University of Virginia Library

III. PART III

FENOLLOSA ON THE NOH

The Japanese people have loved nature so
passionately that they have interwoven her
life and their own into one continuous drama
of the art of pure living. I have written elsewhere[1]
of the five Acts into which this life-drama
falls, particularly as it reveals itself in
the several forms of their visual arts. I have
spoken of the universal value of this special
art-life, and explained how the inflowing of
such an Oriental stream has helped to revitalize
Western Art, and must go on to assist in the
solution of our practical educational problems.
I would now go back to that other key, to the
blossoming of Japanese genius, which I mentioned
under my account of the flower festivals,
namely, the national poetry, and its rise,
through the enriching of four successive periods,
to a vital dramatic force in the fifteenth century.

Surely literature may be as delicate an exponent
of a nation's soul as is art; and there are several
phases of Oriental poetry, both Japanese and
Chinese, which have practical significance and
even inspiration for us in this weak, transitional
period of our Western poetic life.

We cannot escape, in the coming centuries,
even if we would, a stronger and stronger
modification of our established standards by
the pungent subtlety of Oriental thought,
and the power of the condensed Oriental forms.
The value will lie partly in relief from the
deadening boundaries of our own conventions.
This is no new thing. It can be shown that
the freedom of the Elizabethan mind, and its
power to range over all planes of human
experience, as in Shakespeare, was, in part, an
aftermath of Oriental contacts—in the Crusades,
in an intimacy with the Mongols such as Marco
Polo's, in the discovery of a double sea-passage
to Persia and India, and in the first gleanings
of the Jesuit missions to Asia. Still more
clearly can it be shown that the romantic movement
in English poetry, in the later eighteenth
century and the early nineteenth, was influenced
and enriched, though often in a subtle
and hidden way, by the beginnings of scholarly
study and translation of Oriental literature.

Bishop Percy, who afterwards revived our
knowledge of the mediaeval ballad, published
early in the 1760's the first appreciative English
account of Chinese poetry; and Bishop Hood
wrote an essay on the Chinese theatre, seriously
comparing it with the Greek. A few years later
Voltaire published his first Chinese tragedy,
modified from a Jesuit translation; and an
independent English version held the London
stage till 1824. Moore, Byron, Shelley, and
Coleridge were influenced by the spirit, and
often by the very subject, of Persian translations;
and Wordsworth's "Intimations of
Immortality" verges on the Hindoo doctrine
of reincarnation. In these later days India
powerfully reacts upon our imagination through
an increasingly intimate knowledge. . . .

I

A form of drama, as primitive, as intense,
and almost as beautiful as the ancient Greek
drama at Athens, still exists in the world.
Yet few care for it, or see it.[2] In the fifth century
before Christ the Greek drama arose out
of the religious rites practised in the festivals
of the God of Wine. In the fifteenth century

after Christ, the Japanese drama arose out of
religious rites practised in the festivals of the
Shinto gods, chiefly the Shinto god of the
Kasuga temple at Nara. Both began by a
sacred dance, and both added a sacred chorus
sung by priests. The transition from a dance
chorus to drama proper consisted, in both cases,
in the evolving of a solo part, the words of
which alternate in dialogue with the chorus.
In both the final form of drama consists of a
few short scenes, wherein two or three soloists
act a main theme, whose deeper meaning is
interpreted by the poetical comment of the
chorus. In both the speech was metrical, and
involved a clear organic structure of separate
lyrical units. In both music played an important
part. In both action was a modification
of the dance. In both rich costumes were
worn; in both, masks. The form and tradition
of the Athenian drama passed over into
the tradition of the ancient Roman stage, and
died away in the early middle ages fourteen
centuries ago. It is dead, and we can study it
from scant records only. But the Japanese
poetic drama is alive to-day, having been
transmitted almost unchanged from one perfected
form reached in Kioto in the fifteenth
century.

It has been said that all later drama has been
influenced by the Greek; that the strolling
jugglers and contortionists, who wandered in
troupes over Europe in the middle ages, constitute
an unbroken link between the degenerate
Roman actors and the miracle plays of
the church, which grew into the Shakespearean
drama. It is even asserted that, as the Greek
conquest gave rise to a Greco-Buddhist form
of sculpture on the borders of India and China,
Greek dramatic influence entered also into the
Hindoo and Chinese drama, and eventually
into the Noh of Japan. But the effect of
foreign thought on the Noh is small in comparison
with that of the native Shinto influences.
It is as absurd to say that the Noh is an offshoot
of Greek drama as it would be to say that
Shakespeare is such an offshoot.

There is, however, beside the deeper analogy
of the Japanese Noh with Greek plays, an
interesting secondary analogy with the origin
of Shakespeare's art. All three had an independent
growth from miracle plays—the
first from the plays of the worship of Bacchus,
the second from the plays of the worship of
Christ, the third from the plays of the worship
of the Shinto deities and of Buddha. The
plays that preceded Shakespeare's in England

were acted in fields adjoining the churches,
and later in the courtyards of nobles. The
plays that preceded the Noh, and even the
Noh themselves, were enacted, first in the
gardens of temples or on the dry river-beds
adjoining the temples, and later in the courtyards
of the daimio. On the other hand, the
actual modus of the Shakespearean drama is
practically dead for us. Occasional revivals
have to borrow scenery and other contrivances
unknown to the Elizabethan stage, and the
continuity of professional tradition has certainly
been broken. But in the Japanese Noh,
though it arose one hundred years before
Shakespeare, this continuity has never been
broken. The same plays are to-day enacted
in the same manner as then; even the leading
actors of to-day are blood descendants of the
very men who created this drama 450 years
ago.

This ancient lyric drama is not to be
confounded with the modern realistic drama
of Tokio, with such drama, for instance, as
Danjuro's. This vulgar drama is quite like
ours, with an elaborate stage and scenery, with
little music or chorus, and no masks; with
nothing, in short, but realism and mimetics
of action. This modern drama, a ghost of the

fifth period, arose in Yedo some 300 years ago.
It was an amusement designed by the common
people for themselves, and was written and
acted by them. It therefore corresponds to
the work of Ukiyo-ye in painting, and more
especially to the colour prints; and a large
number of these prints reproduce characters
and scenes from the people's theatre.

