtain was, unfortunately, burned in the great
fire of Yedo on the 4th of March in the third year
of Bunka. Kagehisa died in the second year of
Kioroku and after him the family of Umewaka
became professional actors of Noh. Hironaga, the
thirtieth descendant of Umewaka Taiyu Rokuro,
served Ota Nobunaga.[2] And he was given a territory
of 700 koku in Tamba. And he died in
Nobunaga's battle, Akechi. His son, Taiyu Rokuro
Ujimori, was called to the palace of Tokugawa Iyeyasu
in the fourth year of Keicho, and given a territory
of 100 koku near his home in Tamba. He
died in the third year of Kambun. After that the
family of Umewaka served the Tokugawa shoguns
with Noh for generation after generation down to
the revolution of Meiji (1868). These are the outlines
of the genealogy of my house.
This is the 450th anniversary of Tomosato, and
so to celebrate him and Kagehisa and Ujimori, we
have these performances for three days. We hope
that all will come to see them.
The head of the performance is the forty-fifth of
his line, the Umewaka Rokoro, and is aided by
Umewaka Manzaburo.
(Dated.) In the 33rd year of Meiji, 2nd month.
You see how far this is from the conditions
of the Occidental stage. Pride of descent,
fragments of ceremony and religious ritual, all
serve at first to confuse the modern person,
and to draw his mind from the sheer dramatic
value of Noh.
Some scholars seem to have added another
confusion. They have not understood the
function of the individual plays in the performance,
and have thought them fragmentary, or
have complained of imperfect structure. The
Noh plays are often quite complete in themselves;
certain plays are detachable units,
comprehensible as single performances, and
without annotation or comment. Yet even
these can be used as part of the Ban-gumi, the
full Noh programme. Certain other plays are
only "formed" and intelligible when considered
as part of such a series of plays. Again,
the texts or libretti of certain other plays, really
complete in themselves, seem to us unfinished,
because their final scene depends more upon
the dance than on the words. The following
section of Professor Fenollosa's notes throws
a good deal of light on these questions. It is
Notebook J, Section I., based on the authority
of Mr. Taketi Owada, and runs as follows:
In the time of Tokugawa (a.d. 1602 to 1868),
Noh became the music of the Shogun's court and
actor O-no-yakusha, and the stage O-no-butai, with
honorific additions. The first ceremony of the
year, Utai-zome, was considered very important at
the court. In the palaces of the daimyos, also,
they had their proper ceremonies. This ceremony
of Utai-zome began with the Ashikaga shoguns (in
the fourteenth century). At that time on the fourth
day of the first month, Kanze (the head of one of the
five chartered and hereditary companies of court
actors) sang a play in Omaya, and the Shogun gave
him jifuku ("clothes of the season"), and this
became a custom. In the time of Toyotomi, the
second day of the first month was set apart for the
ceremony. But in the time of Tokugawa, the third
day of the first month was fixed "eternally" as
the day for Utai-zome. On that day, at the hour of
"tori no jō" (about 5 a.m.), the Shogun presented
himself in a large hall in Hon-Maru (where the
imperial palace now is), taking with him the San-ke,
or three relative daimyos, the ministers, and all the
other daimyos and officials, all dressed in the robes
called "noshime-kami-shimo." And the "Tayus"
(or heads) of the Kanze and Komparu schools of
acting come every year, and the Tayus of Hosho
and Kita on alternate years, and the Waki actors,
that is, the actors of second parts, and the actors of
Kiogen or farces, and the hayashikata ("cats," or
musicians) and the singers of the chorus, all bow
down on the verandah of the third hall dressed in
robes called "suo," and in hats called "yeboshi."
And while the cup of the Shogun is poured out
three times, Kanze sings the "Shikai-nami" passage
from the play of Takasago, still bowing. Then the
plays Oi-matsu, Tōbuku, and Takasago are sung
with music, and when they are over the Shogun gives
certain robes, called the "White-aya," with crimson
lining, to the three chief actors, and robes called
"orikami" to the other actors. Then the three
chief actors put on the new robes over their "suos"
and begin at once to dance the Dance of the
Match of Bows and Arrows. And the chant that
accompanies it is as follows:
The chief actor sings—
"Shakuson, Shakuson!" (Buddha, Buddha!)
And the chorus sings this rather unintelligible
passage—
"Taking the bow of Great Love and the arrow
of Wisdom, he awakened Sandoku from sleep.
Aisemmyō-o displayed these two as the symbols of
in and yo.[3]
Monju (another deity) appeared in the
form of Yo-yu and caught the serpent, Kishu-ja,
and made it into a bow. From its eyes he made
him his arrows.[4]
"The Empress Jingō of our country defeated the
rebels with these arrows and brought the peace of
Ciyo-shun to the people. O Hachiman Daibosatsu,
Emperor Ojin, War-god Yumi-ya, enshrined in Iwashimidzu,
O, O, O! This water is water flowing forever."
This "yumi-ya" text cannot be used anywhere
save in this ceremony at the Shogun's
court, and in the "Takigi-No" of the Kasuga
temple at Nara (where a few extra lines are
interpolated).