As the pictorial art of the fifth period was
divisible into two parts—that of the nobility,
designed to adorn their castles, and that of
the common people, printed illustration,—so
has the drama of the last 200 years been
twofold, that of the lyric Noh, preserved pure
in the palaces of the rich; and that of the
populace, running to realism and extravagance
in the street theatres. To-day, in spite of the
shock and revolution of 1868, the former, the
severe and poetic drama, has been revived, and
is enthusiastically studied by cultured Japanese.
In that commotion the palaces of the daimios,
with their Noh stages, were destroyed, the
court troupes of actors were dispersed. For
three years after 1868 performances ceased
entirely. But Mr. Umewaka Minoru, who
had been one of the soloists in the Shogun's
central troupe, kept guard over the pure
tradition, and had many stage directions or

"tenets" preserved in writing along with the
texts. In 1871 he bought an ex-diamio's
stage for a song, set it up on the banks of the
Sumida river in Tokio, and began to train
his sons. Many patient pupils and old actors
flocked to him; the public began their patronage;
he bought up collections of costumes
and masks at sales of impoverished nobles;
and now his theatre is so thronged that boxes
have to be engaged a week beforehand, and
five other theatres have been built in Tokio. . . .

For the last twenty years I have been studying
the Noh, under the personal tuition of
Umewaka Minoru and his sons, learning by
actual practice the method of the singing and
something of the acting; I have taken down
from Umewaka's lips invaluable oral traditions
of the stage as it was before 1868; and have
prepared, with his assistance and that of native
scholars, translations of some fifty of the texts.

II

The art of dance has played a richer part
in Chinese and Japanese life than it has in
Europe. In prehistoric days, when men or
women were strongly moved, they got up and
danced. It was as natural a form of self-expression
as improvised verse or song, and

was often combined with both. But the growing
decorum of a polite society tended to
relegate this dancing to occasions of special
inspiration and to professional dancers. These
occasions were roughly of two sorts—formal
entertainments at Court and religious ceremonial.
The former, which survives to this
day in the Mikado's palace, represented the
action of historic heroes, frequently warriors
posturing with sword and spear. This was
accompanied by the instrumental music of a
full orchestra. The religious ceremonial was
of two sorts—the Buddhist miracle plays in
the early temples and the god dances of the
Shinto.

The miracle plays represented scenes from
the lives of saints and the intervention of Buddha
and Bodhisattwa in human affairs. Like the
very earliest forms of the European play,
these were pantomimic, with no special dramatic
text, save possibly the reading of appropriate
scripture. The Japanese miracle plays were
danced with masks; and the temples of Nara
are still full of these masks, which date from
the eighth century. It is clear that many
popular and humorous types must have been
represented; and it is barely possible that
these were remotely derived, through Greco-Buddhist

channels, from the masks of Greek
low comedy. In these plays the god is the
chief actor, sometimes in dramatic relation to
a human companion. The god always wears
a mask. The solo part is established; and
herein the play differs from the Greek, where
the original rite was performed by a group of
priests, or (in the comedy) by goats or fauns.

The most certainly Japanese element of
the drama was the sacred dance in the Shinto
temples. This was a kind of pantomime, and
repeated the action of a local god on his first
appearance to men. The first dance, therefore,
was a god dance; the god himself danced,
with his face concealed in a mask. Here is a
difference between the Greek and Japanese
beginnings. In Greece the chorus danced,
and the god was represented by an altar. In
Japan the god danced alone.

The ancient Shinto dance or pantomime
was probably, at first, a story enacted by the
local spirit, as soloist—a repetition, as it were,
of the original manifestation. Shintoism is
spiritism, mild, nature-loving, much like the
Greek. A local spirit appeared to men in
some characteristic phase. On the spot a
Shinto temple was built, and yearly or monthly
rites, including pantomime, perpetuated the

memory of the event. Such things happened
all over the country; and thus thousands of
different stories were perpetuated in the dances
—hence the wealth of primitive material. The
thing can be seen to-day in every village festival.
Even in great cities like Tokio, every district
maintains its primitive village spirit-worship,
that of some tutelary worthy who enacts the
old story once a year on a specially made
platform raised in the street, about which the
people of the locality congregate. The plays
are generally pantomime without text.

In the Shinto dance the soloist has no
chorus. He performs some religious act of
the spirit, though this is often turned into
rude comedy. This dance takes the form of
a dignified pantomime. It is not an abstract
kicking or whirling, not a mere dervish frenzy,
but is full of meaning, representing divine
situations and emotions, artistically, with restraint
and with the chastening of a conventional
beauty, which makes every posture of
the whole body—head, trunk, hands, and feet
—harmonious in line, and all the transitions
from posture to posture balanced and graceful
in line. A flashlight glimpse across such a
dance is like a flashlight of sculpture; but
the motion itself, like a picture which moves

in colour, is like the art of music. There is an
orchestral accompaniment of flutes, drums, and
cymbals, slow, fast, low, passionate, or accented,
that makes a natural ground-tone. Akin to
these are the moving street pageants, which
are like early European pageants, or even those
of to-day in Catholic countries.

Thus the three sources of the Noh, all
belonging to the first period, are, in the order
of their influence, (1) the Shinto god dance,
(2) the warrior court dance, (3) the Buddhist
sacred pantomime.

As the old Chinese court dances were
modified in the aristocratic life of the second
period, it was natural that lovers of poetry
should begin to add poetical comment to the
entertainment. Thus the next step consisted
in the addition of a text for a chorus to sing
during the solo dance. They were already used
to accompany their verses with the lute.

In the first of the five periods, Japanese
lyric poetry reached its height. It was quite
different from the Chinese, as the language is
polysyllabic, the sentences long and smooth,
the tone gently contemplative. About the year
900, when the capital had been removed to
Kioto, the longer and straggling verse structure
went out of fashion. A tense stanzaic form

had come into almost universal use. This
fashion may be referred to Chinese influence.
Rhyme, however, was not introduced. The
lines, usually of five or seven syllables, are rich
and sonorous. Soon afterwards the passion for
composing and reciting this Japanese poetry
became so powerful among the educated classes,
especially in the cultured aristocracy at Kioto,
where men and women met on equal terms,
that the old court entertainments of dance and
music had to be modified to admit the use of
poetic texts. At first the nobles themselves,
at their feasts or at court ceremonies, sang in
unison songs composed for the occasion. The
next step was to write songs appropriate to
the dances; finally the chorus of nobles
became a trained chorus, accompanied by
court musicians. Thus by the end of the ninth
century there was a body of performers definitely
associated with the court, with a minister
in charge of it. There were two divisions.
The composition of the texts and the composition
of the music and dances were allotted
to different persons. At this stage the old
Chinese subjects fell into the background, and
subjects of Japanese historical interest, or of
more national and lyric nature, were substituted.

Thus arose the court entertainment called
Saibara, which ceased to be practised after the
twelfth century. Most of the details of it are
hopelessly lost, though a few texts remain
from a manuscript collection compiled about
the year 900. The music and dance are
utterly lost, except so far as we can discern a
trace of what they must have been, in the later
practices of the Noh. It is interesting to find
that the very names of some of the pieces in
Saibara are identical with those used in Noh
five centuries later. The Saibara pieces are
very short, much like the lyric poems of the
day; and they are often so lyrical or so personal
as hardly to suggest how they may have
been danced. It is also uncertain whether
these brief texts were repeated over and over,
or at intervals during the long dance, or whether
they were a mere introduction to a dance which
elaborated their thought.[3] The following Saibara
will serve as example:

This new combination of dance and song
soon spread from the court ceremonies to the
religious rites of the god dances in the Shinto
temples, not, however, to the Buddhist, which
were too much under the influence of Hindu
and Chinese thought to care for Japanese verse.
In Shinto dances the subject was already pure
Japanese and fit for Japanese texts; and it
may very well have occurred to some priest, in
one of the thousand Shinto matsuris (festivals)
going on all over the land, to sing a poem concerning
the subject of the dance. By the end
of the ninth century, in the second period, this
custom had become common in the great

Shinto festivals, in the Mikado's private chapel,
and at Kasuga. The texts were sung by a
trained chorus, and here is a second difference
from the line of Greek advance. In Greece
the chorus not only sang but danced; in
Japan the chorus did not dance or act, but
was merely contemplative, sitting at the side.
The songs so sung were called Kagura.

A few examples of these ancient Shinto
texts for Kagura have come down to us.
They are not exactly prayers; they are often
lovely poems of nature, for, after all, these
Shinto gods were a harmless kind of nature
spirit clinging to grottoes, rivers, trees, and
mountains. It is curious to note that the structure
of the texts is always double, like the
Greek strophe and antistrophe. They were
probably sung by a double chorus; and this
is doubtless the basis of the alternation or
choric dialogue.

Here is a kagura, sung by a priestess to her
wand:

III

We have now come to the point where we
can deal with this mass of playwriting as
literature. The plays are written in a mixture
of prose and verse. The finest parts are in
verse; ordinary conversation lapses into prose;
the choruses are always in verse.

It appears that the first period of Japanese
civilization supplied the chance elements for
the Noh, that is, the dances and certain attitudes
of mind. The second period supplied the
beginnings of literary texts. The third period,
dating from the end of the twelfth century, is
marked by the rise of the military classes and
supplied naturally a new range of dramatic
motives. The land was filled with tales of
wild achievement and knight-errantry and
with a passionate love for individuality, however

humble. The old court customs and
dances of the supplanted nobles were kept
up solely in the peaceful enclosures of the
Shinto temples. New forms of entertainment
arose. Buddhism threw away scholarship and
mystery, and aimed only at personal salvation.
As in contemporary Europe, itinerant monks
scoured the country, carrying inspiration from
house to house. Thus arose a semi-epic literature,
in which the deeds of martial heroes were
gathered into several great cycles of legend,
like the Carolingian and the Arthurian cycles
in Europe. Such were the Heike epic, the
Soga cycle, and a dozen others. Episodes
from these were sung by individual minstrels
to the accompaniment of a lute. One of the
most important effects of this new epic balladry
was to widen greatly the scope of motives
acceptable for plays.

As for comedy, another movement was
growing up in the country, from farmers'
festivals, the spring sowing of the rice, and the
autumn reaping. These were at first mere
buffooneries or gymnastic contests arranged
by the villagers for their amusement. They
were called Dengaku, a rice-field music. Later,
professional troupes of Dengaku jugglers and
acrobats were kept by the daimios in their

palaces, and eventually by the authorities of
the Buddhist and Shinto temples, in order to
attract crowds to their periodic festivals. Such
professional troupes began to add rude country
farces to their stock of entertainments, at first
bits of coarse impromptu repartee, consisting
of tricks by rustics upon each other, which
were probably not out of harmony with some
of the more grotesque and comic Shinto
dances. About the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries these two elements of comedy—the
rustic and the sacred—combined at the Shinto
temples, and actors were trained as a permanent
troupe. Such farces are called Kiogen. In
the later part of the fourteenth century, towards
the end, that is, of the third period, Dengaku
troupes of Shinto dancers advanced to the
incorporating of more tragic subjects, selected
from the episodes of the balladry. The god
dancer now became, sometimes, a human
being, the hero of a dramatic crisis—sometimes
even a woman, interchanging dialogue with
the chorus, as the two ancient Shinto choruses
had sung dialogue in the Kagura.

It was not till the fourth period of Japanese
culture, that is to say, early in the fifteenth
century, when a new Buddhist civilization,
based upon contemplative and poetic insight

into nature had arisen, that the inchoate
Japanese drama, fostered in the Shinto temples,
could take on a moral purpose and a psychologic
breadth that should expand it into a vital
drama of character. The Shinto god dance,
the lyric form of court poetry, the country
farces, and a full range of epic incident, in
short, all that was best in the earlier Japanese
tradition, was gathered into this new form,
arranged and purified.

The change came about in this way. The
Zen parish priests summoned up to Kioto the
Dengaku troupe from Nara, and made it play
before the Shogun. The head actor of this
Nara troupe, Kwan, took the new solo parts,
and greatly enlarged the scope of the music
of the other acting. During the lifetime of
his son and grandson, Zei and On, hundreds
of new plays were created. It is a question
to what extent these three men, Kwan, Zei,
and On, were the originators of the texts of
these new dramas, and how far the Zen priests
are responsible. The lives of the former are
even more obscure than is Shakespeare's. No
full account exists of their work. We have
only stray passages from contemporary notebooks
relating to the great excitement caused
by their irregular performances. A great temporary

circus was erected on the dry bed of the
Kamo river, with its storeys divided into
boxes for each noble family, from the Emperor
and the Shogun downwards. Great priests
managed the show, and used the funds collected
for building temples. The stage was a raised
open circle in the centre, reached by a long
bridge from a dressing-room outside the circus.

We can now see why, even in the full lyric
drama, the god dance remains the central
feature. All the slow and beautiful postures
of the early dramatic portion invariably lead
up to the climax of the hero's dance (just as
the Greek had planned for the choric dances).
This often comes only at the end of the second
act, but sometimes also in the first. Most plays
have two acts. During the closing dance the
chorus sings its finest passages, though it will
have been already engaged many times in
dialogue with the soloist. Its function is poetical
comment, and it carries the mind beyond
what the action exhibits to the core of the
spiritual meaning. The music is simple melody,
hardly more than a chant, accompanied by
drums and flutes. There is thus a delicate
adjustment of half a dozen conventions appealing
to eye, ear, or mind, which produces an
intensity of feeling such as belongs to no merely

realistic drama. The audience sits spellbound
before the tragedy, bathed in tears; but the
effect is never one of realistic horror, rather
of a purified and elevated passion, which sees
divine purpose under all violence.