When the above chant and dance are
finished, the Shogun takes the robe "Kata-ginu"
from his shoulders and throws it to the
samurai in attendance. The samurai hands it to
the minister, who walks with it to the verandah
and presents it to the Taiyu of Kanze very
solemnly. Then all the daimyos present take
off their "kata-ginus" and give them to the
chief actors, and thus ends the ceremony of
Utai-zome. The next day the tayus, or chief
actors, take the robes back to the daimyos and
get money in exchange for them.
There are performances of Noh lasting five
days at the initiations, marriages, and the like,
of the Shoguns; and at the Buddhist memorial
services for dead Shoguns for four days. There
are performances for the reception of imperial
messengers from Kyoto, at which the actors
have to wear various formal costumes. On
one day of the five-day performances the town
people of the eight hundred and eight streets
by the officers of every street. The nanushi,
or street officers, assemble the night before by
the gates of Ote and Kikyo, and each officer
carries aloft a paper lantern bearing the name
of his street. They take sake and refreshments
and wait for the dawn. It looks like a place on
fire, or like a camp before battle.
The Kanze method of acting was made the
official style of the Tokugawa Shoguns, and
the tayus, or chief actors, of Kanze were placed
at the head of all Noh actors. To the Kanze
tayu alone was given the privilege of holding
one subscription performance, or Kanjin-No,
during his lifetime, for the space of ten days.
And for this performance he had the right to
certain dues and levies on the daimyos and on
the streets of the people of Yedo. The daimyos
were not allowed to attend the common theatre,
but they could go to the Kanjin-No. (Note
that the common theatre, the place of mimicry
and direct imitation of life, has always been
looked down upon in Japan. The Noh, the
symbolic and ritual stage, is a place of honour
to actor and audience alike.) The daimyos
and even their wives and daughters could see
Kanjin-No without staying behind the blinds.
Programmes were sold in the streets, and a drum
audience for the wrestling matches.
The privilege of holding one subscription
performance was later granted to the Hosho
company also.
Ban-gumi
In the performance of Utai, or Noh, the
arrangement of pieces for the day is called
"Ban-gumi." "Gumi" means a setting in
order, and "Ban" is derived from the old
term "Ban-no-mai," which was formerly used
when the two kinds of mai, or dancing, the
Korean "u-ho" and the Chinese "sa-ho,"
were performed one after the other.
Now the Ka-den-sho, or secret book of Noh,
decrees that the arrangement of plays shall be
as follows:
A "Shugen" must come first. And Shugen,
or congratulatory pieces, are limited to Noh of the
Gods (that is, to pieces connected with some religious
rite), because this country of the rising sun is the
country of the gods. The gods have guarded the
country from Kami-yo (the age of the gods) down to
the time of the present reign. So in praise of them
and in prayer we perform first this Kami-No.
The Shura, or battle-piece, comes second, for
the gods and emperors pacified this country with
bows and arrows; therefore, to defeat and put out
it is sympathetic magic.)
Kazura, or Onna-mono, "wig-pieces," or pieces for
females, come third. Many think that any Kazura
will do, but it must be a "female Kazura," for after
battle comes peace, or Yu-gen, mysterious calm, and
in time of peace the cases of love come to pass. Moreover,
the battle-pieces are limited to men; so we now
have the female piece in contrast like in and yo (the
different divisions of the metric, before mentioned).
The fourth piece is Oni-No, or the Noh of spirits.
After battle comes peace and glory, but they soon
depart in their turn. The glory and pleasures of
man are not reliable at all. Life is like a dream and
goes with the speed of lightning. It is like a dewdrop
in the morning; it soon falls and is broken.
To suggest these things and to lift up the heart for
Buddha (to produce "Bodai-shin") we have this
sort of play after the Onna-mono, that is, just after
the middle of the programme, when some of the
audience will be a little tired. Just to wake them
out of their sleep we have these plays of spirits
("Oni"). Here are shown the struggles and the
sins of mortals, and the audience, even while they sit
for pleasure, will begin to think about Buddha and
the coming world. It is for this reason that Noh is
called Mu-jin-Kyo, the immeasurable scripture.[5]
Fifth comes a piece which has some bearing
upon the moral duties of man, Jin, Gi, Rei, Chi,
Shin; that is, Compassion, Righteousness, Politeness,
Wisdom, and Faithfulness. This fifth piece
teaches the duties of man here in this world as the
fourth piece represents the results of carelessness
to such duties.
Sixth comes another Shugen, or congratulatory
piece, as conclusion to the whole performance, to
congratulate and call down blessings on the lords
present, the actors themselves, and the place. To
show that though the spring may pass, still there is
a time of its return, this Shugen is put in again just
as at the beginning.
This is what is written in the Ka-den-sho.
Then some one, I think Mr. Owada, comments
as follows:
Though it is quite pedantic in wording, still the
order of the performance is always like this. To
speak in a more popular manner, first comes the
Noh of the Divine Age (Kamiyo); then the battle-piece;
then the play of women; fourth, the pieces
which have a very quiet and deep interest, to touch
the audience to their very hearts; fifth, the pieces
which have stirring or lively scenes; and, sixth,
pieces which praise the lords and the reign.