The beauty and power of Noh lie in the
concentration. All elements—costume, motion,
verse, and music—unite to produce a single
clarified impression. Each drama embodies
some primary human relation or emotion;
and the poetic sweetness or poignancy of this
is carried to its highest degree by carefully
excluding all such obtrusive elements as a
mimetic realism or vulgar sensation might
demand. The emotion is always fixed upon
idea, not upon personality. The solo parts
express great types of human character, derived
from Japanese history. Now it is brotherly
love, now love to a parent, now loyalty to a
master, love of husband and wife, of mother
for a dead child, or of jealousy or anger, of
self-mastery in battle, of the battle passion
itself, of the clinging of a ghost to the scene of
its sin, of the infinite compassion of a Buddha,
of the sorrow of unrequited love. Some one
of these intense emotions is chosen for a piece,
and, in it, elevated to the plane of universality
by the intensity and purity of treatment. Thus

the drama became a storehouse of history, and
a great moral force for the whole social order
of the Samurai.

After all, the most striking thing about
these plays is their marvellously complete
grasp of spiritual being. They deal more with
heroes, or even we might say ghosts, than with
men clothed in the flesh. Their creators were
great psychologists. In no other drama does
the supernatural play so great, so intimate a
part. The types of ghosts are shown to us;
we see great characters operating under the
conditions of the spirit-life; we observe what
forces have changed them. Bodhisattwa, devas,
elementals, animal spirits, hungry spirits or
pseta, cunning or malicious or angry devils,
dragon kings from the water world, spirits of
the moonlight, the souls of flowers and trees,
essences that live in wine and fire, the semiembodiments
of a thought—all these come
and move before us in the dramatic types.

These types of character are rendered
particularly vivid to us by the sculptured
masks. Spirits, women, and old men wear
masks; other human beings do not. For the
200 plays now extant, nearly 300 separate
masks are necessary in a complete list of properties.
Such variety is far in excess of the

Greek types, and immense vitality is given to
a good mask by a great actor, who acts up to
it until the very mask seems alive and displays
a dozen turns of emotion. The costumes are
less carefully individualized. For the hero
parts, especially for spirits, they are very rich,
of splendid gold brocades and soft floss-silk
weaving, or of Chinese tapestry stitch, and are
very costly. In Tokugawa days (1602-1868)
every rich daimio had his own stage, and his
complete collection of properties. The dancing
is wonderful—a succession of beautiful poses
which make a rich music of line. The whole
body acts together, but with dignity. Great
play is given to the sleeve, which is often tossed
back and forth or raised above the head. The
fan also plays a great part, serving for cup,
paper, pen, sword, and a dozen other imaginary
stage properties. The discipline of the actor
is a moral one. He is trained to revere his
profession, to make it a sacred act thus to impersonate
a hero. He yields himself up to
possession by the character. He acts as if he
knew himself to be a god, and after the performance
he is generally quite exhausted.

IV

In Dojoji a girl is in love with a priest, who
flees from her and takes shelter under a great
bronze temple bell, which falls over him. Her
sheer force of desire turns her into a dragon,
she bites the top of the bell, twists herself
about the bell seven times, spits flame from
her mouth, and lashes the bronze with her tail.
Then the bell melts away under her, and the
priest she loves dies in the molten mass. In
Kumasaka the boy-warrior, Ushiwaka, fights a
band of fifteen giant robbers in the dark.
They fight with each other also. One by one,
and two by two, they are all killed. At one
time all are dancing in double combat across
stage and bridge. The Noh fencing with
spear and sword is superb in line. In the
conventional Noh fall, two robbers, facing, who
have killed each other with simultaneous blows,
stand for a moment erect and stiff, then slowly
fall over backward, away from each other, as
stiff as logs, touching the stage at the same
moment with head and heel.

In the play of Atsumori there is an interesting
ghost, taken from the epic cycle of the
Yoritomo. Atsumori was a young noble of
the Heike family who was killed in one of

Yoshitsumi's decisive battles. The priest who
opens the final scene tells the story thus:

During his prayer the boy hears a voice
which tells him to go to the forest of Ikuta;
and thither the priest and the boy journey.
On arrival they look about at the beauty of
the place, till suddenly nightfall surprises them.

"Look here, boy, the sun has set! What, is
that a light yonder? Perhaps it may be a
house? We will go to take lodging there."
A straw hut has been set at the centre of the
stage. The curtain in front of it is now withdrawn,
and the figure of a very young warrior
is disclosed, in a mask, and wearing a dress of
blue, white, and gold. He begins to speak to
himself:

They think him a man, but he tells them
he has had a half-hour's respite from hell. He
looks wistfully at the boy, who wishes to seize
him, and cries, "Flower child of mine, left
behind in the world, like a favourite carnation,
how pitiful to see you in those old black
sleeves!" Then the spirit dances with restraint,
while the chorus chants the martial
scene of his former death. "Rushing like
two clouds together they were scattered in a
whirlwind." Suddenly he stops, looks off the
stage, and stamps, shouting:

Among the most weird and delicately poetic
pieces is Nishikigi, in which the hero and heroine
are the ghosts of two lovers who died unmarried
a hundred years before. Their spirits are in
the course of the play united near a hillside
grave where their bodies had long lain together.
This spiritual union is brought about
by the piety of a priest. Action, words, and
music are vague and ghostly shadows. The
lover, as a young man, had waited before the
girl's door every night for months, but she,
from ignorance or coquetry, had refused to
notice him. Then he died of despair. She
repented of her cruelty and died also.

The play opens with the entrance of the
travelling priest, who has wandered to the
ancient village of Kefu in the far north of the
island. He meets the two ghosts in ancient
attire. At first he supposes them to be villagers.
He does not seem to notice their dress, or, if
he does, he apparently mistakes it for some
fashion of the province. Then the two ghosts
sing together, as if muttering to themselves:

Then the priest says:

Gradually they tell him the story—they do
not say at first that it is their own story. Two
people had lived in that village, one of whom
had offered the nishikigi, the charm-sticks, the
"crimson tokens of love," night after night
for three years. That was the man, of course;
and the girl, apparently oblivious, had sat
inside her house, weaving long bands of cloth.
They say that the man was buried in a cave
and all his charm-sticks with him. The priest
says it will be a fine tale for him to tell when
he gets home, and says he will go see the
tomb, to which they offer to guide him. Then
the chorus for the first time sings:

Then the hero, the man's ghost, breaks in
for a moment: "Oh how cold it is in these
evening dusks of autumn!" And the chorus
resumes:

After an interval, for the changing of the
spirits' costumes, the second act begins. The
priest cannot sleep in the frost, and thinks he
had better pass the night in prayer. Then the
spirits in masks steal out, and in mystic language,
which he does not hear, try to thank
him for his prayer, and say that through his
pity the love promise of incarnations long
perished is now just realized, even in dream.
Then the priest says:

Then follows a wonderful loom song and
chorus, comparing the sound of weaving to
the clicking of crickets; and in a vision is
seen the old tragic story, and the chorus sings

that "their tears had become a colour." "But
now they shall see the secret bride-room."
The hero cries, "And we shall drink the cup
of meeting." Then the ghostly chorus sings
a final song:

But now the wine-cup of the night-play is
reflecting the first hint of the dawn. Perhaps we
shall feel awkward when it becomes really morning.
And like a dream which is just about to break,
the stick and the cloth are breaking up, and the
whole place has turned into a deserted grave on
a hill, where morning winds are blowing through
the pines.