This is the usual order. When we have five
pieces instead of six, we sing at the end of the performance
the short passage from the play Takasago,
beginning at "Senshuraku wa tami wo nade,"
Autumns." (From the final chorus of Takasago.)
This is called the "adding Shugen." But if in the
fifth piece there are phrases like "Medeta kere"
or "Hisashi kere"—"Oh, how happy!" or "O
everlasting,"—then there is no necessity to sing the
extra passage. In performances in memory of the
dead, Tsuizen-No, they sing short passages from
Toru and Naniwa.
Though five or six pieces are the usual number,
there can be more or even fewer pieces, in which
case one must use the general principles of the above
schedule in designing and arranging the programme.
I think I have quoted enough to make clear
one or two points.
First: There has been in Japan from the
beginning a clear distinction between serious
and popular drama. The merely mimetic
stage has been despised.
Second: The Noh holds up a mirror to
nature in a manner very different from the
Western convention of plot. I mean the Noh
performance of the five or six plays in order
presents a complete service of life. We do not
find, as we find in Hamlet, a certain situation
or problem set out and analysed. The Noh
service presents, or symbolizes, a complete
diagram of life and recurrence.
The individual pieces treat for the most
to that of the Greek plays, in which we find,
for instance, a known Oedipus in a known
predicament.
Third: As the tradition of Noh is unbroken,
we find in the complete performance numerous
elements which have disappeared from our
Western stage; that is, morality plays, religious
mysteries, and even dances—like those of the
mass—which have lost what we might call
their dramatic significance.
Certain texts of Noh will therefore be
interesting only to students of folk-lore or of
comparative religion. The battle-pieces will
present little of interest, because Chansons de
Geste are pretty much the same all the world
over. The moralities are on a par with Western
moralities, for ascetic Buddhism and ascetic
Christianity have about the same set of preachments.
These statements are general and
admit of numerous exceptions, but the lover of
the stage and the lover of drama and of poetry
will find his chief interest in the psychological
pieces, or the Plays of Spirits; the plays that
are, I think, more Shinto than Buddhist.
These plays are full of ghosts, and the ghost
psychology is amazing. The parallels with
Western spiritist doctrines are very curious.
interest, and one might set it aside if it were
not bound up with a dramatic and poetic
interest of the very highest order.
I think I can now give a couple of texts,
without much more preface than saying that
the stage is visible from three sides. It is
reached by a bridge which is divided into three
sections by three real pine trees which are small
and in pots. There is one scene painted on
the background. It is a pine tree, the symbol
of the unchanging. It is painted right on the
back of the stage, and, as this cannot be shifted,
it remains the same for all plays.
A play very often represents some one going
a journey. The character walks along the
bridge or about the stage, announces where he
is and where he is going, and often explains
the meaning of his symbolic gestures, or tells
what the dance means, or why one is dancing.
Thus, in Sotoba Komachi, a play by Kiyotsugu,
two priests are going from Koyosan to
Kioto, and in Settsu they meet with Ono no
Komachi; that is to say, they meet with what
appears to be an old woman sitting on a roadside
shrine—though she is really the wraith of
Ono, long dead.
These pieces are the most interesting because of their profound
and subtle psychology and because of situations entirely
foreign to our Western drama, if not to our folk-lore and legend.
—E. P.
SOTOBA KOMACHI
OnoAnd the flowers in my hair
Were like spring willows.
I spoke like the nightingales, and now am old.
Old by a hundred years, and wearied out.
I will sit down and rest.
The Waki
(one of the priests, is shocked at her impiety
and says)
It is near evening; let us be getting along.
Now will you look at that beggar. She is
sitting on a sotoba (a carved wooden devotional
stick, or shrine)
. Tell her to come off it and sit
on some proper thing.
Ono
Eh, for all your blather it has no letters
on it, not a smudge of old painting. I thought
it was only a stick.
Is it only a stick or a stump? May be it
had once fine flowers—in its time, in its time;
and now it is a stick, to be sure, with the blessed
Buddha cut in it.
Ono
Oh, well then, I'm a stump, too, and well
buried, with a flower at my heart. Go on and
talk of the shrine.
the legend of the shrine, and while he is
doing it, the Waki notices something strange
about the old hag, and cries out—
Who are you?
Ono
The daughter of Ono no Yoshizane.
Waki and Tsure
(together)
Komachi was in her day a bright flower;
She had the blue brows of Katsura;
She used no power at all;
She walked in beautiful raiment in palaces.
And in the speech of the foreign court. [That is, China.]
White of winter is over her head,
Over the husk of her shoulders;
Her eyes are no more like the colour on distant mountains.
She is like a dull moon that fades in the dawn's grip.
The wallet about her throat has in it a few dried beans,
A bundle is wrapped on her back, and on her shoulder is a basket of woven roots;
She cannot hide it at all.
She is begging along the road;
She wanders, a poor, daft shadow.
still sceptical, and thinks he has before him merely
an old woman who thinks she is Komachi. At any
rate, she does not want commiseration, and
replies.]
Ono
Daft! Will you hear him? In my own
young days I had a hundred letters from men
a sight better than he is. They came like
rain-drops in May. And I had a high head,
may be, that time. And I sent out no answer.