NISHIKIGI[1]

A Play in two Acts, by Motokiyo

Characters

The Waki,

• a priest.

The Shite, or Hero,

• ghost of the lover.

Tsure,

• ghost of the woman; they have both been
  long dead, and have not yet been united.

A Chorus.

PART FIRST

Waki

There never was anybody heard of Mt.
Shinobu but had a kindly feeling for it; so I,
like any other priest that might want to know
a little bit about each one of the provinces,
may as well be walking up here along the
much-travelled road.

I have not yet been about the east country,
but now I have set my mind to go as far as the
earth goes, and why shouldn't I, after all?

seeing that I go about with my heart set upon
no particular place whatsoever, and with no
other man's flag in my hand, no more than a
cloud has. It is a flag of the night I see coming
down upon me. I wonder now, would the
sea be that way, or the little place Kefu that
they say is stuck down against it.

Shite and Tsure

Times out of mind am I here setting up
this bright branch, this silky wood with the
charms painted in it as fine as the web you'd
get in the grass-cloth of Shinobu, that they'd
be still selling you in this mountain.

Shite
(to Tsure)

Tangled, we are entangled. Whose fault
was it, dear? tangled up as the grass patterns
are tangled in this coarse cloth, or as the little
Mushi that lives on and chirrups in dried seaweed.
We do not know where are to-day our
tears in the undergrowth of this eternal wilderness.
We neither wake nor sleep, and passing
our nights in a sorrow which is in the end a
vision, what are these scenes of spring to us?
this thinking in sleep of some one who has no
thought of you, is it more than a dream? and

yet surely it is the natural way of love. In
our hearts there is much and in our bodies
nothing, and we do nothing at all, and only
the waters of the river of tears flow quickly.

Chorus

Narrow is the cloth of Kefu, but wild is that
river, that torrent of the hills, between
the beloved and the bride.

The cloth she had woven is faded, the thousand
one hundred nights were night-trysts
watched out in vain.

Waki
(not recognizing the nature of the speakers)

Tsure

Shite

Waki

Yes, I know that the cloth of this place and
the lacquers are famous things. I have already
heard of their glory, and yet I still wonder why
they have such great reputation.

Tsure

Well now, that's a disappointment. Here
they call the wood "Nishikigi," and the woven
stuff "Hosonuno," and yet you come saying
that you have never heard why, and never
heard the story. Is it reasonable?

Shite

No, no, that is reasonable enough. What
can people be expected to know of these affairs
when it is more than they can do to keep
abreast of their own?

Both
(to the Priest)

Ah well, you look like a person who has
abandoned the world; it is reasonable enough

that you should not know the worth of wands
and cloths with love's signs painted upon them,
with love's marks painted and dyed.

Waki

That is a fine answer. And you would tell
me then that Nishikigi and Hosonuno are
names bound over with love?

Shite

They are names in love's list surely. Every
day for a year, for three years come to their
full, the wands Nishikigi were set up, until
there were a thousand in all. And they are
in song in your time, and will be. "Chidzuka"
they call them.

Tsure

Shite

'Tis a sad name to look back on.

Tsure

Shite

Tsure

Let him read out the story.

Chorus

Waki

Go on, tell out all the story.

Shite

There is an old custom of this country.
We make wands of mediation and deck them
with symbols, and set them before a gate when
we are suitors.

Tsure

And we women take up a wand of the man
we would meet with, and let the others lie,
although a man might come for a hundred
nights, it may be, or for a thousand nights in
three years, till there were a thousand wands
here in the shade of this mountain. We know
the funeral cave of such a man, one who had
watched out the thousand nights; a bright
cave, for they buried him with all his wands.
They have named it the "Cave of the many
charms."

Waki

Shite

So be it, I will teach you the path.

Tsure

Tell him to come over this way.

Both

Chorus

Shite

Chorus

PART SECOND

(The Waki has taken the posture of sleep.
His respectful visit to the cave is beginning to
have its effect.)
Waki
(restless)

Tsure

Shite
(supposedly invisible)

Chorus

Shite

Chorus

Shite

Waki

Tsure

Shite

Waki

Shite

Tsure

Shite

Tsure

Shite

. . . the sound of the loom.

Tsure

Shite

It was what you would hear any night.

Tsure

Kiri.

Shite

Hatari.

Tsure

Cho.

Shite

Cho.

Chorus
(mimicking the sound of crickets)

Chorus
(antistrophe)

Shite

Chorus

Shite

Chorus

Shite

Chorus

Shite

. . . were set up a thousand times;
Then, now, and for always.

Chorus

Shall I ever at last see into that secret bride-room,
which no other sight has traversed?

Shite

Chorus

Shite

Tread out the dance.

Chorus

Shite

Chorus

Chorus

KINUTA

Husband

I am of Ashiya of Kinshu, unknown and of
no repute. I have been loitering on in the

capital entangled in many litigations. I went
for a casual visit, and there I have been tarrying
for three full years. Now I am anxious, overanxious,
about affairs in my home. I shall
send Yugiri homeward; she is a maid in my
employ. Ho! Yugiri! I am worried. I
shall send you down to the country. You
will go home and tell them that I return at
the end of this year.

Maid-servant

I will go, Sir, and say that then you are
surely coming. (She starts on her journey.)

The day is advancing, and I, in my travelling
clothes, travel with the day. I do not know
the lodgings, I do not know the dreams upon
the road, I do not know the number of the
dreams that gather for one night's pillow. At
length I am come to the village—it is true
that I was in haste—I am come at last to
Ashiya. I think I will call out gently. "Is
there any person or thing in this house? Say
that Yugiri is here in the street, she has just
come back from the city."

Wife

Maid-servant

Say to whomsoever it concerns that Yugiri
has come.

Wife

What! you say it is Yugiri? There is no
need for a servant. Come to this side! in
here! How is this, Yugiri, that you are so
great a stranger? Yet welcome. I have cause
of complaint. If you were utterly changed,
why did you send me no word? Not even a
message in the current of the wind?

Maid-servant

Truly I wished to come, but his Honour

gave me no leisure. For three years he kept
me in that very ancient city.

Wife

You say it was against your heart to stay
in the city? While even in the time of delights
I thought of its blossom, until sorrow had
grown the cloak of my heart.

Chorus

Wife

What strange thing is it beyond there that
takes the forms of sound? Tell me. What
is it?

Maid-servant

A villager beating a silk-board.