I was in want of a handsome man in the old
days, when Shosho came with the others—Shii
no Shosho of Fukakusa [Deep Grass] that
came to me in the moonlight and in the dark
night and in the nights flooded with rain, and
in the black face of the wind and in the wild
swish of the snow. He came as often as the
melting drops fall from the eaves, ninety-nine
times, and he died. And his ghost is about me,
driving me on with the madness.
Umewaka Minoru acted Ono in this play
on March 8, 1899. It is quite usual for an
old actor, wearing a mask, to take the part of
a young woman. There is another play of
Ono and Shosho called Kayoi Komachi, "Komachi
Going"; it is by a Minoru, and Umewaka
acted it on November 19, 1899; and it was
followed by Suma Genji. I shall give both of
these plays complete without further comment.
TECHNICAL TERMS IN NOH
- The hero or chief
character. - The follower of the hero.
- Guest or guests, very often a wandering
priest. - Guest's attendant.
- An insignificant attendant.
- A very young boy.
- Sailor or servant.
- An evil spirit.
Shite (pronounced "Sch'tay"):
Tsure:
Waki:
Waki no tsure, or Wadzure:
Tomo:
Kogata:
Kiogenshi:
Hannya:
The speaking part of Noh is called "Kataru,"
the singing parts "Utai."
KAYOI KOMACHI[1]
The Scene is in Yamashiro- the ghost of Ono no Komachi's
lover. - or subsidiary character, a priest.
- Ono no Komachi.
Characters
Shite, Shosho,
Waki,
Tsure,
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.
(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.
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.
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?
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?
the image of the coming of Shosho.
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.
I can, even now, seem to be shaking it off
my sleeves.
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.
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.
His under-coat is in rags.
[All this refers both to Shosho's havingcome 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
He comes oversprinkled with flowers.
It is Shosho!
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
catch one for Buddha.
Chorus
(in a final statement)
Both their sins vanished. They both became
pupils of Buddha, both Komachi and Shosho.
[Note.—The crux of the play is that Shosho would not
accept Buddhism, and thus his spirit and Ono's are kept apart.
There is nothing like a ghost for holding to an idée fixe. In
Nishikigi, the ghosts of the two lovers are kept apart because the
woman had steadily refused the hero's offering of charm sticks.
The two ghosts are brought together by the piety of a wandering
priest. Mr. Yeats tells me that he has found a similar legend in
Arran, where the ghosts come to a priest to be married.—E. P.]
The final dance means that the lovers are
spirits fluttering in the grass.
This eclogue is very incomplete. Ono
seems rather like Echo, and without the last
two lines of the chorus one could very well
imagine her keeping up her tenzone with
Shosho until the end of time.
In the performance of November 19, as
stated before, this play was followed by Manzaburo's
Suma Genji (Genji at Suma).
I must ask the reader to suspend his judgment
of the dramatic values of such plays until
he has read Nishikigi and some of the longer
eclogues, at least some of those in which the
utai or libretto set by itself conveys a fuller
sense of the meaning.
SUMA GENJI
- an old wood-cutter, who is an apparition of
the hero, Genji, as a sort of place-spirit, the
spirit of the seashore at Suma. - a priest with a hobby for folk-lore,
who is visiting sacred places. - or the Shite in his second manner
or apparition, Genji's spirit appearing in a sort
of glory of waves and moonlight.
Characters
Shite,
Waki, Fujiwara,
Second Shite,
(announcing himself)
Am come over the sea from Hiuga;
I am a priest from the shinto temple at Miyazaki,
And, as I lived far afield,
I could not see the temple of the great god at Ise;
And now I am a-mind to go thither,
And am come to Suma, the sea-board.
The tree that is so set in the tales—
Shite
I fish in the twilight;
By day I pack wood and make salt.
Here is the mount of Suma.
There is the tree, the young cherry.[1]
And you may be quite right about Genji's
having lived here. That blossom will flare
in a moment.[2]
Waki
I must find out what that old man knows.
(To Shite.)
Sir, you seem very poor, and
yet you neglect your road; you stop on your
way home, just to look at a flower. Is that
the tree of the stories?
Shite
I dare say I'm poor enough; but you
tree, "Is it the fine tree of Suma?"
Waki
Well, is it the tree? I've come on purpose
to see it.
Shite
What! you really have come to see the
cherry-blossom, and not to look at Mount
Suma?
Waki
Yes; this is where Genji lived, and you
are so old that you ought to know a lot of
stories about him.
Chorus
(telling out Genji's thoughts)
My sleeves will wither.[3]
The past was at Kiritsubo;
I went to the lovely cottage, my mother's,
But the emperor loved me.
I was made esquire at twelve, with the hat.
The soothsayers unrolled my glories.[4]
I was
province. I was chujo in the land of the maple-feasting.[5]
At twenty-five I came to Suma,
knowing all sorrow of seafare, having none to
attend my dreams, no one to hear the old
stories.
Then I was recalled to the city. I passed
from office to office. I was naidaijin in Miwotsu-kushi,
I was dajodaijin in the lands of Otome,
and daijotenno in Fuji no Uraba; for this I
was called Hikam Kimi.