Wife

Is that all? And I am weary as an old
saying. When the wandering Sobu[1] of China
was in the Mongol country he also had left
a wife and children, and she, aroused upon
the clear cold nights, climbed her high tower
and beat such a silk-board, and had perhaps
some purpose of her heart. For that far-murmuring
cloth could move his sleep—that
is the tale — though he were leagues away.
Yet I have stretched my board with patterned
cloths, which curious birds brought through
the twilit utter solitude, and hoped with such
that I might ease my heart.

Maid-servant

Boards are rough work, hard even for the
poor, and you of high rank have done this to
ease your heart! Here, let me arrange them,
I am better fit for such business.

Wife

Beat then. Beat out our resentment.

Maid-servant

It's a coarse mat; we can never be sure.

Chorus

Wife

Autumn it is, and news rarely comes in
your fickle wind, the frost comes bearing no
message.

Chorus

Weariness tells of the night.

Wife

Even a man in a very far village might
see. . . .

Chorus

Perhaps the moon will not call upon her,
saying: "Whose night-world is this?"

Wife

O beautiful season, say also this time is
toward autumn, "The evening moves to an
end."

Chorus

Wife

My blind soul hangs like a curtain studded
with dew.

Chorus

Wife

They beat now fast and now slow—are
they silk-workers down in the village? The
moon-river pours on the west.

Chorus
(strophe)

Chorus
(antistrophe)

Go where her lord is, O Wind; my heart
reaches out and can be seen by him; I pray
that you keep him still dreaming.

Wife

Aoi! if the web is broken, who, weary
with time, will then come to seek me out?
If at last he should come to seek me, let him
call in the deep of time. Cloths are changed
by recutting, hateful! love thin as a summer
cloth! Let my lord's life be even so slight,

for I have no sleep under the moon. O let
me go on with my cloths!

Chorus

Wife

The seventh month is come to its seventh
day; we are hard on the time of long nights,
and I would send him the sadness of these ten
thousand voices—the colour of the moon, the
breath-colour of the wind, even the points of
frost that assemble in the shadow. A time
that brings awe to the heart, a sound of beaten
cloths, and storms in the night, a crying in

the storm, a sad sound of the crickets, make
one sound in the falling dew, a whispering
lamentation, hera, hera, a sound in the cloth of
beauty.

Maid-servant

What shall I say to all this? A man has
just come from the city. The master will
not come this year. It seems as if . . .

Chorus

The heart, that thinks that it will think no
more, grows fainter; outside in the withered
field the crickets' noise has gone faint. The
flower lies open to the wind, the gazers pass on
to madness, this flower-heart of the grass is
blown on by a wind-like madness, until at
last she is but emptiness.

[The wife dies. Enter the husband, returning.

Husband

Pitiful hate, for my three years' delay,
working within her has turned our long-drawn
play of separation to separation indeed.

Chorus

Ghost of the Wife

Aoi! for fate, fading, alas, and unformed,
all sunk into the river of three currents, gone
from the light of the plum flowers that reveal
spring in the world!

Chorus

She has but kindling flame to light her
track . . .

Ghost of the Wife

. . . and show her autumns of a lasting moon.[2]
And yet, who had not fallen into desire? It
was easy, in the rising and falling of the smoke

and the fire of thought, to sink so deep in
desires. O heart, you were entangled in the
threads. "Suffering" and "the Price" are
their names. There is no end to the lashes of
Aborasetsu, the jailor of this prison. O heart,
in your utter extremity you beat the silks of
remorse; to the end of all false desire Karma
shows her hate.

Chorus

Ghost of the Wife

Even the leaves of the katsu-grass show
their hate of this underworld by the turning
away of their leaves.

Chorus

The leaves of the katsu show their hate by
bending aside; and neither can they unbend
nor can the face of o'ershadowed desire. O
face of eagerness, though you had loved him
truly through both worlds, and hope had clung
a thousand generations, 'twere little avail.
The cliffs of Matsuyama, with stiff pines,
stand in the end of time; your useless speech
is but false mocking, like the elfish waves.
Aoi! Aoi! Is this the heart of man?

Ghost of the Wife

It is the great, false bird called "Taking-care."

Chorus

Who will call him a true man—the wandering
husband—when even the plants know
their season, the feathered and furred have
their hearts? It seems that our story has set
a fact beyond fable. Even Sobu, afar, gave to
the flying wild-duck a message to be borne
through the southern country, over a thousand

leagues, so deep was his heart's current—not
shallow the love in his heart. Kimi, you
have no drowsy thought of me, and no dream
of yours reaches toward me. Hateful, and
why? O hateful!

Chorus

She recites the Flower of Law; the ghost
is received into Butsu; the road has become
enlightened. Her constant beating of silk
has opened the flower, even so lightly she has
entered the seed-pod of Butsu.

HAGOROMO

A Play in one Act

Hakuryo

Hakuryo, taker of fish, head of his house,
dwells upon the barren pine-waste of Miwo.

A Fisherman

Upon a thousand heights had gathered the
inexplicable cloud. Swept by the rain, the
moon is just come to light the high house.

A clean and pleasant time surely. There
comes the breath-colour of spring; the waves
rise in a line below the early mist; the moon
is still delaying above, though we've no skill
to grasp it. Here is a beauty to set the mind
above itself.

Chorus

Let us go according to custom. Take
hands against the wind here, for it presses the
clouds and the sea. Those men who were
going to fish are about to return without

launching. Wait a little, is it not spring?
will not the wind be quiet? This wind is only
the voice of the lasting pine-trees, ready for
stillness. See how the air is soundless, or
would be, were it not for the waves. There
now, the fishermen are putting out with even
the smallest boats.

Hakuryo

I am come to shore at Miwo-no; I disembark
in Matsubara; I see all that they
speak of on the shore. An empty sky with
music, a rain of flowers, strange fragrance on
every side; all these are no common things,
nor is this cloak that hangs upon the pine-tree.
As I approach to inhale its colour, I am
aware of mystery. Its colour-smell is mysterious.
I see that it is surely no common dress.
I will take it now and return and make it a
treasure in my house, to show to the aged.

Tennin

That cloak belongs to some one on this
side. What are you proposing to do with it?

Hakuryo

This? this is a cloak picked up. I am
taking it home, I tell you.

Tennin

Hakuryo

How! Is the owner of this cloak a Tennin?
So be it. In this downcast age I should keep
it, a rare thing, and make it a treasure in the
country, a thing respected. Then I should
not return it.

Tennin

Pitiful, there is no flying without the cloak
of feathers, no return through the ether. I
pray you return me the mantle.

Hakuryo

Just from hearing these high words, I,
Hakuryo, have gathered more and yet more
force. You think, because I was too stupid
to recognize it, that I shall be unable to take
and keep hid the feather-robe, that I shall
give it back for merely being told to stand and
withdraw?

Tennin

Hakuryo

And this world would be a sorry place for
her to dwell in?

Tennin

I am caught, I struggle, how shall I . . .?

Hakuryo

No, Hakuryo is not one to give back the
robe.

Tennin

Power does not attain . . .

Hakuryo

. . . to get back the robe. . . .

Chorus

Her coronet,[1] jewelled as with the dew of
tears, even the flowers that decorated her hair,
drooping and fading, the whole chain of
weaknesses[2] of the dying Tennin can be seen
actually before the eyes. Sorrow!

Tennin

I look into the flat of heaven, peering;
the cloud-road is all hidden and uncertain; we
are lost in the rising mist; I have lost the
knowledge of the road. Strange, a strange
sorrow!

Chorus

Enviable colour of breath, wonder of clouds
that fade along the sky that was our accustomed
dwelling; hearing the sky-bird, accustomed,
and well accustomed, hearing the voices grow
fewer, the wild geese fewer and fewer, along
the highways of air, how deep her longing
to return! Plover and seagull are on the waves
in the offing. Do they go or do they return?
She reaches out for the very blowing of the
spring wind against heaven.

Hakuryo
(to the Tennin)

What do you say? Now that I can see
you in your sorrow, gracious, of heaven, I
bend and would return you your mantle.

Tennin

It grows clearer. No, give it this side.

Hakuryo

First tell me your nature, who are you,
Tennin? Give payment with the dance of
the Tennin, and I will return you your mantle.

Tennin

Readily and gladly, and then I return into
heaven. You shall have what pleasure you
will, and I will leave a dance here, a joy to be
new among men and to be memorial dancing.
Learn then this dance that can turn the palace
of the moon. No, come here to learn it.
For the sorrows of the world I will leave this
new dancing with you for sorrowful people.
But give me my mantle, I cannot do the dance
rightly without it.

Hakuryo

Not yet, for if you should get it, how do
I know you'll not be off to your palace without
even beginning your dance, not even a measure?

Tennin

Doubt is fitting for mortals; with us there
is no deceit.

Hakuryo

I am again ashamed. I give you your
mantle.

Chorus

The young sprite now is arrayed, she assumes
the curious mantle; watch how she moves
in the dance of the rainbow-feathered garment.

Hakuryo

The heavenly feather-robe moves in accord
with the wind.

Tennin

The sleeves of flowers are being wet with
the rain.

Hakuryo

All three are doing one step.

Chorus

Tennin

The jewelled axe takes up the eternal
renewing, the palace of the moon-god is being
renewed with the jewelled axe, and this is
always recurring.

Chorus
(Commenting on the dance)

Tennin

I also am heaven-born and a maid, Amaotome.
Of them there are many. This is the
dividing of my body, that is fruit of the moon's
tree, Katsura.[4] This is one part of our dance
that I leave to you here in your world.

Chorus

The spring mist is widespread abroad; so
perhaps the wild olive's flower will blossom
in the infinitely unreachable moon. Her
flowery head-ornament is putting on colour;
this truly is sign of the spring. Not sky is
here, but the beauty; and even here comes
the heavenly, wonderful wind. O blow, shut
the accustomed path of the clouds. O, you

in the form of a maid, grant us the favour of
your delaying. The pine-waste of Miwo puts
on the colour of spring. The bay of Kiyomi
lies clear before the snow upon Fuji. Are
not all these presages of the spring? There
are but few ripples beneath the piny wind. It
is quiet along the shore. There is naught
but a fence of jewels between the earth and
the sky, and the gods within and without,[5]
beyond and beneath the stars, and the moon
unclouded by her lord, and we who are born
of the sun. This alone intervenes, here where
the moon is unshadowed, here in Nippon, the
sun's field.

Tennin

The plumage of heaven drops neither
feather nor flame to its own diminution.

Chorus

Nor is this rock of earth overmuch worn
by the brushing of that feather-mantle, the
feathery skirt of the stars: rarely, how rarely.
There is a magic song from the east, the voices
of many and many: and flute and sho, filling
the space beyond the cloud's edge, seven-stringed;
dance filling and filling. The red
sun blots on the sky the line of the colour-drenched

mountains. The flowers rain in a
gust; it is no racking storm that comes over
this green moor, which is afloat, as it would
seem, in these waves.

Wonderful is the sleeve of the white cloud,
whirling such snow here.

Tennin

Plain of life, field of the sun, true foundation,
great power!

Chorus

Hence and for ever this dancing shall be
called "a revel in the East." Many are the
robes thou hast, now of the sky's colour itself,
and now a green garment.

Semi-Chorus

And now the robe of mist, presaging spring,
a colour-smell as this wonderful maiden's skirt—
left, right, left! The rustling of flowers, the
putting on of the feathery sleeve; they bend
in air with the dancing.

Semi-Chorus

Many are the joys in the east. She who
is the colour-person of the moon takes her
middle-night in the sky. She marks her three
fives with this dancing, as a shadow of all fulfilments.

The circled vows are at full. Give the
seven jewels of rain and all of the treasure, you
who go from us. After a little time, only a
little time, can the mantle be upon the wind
that was spread over Matsubara or over Ashitaka
the mountain, though the clouds lie in its
heaven like a plain awash with sea. Fuji is
gone; the great peak of Fuji is blotted out
little by little. It melts into the upper mist.
In this way she (the Tennin) is lost to sight.

KAGEKIYO

A Play in one Act, by Motokiyo

Characters

Shite, Kagekiyo

• old and blind.

Tsure,

• a girl, his daughter, called Hitomaru.

Tomo,

• her attendant.

Waki,

• a villager.

The scene is in Hiuga.

Girl and Attendant
(chanting)

What should it be; the body of dew, wholly
at the mercy of wind?

Girl

Girl and Attendant
(describing the journey as they walk
across the bridge and the stage)

Attendant

As we have come so fast, we are now in
Miyazaki of Hiuga.

It is here you should ask for your father.

Kagekiyo
(in another corner of the stage)

Sitting at the gate of the pine wood I wear
out the end of my years. I cannot see the clear
light, I do not know how the time passes. I
sit here in this dark hovel, with one coat for

the warm and the cold, and my body is but a
framework of bones.

Chorus

May as well be a priest with black sleeves.
Now having left the world in sorrow, I look
upon my withered shape. There is no one
to pity me now.

Girl

Surely no one can live in that ruin, and yet
a voice sounds from it. A beggar, perhaps.
Let us take a few steps and see.

Kagekiyo

My eyes will not show it me, yet the autumn
wind is upon us.

Girl

The wind blows from an unknown past,
and spreads our doubts through the world.
The wind blows, and I have no rest, nor any
place to find quiet.