Waki
But tell me exactly where he lived. Tell
me all that you know about him.
Shite
One can't place the exact spot; he lived
all along here by the waves. If you will wait
for the moonlight you might see it all in a mist.
Chorus
He was in Suma in the old days—
Shite
(stepping behind a screen or making some sign of
departure, he completes the sentence of the chorus)
—but now in the aery heaven.
(to Waki)
That woodman is gone in the clouds.
Waki
That "woodman" was Genji himself, who
was here talking live words. I will wait for
the night. I will stay here to see what happens.
(Announcing his act.[6]
)
Then Fujiwara no Okinori
lay down and heard the waves filled with
music.
Second Shite, that is to say, a bright apparition
of Genji in supernatural form.
Genji
How beautiful this sea is! When I trod
the grass here I was called "Genji the gleaming,"
and now from the vaulting heaven I
reach down to set a magic on mortals. I sing
of the moon in this shadow, here on this sea-marge
the blue dance of the sea waves. [And then he begins to dance.
Chorus
(accompanying and describing the dance)
Is on his white garment;
That pattern covers the sleeve.
The air is alive with flute-sounds,
With the song of various pipes
The land is a-quiver,
And even the wild sea of Suma
Is filled with resonant quiet.
The dream overlaps with the real;
There was a light out of heaven,
There was a young man at the dance here;
Surely it was Genji Hikaru,
It was Genji Hikaru in spirit.
Genji
Here by the white waves was my dwelling;
But I am come down out of sky
To put my glamour on mortals.
It is like the feel of things at Suma.
Genji
(referring also to a change in the dance)
The wind is abated.
Chorus
A thin cloud—
Genji
It seems like the spring-time.
Chorus
He, the soul of the place.[8]
He, who seemed but a woodman,
He flashed with the honoured colours,
He the true-gleaming.
Blue-grey he fluttered in Suma;
His sleeves were like the grey sea-waves;
They moved with curious rustling,
Like the noise of the restless waves,
Like the bell of a country town
'Neath the nightfall.
It must be remembered that the properties and scene are not representational but symbolic, the hero-actor simply says in effect, "Pretend that that is the tree and that the mountain."
There is here the double-entente. The blossom will really
come out: it is a day of anniversary or something of that kind;
also Genji will appear in his proper glory, as the audience
knows, though the Waki does not.
The characters often give their own stage directions or
explain the meaning of their acts, as in the last line here.
The Four Kings, i.e. of the four points of the compass. Devas (spirits) and Men occupy the position immediately below the Gods.
More precisely "He became the place." You can compare this with Buckle, or Jules Romains' studies in unanimism.
I dare say the play, Suma Genji, will seem
undramatic to some people the first time they
read it. The suspense is the suspense of waiting
for a supernatural manifestation—which comes.
Some will be annoyed at a form of psychology
which is, in the West, relegated to spiritistic
séances. There is, however, no doubt that
such psychology exists. All through the winter
of 1914-15 I watched Mr. Yeats correlating
folk-lore (which Lady Gregory had collected
in Irish cottages) and data of the occult writers,
with the habits of charlatans of Bond Street.
If the Japanese authors had not combined the
psychology of such matters with what is to me
a very fine sort of poetry, I would not bother
about it.
The reader will miss the feel of suspense if
the priest eager to see "even in a vision" the
beauty lost in the years, "the shadow of the
past in bright form." I do not say that this
sympathy is easily acquired. It is too unusual
a frame of mind for us to fall into it without
conscious effort. But if one can once get over
the feeling of hostility, if one can once let
himself into the world of the Noh, there is
undoubtedly a new beauty before him. I have
found it well worth the trial, and can hope
that others will also.
The arrangement of five or six Noh into one
performance explains, in part, what may seem
like a lack of construction in some of the pieces;
the plays have, however, a very severe construction
of their own, a sort of musical construction.
When a text seems to "go off into nothing"
at the end, the reader must remember "that
the vagueness or paleness of words is made
good by the emotion of the final dance," for
the Noh has its unity in emotion. It has also
what we may call Unity of Image.[1]
At least,
of a single Image: the red maple leaves
and the snow flurry in Nishikigi, the pines in
Takasago, the blue-grey waves and wave pattern
in Suma Genji, the mantle of feathers in the
play of that name, Hagoromo.
When it comes to presenting Professor
Fenollosa's records of his conversations with
Umewaka Minoru, the restorer of Noh, I find
myself much puzzled as to where to begin. I
shall, however, plunge straight into the conversation
of May 15, 1900, as that seems
germane to other matters already set forth in
this excerpt, preceding it only by the quaint
record of an earlier meeting, December 20,
1898, as follows:
Called on old Mr. Umewaka with Mr. Hirata.
Presented him with large box of eggs. He thanked
me for presenting last Friday 18 yen to Takeyo for
my six lessons, which began on November 18. I
apologized to him for the mistake of years ago,
thanked him for his frankness, his reticence to others,
and his kindness in allowing me to begin again with
him, asked him to receive 15 yen as a present in
consideration of his recent help.