Kagekiyo

Neither in the world of passion, nor in the
world of colour, nor in the world of non-colour,
is there any such place of rest; beneath
the one sky are they all. Whom shall I ask,
and how answer?

Girl

Shall I ask the old man by the thatch?

Kagekiyo

Who are you?

Girl

Where does the exile live?

Kagekiyo

What exile?

Girl

One who is called Akushichi-bioye Kagekiyo,
a noble who fought with Heike.

Kagekiyo

Indeed? I have heard of him, but I am
blind, I have not looked in his face. I have
heard of his wretched condition and pity him.
You had better ask for him at the next place.

Attendant
(to girl)

It seems that he is not here, shall we ask
further?

[They pass on.

Kagekiyo

Strange, I feel that woman who has just
passed is the child of that blind man. Long

ago I loved a courtesan in Atsuta, one time
when I was in that place. But I thought our
girl-child would be no use to us, and I left
her with the head man in the valley of Kamegaye-ga-yatsu;
and now she has gone by me
and spoken, although she does not know who
I am.

Chorus

Attendant
(at further side of the stage)

Is there any native about?

Villager

What do you want with me?

Attendant

Do you know where the exile lives?

Villager

What exile is it you want?

Attendant

Akushichi-bioye Kagekiyo, a noble of
Heike's party.

Villager

Did not you pass an old man under the edge
of the mountain as you were coming that way ?

Attendant

A blind beggar in a thatched cottage.

Villager

That fellow was Kagekiyo. What ails the
lady, she shivers ?

Attendant

A question you might well ask, she is the
exile's daughter. She wanted to see her father
once more, and so came hither to seek him.
Will you take us to Kagekiyo ?

Villager

Bless my soul! Kagekiyo's daughter.
Come, come, never mind, young miss. Now
I will tell you, Kagekiyo went blind in both
eyes, and so he shaved his crown and called
himself "The blind man of Hiuga." He begs
a bit from the passers, and the likes of us keep
him; he'd be ashamed to tell you his name.
However, I'll come along with you, and then
I'll call out, "Kagekiyo!" and if he comes,
you can see him and have a word with him.
Let us along. (They cross the stage, and the

villager calls)
Kagekiyo! Oh, there, Kagekiyo!

Kagekiyo

Noise, noise! Some one came from my
home to call me, but I sent them on. I
couldn't be seen like this. Tears like the
thousand lines in a rain storm, bitter tears
soften my sleeve. Ten thousand things rise
in a dream, and I wake in this hovel, wretched,
just a nothing in the wide world. How can I
answer when they call me by my right name?

Chorus

Do not call out the name he had in his
glory. You will move the bad blood in his
heart. (Then, taking up Kagekiyo's thought)

I am angry.

Kagekiyo

Living here . . .

Chorus
(going on with Kagekiyo's thought)

I go on living here, hated by the people
in power. A blind man without his staff. I
am deformed, and therefore speak evil; excuse
me.

Kagekiyo

My eyes are darkened.

Chorus

Though my eyes are dark I understand the
thoughts of another. I understand at a word.
The wind comes down from the pine trees on
the mountain, and snow comes down after the
wind. The dream tells of my glory. I am
loath to wake from the dream. I hear the
waves running in the evening tide, as when I
was with Heike. Shall I act out the old
ballad?

Kagekiyo
(to the villager)

I had a weight on my mind, I spoke to you
very harshly; excuse me.

Villager

You're always like that, never mind it.
Has any one been here to see you?

Kagekiyo

No one but you.

Villager

Go on! That is not true. Your daughter
was here. Why couldn't you tell her the
truth, she being so sad and so eager? I have
brought her back now. Come now, speak
with your father. Come along.

Girl

Oh, Oh, I came such a long journey, under
rain, under wind, wet with dew, over the
frost; you do not see into my heart. It
seems that a father's love goes when the child
is not worth it.

Kagekiyo

I meant to keep it concealed, but now they
have found it all out. I shall brench you with
the dew of my shame, you who are young as
a flower. I tell you my name, and that we
are father and child, yet I thought this would
put dishonour upon you, and therefore I let
you pass. Do not hold it against me.

Chorus

At first I was angry that my friends would
no longer come near me. But now I have
come to a time when I could not believe that
even a child of my own would seek me out.

[Singing.

Villager
(to Kagekiyo)

Many a fine thing is gone, sir, your daughter
would like to ask you. . . .

Kagekiyo

What is it?

Villager

She has heard of your fame from the old
days. Would you tell her the ballad?

Kagekiyo

Towards the end of the third month, it was
in the third year of Juei. We men of Heike
were in ships, the men of Genji were on land.
Their war-tents stretched on the shore. We
awaited decision. And Noto-no-Kami Noritsune
said: "Last year in the hills of Harima,
and in Midzushima, and in Hiyodorigoye of
Bitchiu, we were defeated time and again, for
Yoshitsune is tactful and cunning. Is there
any way we can beat them?" Kagekiyo
thought in his mind: "This Hangan Yoshitsune
is neither god nor a devil, at the risk of
my life I might do it." So he took leave of
Noritsune and led a party against the shore,
and all the men of Genji rushed on them.

Chorus

Kagekiyo cried, "You are haughty." His
armour caught every turn of the sun. He
drove them four ways before them.

Kagekiyo
(excited and crying out)

Samoshiya! Run, cowards!

Chorus

He thought, how easy this killing. He
rushed with his spear-haft gripped under his
arm. He cried out, "I am Kagekiyo of the
Heike." He rushed on to take them. He
pierced through the helmet vizards of Miyonoya.
Miyonoya fled twice, and again; and
Kagekiyo cried: "You shall not escape me!"
He leaped and wrenched off his helmet.
"Eya!" The vizard broke and remained
in his hand and Miyonoya still fled afar, and
afar, and he looked back crying in terror,
"How terrible, how heavy your arm!" And
Kagekiyo called at him, "How tough the shaft
of your neck is!" And they both laughed
out over the battle, and went off each his own
way.

Chorus

These were the deeds of old, but oh, to tell
them! to be telling them over now in his

wretched condition. His life in the world is
weary, he is near the end of his course. "Go
back," he would say to his daughter. "Pray
for me when I am gone from the world, for
I shall then count upon you as we count on
a lamp in the darkness . . . we who are blind."
"I will stay," she said. Then she obeyed
him, and only one voice is left.

We tell this for the remembrance. Thus
were the parent and child.

Note

Fenollosa has left this memorandum on the
stoicism of the last play: I asked Mr. Hirata
how it could be considered natural or dutiful
for the daughter to leave her father in such a
condition. He said, "that the Japanese would
not be in sympathy with such sternness now,
but that it was the old Bushido spirit. The
personality of the old man is worn out, no
more good in this life. It would be sentimentality
for her to remain with him. No
good could be done. He could well restrain
his love for her, better that she should pray
for him and go on with the work of her normal
life."