He was very affable, and talked with me for
about 1½ hours. He asked me to sing, and I sang
"Hansakaba." He praised me, said everything
was exactly right and said that both he and
than a Japanese could make. He said I was
already advanced enough to sing in a Japanese
company.[2]
Mosse and I are the only foreigners who have
ever been taught Noh, and I am the only foreigner
now practising it.
We spoke much of the art of it, I giving him
a brief account of Greek drama. He already knew
something about opera.
He said the excellence of Noh lay in emotion,
not in action or externals. Therefore there were no
accessories, as in the theatres. "Spirit" (tamashii)
was the word he used. The pure spirit was what it
(Noh) worked in, so it was higher than other arts.
If a Noh actor acted his best, Umewaka could read
his character. The actor could not conceal it. The
spirit must out, the "whole man," he said. Therefore
he always instructed his sons to be moral, pure
and true in all their daily lives, otherwise they could
not become the greatest actors.
He spoke much about the (popular) theatre, of
its approximation of Noh when he was about thirteen
years old. The present Danjuro's father and his
troop disguised themselves and came to the performance
of Kanjin Noh, from which they were normally
excluded. This was the one opportunity for the
public to see Noh, it is (as said elsewhere) the single
actor. Other actors were excluded.
Then it was that Ichikawa, having seen these
Noh plays, imitated them in the famous "Kanjiinjo,"
which the present Danjuro still plays as one of
his 18 special pieces. Under the present regime,
the popular actors have access to the Noh plays, and
the popular plays have imitated them still further.
Almost all forms of music and recitation have now
(1898) taken more or less of their style from Noh.
Noh has been a purification of the Japanese soul
for 400 years. Kobori Enshu classified the fifteen
virtues of Noh, among which he counted mental
and bodily health as one, calling it "Healing without
medicine."
"Dancing is especially known, by its circulation
of the blood, to keep off the disease of old age."
Now Minoru and his sons occasionally go to
Danjuro's theatre. He spoke much about the
Shogun's court. When a Noh actor was engaged
by the Shogun he had to sign long articles to the
effect that he would never divulge even to his wife
or his relatives any of the doings or descriptions of
things in the palace, also that he would not visit
houses of pleasure or go to the theatre. If caught
doing these things he was severely punished.
Occasionally a Noh actor would go to the theatre in
disguise.
With the exception of the Kanjin Noh, common
people could not, at that time, see the Noh, but a very
few were occasionally let in to the monthly rehearsals.
The notes for May 15, 1900, begin as
follows:
He (Minoru) says that Mitsuni (a certain actor)
has learning and great Nesshin, or technique, but
that, after all the technique is learned, the great
difficulty is to grasp the spirit of the piece.
He always tells the newspaper men to-day not
to write criticisms of Noh. They can criticize the
popular theatre, for there even the plots may change,
and amateurs can judge it. But in Noh everything
comes down by tradition from early Tokugawa days
and cannot be judged by any living man, but can
only be followed faithfully.[3]
Although there is no general score for actors and
cats (i.e. the four musicians who have sat at the back
of the Noh stage for so many centuries that no one
quite knows what they mean or how they came
there), there is in the hands of the Taiyu, or actor-manager,
a roll such as he (Minoru) himself has,
which gives general directions, not much detail.
This contains only the ordinary text, with no special
notations for singing, but for the dances there are
minute diagrams showing where to stand, how far
to go forward, the turns in a circle, the turns to
right or left, how far to go with the right or left
foot, how many steps, eyes right, eyes left, what
mask and what clothes are to be worn, the very
position of the arms. There are drawings of figures
naked for old men, women, girls, boys, ghosts,
and all kinds of characters sitting and standing;
they show the proper relation of limbs and body.
Then there are similar drawings of the same figures
clothed.
But one cannot trust merely to such a set of
instructions. There is a great deal that must be
supplied by experience, feeling, and tradition, and
which has always been so supplied. Minoru feels
this so strongly that he has not yet shown the rolls
to his sons, for fear it might make them mechanical.
"Kuden" (Tradition)
A book of this sort has been handed down by
his ancestors from early Tokugawa days, but it is
only a rough draft. He has written a long supplement
on the finer points, but has shown it to no one.
One should not trust to it, either. Such fine things
as Matsukaze, the pose for looking at the moon, or
at the dawn, or at the double reflection of the moon
in two tubs, and all the detail of business cannot
be written down; at such places he writes merely
"kuden" (tradition), to show that this is something
that can be learned only from a master. Sometimes
his teacher used to beat him with a fan when he
was learning.
Relying on record plus such tradition, we can
say with fair certitude that there has been no appreciable
(that is to say, since the beginning of the seventeenth
century, or about the end of Shakespeare's lifetime).
Kuden, or this feeling for the traditional intensity,
is not to be gained by mere teaching or mimicry,
or by a hundred times trying; but it must be
learned by a grasp of the inner spirit. In a place,
for instance, where a father comes to his lost son,
walks three steps forward, pats him twice on the
head and balances his stick, it is very difficult to
get all this into grace and harmony, and it certainly
cannot be written down or talked into a man by
word of mouth.
Imitation must not be wholly external. There
is a tradition of a young actor who wished to learn
Sekidera Komachi, the most secret and difficult of
the three plays, which alone are so secret that they
were told and taught only by father to eldest son.
He followed a fine old woman, eighty years of age, in
the street and watched her every step. After a
while she was alarmed and asked him why he was
following her. He said she was interesting. She
replied that she was too old. Then he confessed
that he was an ambitious Noh actor and wanted to
play Komachi.
An ordinary woman would have praised him,
but she did not. She said it was bad for Noh,
though it might be good for the common theatre,
to imitate facts. For Noh he must feel the thing as
a whole, from the inside. He would not get it
copying facts point by point. All this is true.
You must lay great stress upon this in explaining
the meaning and aesthetics of the Noh.
There is a special medium for expressing emotion.
It is the voice.
Each pupil has his own voice; it cannot be made
to imitate the voice of an old woman or a spirit (oni).
It must remain always the same, his own; yet with
that one individual voice of his he must so express
himself as to make it clear that it is the mentality
of an old woman, or whatever it happens to be, who
is speaking.
It is a Noh saying that "The heart is the form."
Costumes
There is a general tradition as to costumes.
Coloured garments cannot be interchanged for
white. The general colour is a matter of record,
but not the minute patterns, which may be changed
from time to time. It is not necessary that one
dress should be reserved for one particular character
in one particular piece. Even in Tokugawa days
there was not always a costume for each special
character. Some were used for several parts and
some were unique; so also were the masks.
The general colour and colour-effect of the dress
cannot be changed: say it were small circular
patterns on a black ground, this must remain, but
the exact flower or ornament inside the circles may
vary. The length and cut of the sleeve could not
be altered, but only the small details of the pattern.
little.
Masks
The hannia, or daemonic masks, are different.
The hannia in Awoi no Uye is lofty in feeling; that
of Dojoji is base. They are very different. The
masks of Shunkan, Semimaru, Kagekiyo, and Yoro-boshi
cannot be used for any other parts. Kontan's
mask can be used for several parts, as, for example,
the second shite in Takasago. Of course if one
has only one hannia mask one must use it for all
hannia, but it is better not to do so. The Adachigahara
hannia is the lowest in feeling.
Fifty years ago they tried to copy the old masks
exactly. The Shogun had Kanze's masks copied
even to the old spots. Now it is difficult to get good
sculptors.
Turning the head is very difficult, for the actor
must be one piece with the mask.
An ordinary mask is worth 30 yen; a great one,
200. At first one cannot distinguish between them.
But the longer you look at a good mask the more
charged with life it becomes. A common actor
cannot use a really good mask. He cannot make
himself one with it. A great actor makes it live.
Music
In the notes for a conversation of May 6,
there are the following remarks about the
in prose and part in verse; some parts are sung
and some spoken, or one might better say,
intoned]:
The importance of the music is in its intervals
[he seems to mean intervals between beats, i.e.
rhythm intervals, not "intervals" of pitch]. It is
just like the dropping of rain from the eaves.
The musical bar is a sort of double bar made
up of five notes and seven notes, or of seven notes
and then seven more notes, the fourteen notes
being sung in the same time as the twelve first
ones.
The division of seven syllables is called "yo,"
that of five is called "in"; the big drum is called
"yo," and the small drum "in." The seven
syllables are the part of the big drum, the five
syllables are the part of the small drum—but if they
come in succession it is too regular; so sometimes
they reverse and the big drum takes the "in" part
and the small drum the "yo."
The head of the chorus naturally controls the
musicians. The chorus is called "kimi," or lord,
and the "cats," or musicians, are called "subjects."
When Minoru acts as head of the chorus, he says
he can manage the "cats" by a prolonging or
shortening of sounds. [This is obscure, but apparently
each musician has ideas of his own about
tempo.]
The "cats" must conform to him. The chorus
number of changes may have crept into the tradition.
The art consists in not being mechanical. The
"cats," the chorus, and the shite "feel out their
own originality," and render their own emotions.
Even during the last fifteen years some changes
may have crept in unconsciously. Even in Tokugawa
days there never was any general score bringing
all the parts under a single eye. There is not and
never has been any such score. There are independent
traditions. [Note.—The privileges of acting
as "cats" and as waki were hereditary privileges
of particular families, just as the privilege of
acting the chief parts pertained to the members
of the five hereditary schools.] Minoru and other
actors may know the parts [he means here the
musical air] instinctively or by memory; no
one has ever written them down. Some actors
know only the arias of the few pieces of which they
are masters.
Each "cat" of each school has his own traditions.
When he begins to learn, he writes down
in his note-book a note for each one of the twelve
syllables. Each man has his own notation, and he
has a more or less complete record to learn from.
These details are never told to any one. The
ordinary actors and chorus singers do not know
them.
In singing, everything depends on the most
minute distinction between "in" and "yo." Minoru
was surprised to hear that this was not so in
"in," "yo." This adds breadth and softness,
"haba" he calls it.[4]
This looks like a sort of syncopation. I don't know enough
about music to consider it musically with any fullness, but it
offers to the student of metric most interesting parallels, or if
not parallels, suggestions for comparison with sapphics and with
some of the troubadour measures (notably those of Arnaut
Daniel), the chief trouble being that Professor Fenollosa's notes
at this point are not absolutely lucid.
The Stage
The stage is, as I have said, a platform open
on three sides and reached by a bridge from
the green-room. The notes on the conversation
of June 2 run as follows:
They have Hakama Noh in summer. The general
audience does not like it, but experts can see the
movements better as the actors sometimes wear no
upper dress at all, and are naked save for the semitransparent
hakama. New servants are surprised
at it.
Mr. Umewaka Minoru has tried hard not to
change any detail of the old customs. In recent
times many have urged him to change the lights,
but he prefers the old candles. They ask him to
modernize the text and to keep the shite from sitting
in the middle [of the stage? or of the play?], but
he won't.
A pupil of his, a wood-dealer, says that a proper
Noh stage could not be built now, for it is all of
hinoten. The floor is in twenty pieces, each of which
would now cost 250 yen. There must be no knots
in the pillars, and all the large pillars and cross
pieces are of one piece. This would cost enormously
now even if it were possible at all.
Awoyama Shimotsuke no Kami Roju built this
stage [the one now used by Minoru] for his villa in
Aoyama more than forty years ago; it was moved
to its present site in the fourth year of Meiji (1872).
The daimyo sold it to a curio dealer from whom
Umewaka Minoru bought it. Shimotsuke was
some relation to the daimyo of Bishu, in Owari, and
so he got the timbers for nothing. The best
timber comes from Owari. So the stage had cost
only the carpenter's wages (2000 yen?). Now
the wood alone would cost 20,000 to 40,000 yen,
if you could get it at all. You couldn't contract
for it.
The form of the stage was fixed in the time of
Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu. In Ashikaga (fourteenth
century) the performances were in Tadasu ga wara,
and the stage was open on all sides. The bridge
came to the middle of one side (apparently the back)
where the pine tree now is. The stage was square,
as it now is, with four pillars. The audience surrounded
it in a great circle "like Sumo" [whatever
that may mean]. They had a second story or gallery
and the Shogun sat in front. The roof was as it
now is.
The roof should not be tiled, but should be like
the roof of the shinto temples in Ise. Shimotsuke
had had a tiled roof because he was afraid of fire.
People had said that he (Minoru) was mad to set up
a Noh stage [at the time when he was starting to
revive the performance]; so he had made the roof
small and inconspicuous to attract less notice.
Under the stage are set five earthen jars, in the
space bounded by the pillars, to make the sound
reverberate—both the singing and the stamping.[5]
There are two more jars under the musicians' place
and three under the bridge. This has been so since
early Tokugawa times. The ground is hollowed
out under the stage to the depth of four feet.[6]
The jars are not set upright, as this would obstruct
the sound. They are set at 45 degrees. Sometimes
they are hung by strings and sometimes set on
posts. Minoru's are on posts.
Some jars are faced right and some left; there
is a middle one upright. Minoru says it is just
like a drum, and that the curve of the jars has to be
carefully made. The larger the jars the better.
Hideyoshi or Iyeyasu put the back on the stage.
It is made of a double set of boards in order to throw
the sound forward. They didn't like having the
sound wasted. This innovation was, on that score,
aesthetic.
"Social and palace" reasons have in some
measure determined the form of the stage.
The floor is not quite level, but slopes slightly
forward. The art of stage-building is a secret of
"daiko." It is as difficult to build a Noh stage
as to build a shinto temple, and there are no proper
Noh stages built now.
The painting of the pine tree on the back is most
important. It is a congratulatory symbol of unchanging
green and strength.
On some stages they have small plum flowers,
but this is incorrect; there should be no colour
except the green. The bamboo is the complement
of the pine. To paint these trees well is a great
secret of Kano artists. When skilfully painted,
they set off the musicians' forms.
The three real little pine trees along the bridge
are quite fixed; they symbolize heaven, earth, and
man. The one for heaven is nearest the stage,
and then comes the one which symbolizes man.
They are merely symbols like the painted pine tree.
Sometimes when a pine is mentioned the actors look
toward it.
The measurements of the stage have not changed
since early Tokugawa days. It should be three
ken square, but this measurement is sometimes
taken inside, sometimes outside the pillars.
There is no special symbolism in the bridge; it
is merely a way of getting across. The length was
arbitrary under the Ashikaga; later it was fixed
by rule. At the Shogun's court the bridge was 13
The middle palace bridge was 7 ken. Minoru's
bridge is 5 ken. The bridge must be an odd number
of ken, like 13, or like the "in" and "yo" numbers
(7 and 5). The width is 9 "shaken" outside and
8 inside the pillars.
This stamping dates from the time when some mythological
person danced on a tub to attract the light-goddess.
The stage is in the open. Minoru says elsewhere, "Snow
is worst for it blows on the stage and gets on the feet."
This intensification of the Image, this manner of construction,
is very interesting to me personally, as an Imagiste, for we
Imagistes knew nothing of these plays when we set out in our
own manner. These plays are also an answer to a question that
has several times been put to me: "Could one do a long
Imagiste poem, or even a long poem in vers libre?"
| "Noh", or, Accomplishment : | |