"Noh", or, Accomplishment : a study of the classical stage of Japan |
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| NISHIKIGI
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 | "Noh", or, Accomplishment : |  |
NISHIKIGI[1]
A Play in two Acts, by Motokiyo
- a priest.
- ghost of the lover.
- ghost of the woman; they have both been
long dead, and have not yet been united.
Characters
The Waki,
The Shite, or Hero,
Tsure,
A Chorus.
PART FIRST
WakiThere 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?
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
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)
They seem like man and wife,
And the lady seems to be holding something
Like a cloth woven of feathers,
While he has a staff or a wooden sceptre
Beautifully ornate.
Both of these things are strange;
In any case, I wonder what they call them.
Tsure
It is just the breadth of the loom.
And yet the place is famous because of these things.
Would you care to buy them from us?
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
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
As the cloth Hosonuno is narrow of weft,
More narrow than the breast,
We call by this name any woman
Whose breasts are hard to come nigh to.
It is a name in books of love.
Shite
'Tis a sad name to look back on.
A sad name, set in a story.
Shite
We had no meeting together.
Tsure
Let him read out the story.
Chorus
The wands are no longer offered,
The custom is faded away.
The narrow cloth of Kefu
Will not meet over the breast.
'Tis the story of Hosonuno,
This is the tale:
These bodies, having no weft,
Even now are not come together.
Truly a shameful story,
A tale to bring shame on the gods.
Now for a little spell,
For a faint charm only,
For a charm as slight as the binding together
Of pine-flakes in Iwashiro,
We return, and return to our lodging.
The evening sun leaves a shadow.
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
It will be a tale to take back to my village.
Will you show me my way there?
So be it, I will teach you the path.
Tsure
Tell him to come over this way.
Both
Going along before the traveller.
Chorus
Pushing aside the grass
From the overgrown way at Kefu,
And we are not yet come to the cave.
O you there, cutting grass on the hill,
Please set your mind on this matter.
"You'd be asking where the dew is
"While the frost's lying here on the road.
"Who'd tell you that now?"
Very well, then, don't tell us,
But be sure we will come to the cave.
Shite
Night comes. . . .
Chorus
Spotted with sudden showers.
In the dew-drenched, entangled leaves.
The perpetual shadow is lonely,
The mountain shadow is lying alone.
The owl cries out from the ivies
That drag their weight on the pine.
Among the orchids and chrysanthemum flowers
The hiding fox is now lord of that love-cave,
Nishidzuka,
That is dyed like the maple's leaf.
They have left us this thing for a saying.
That pair have gone into the cave. [Sign for the exit of Shite and Tsure.
PART SECOND
(The Waki has taken the posture of sleep.His respectful visit to the cave is beginning to
have its effect.)
Waki
(restless)
For the length of a pricket's horn.
Under October wind, under pines, under night!
I will do service to Butsu. [He performs the gestures of a ritual.
You do not dip twice in the river
Beneath the same tree's shadow
Without bonds in some other life.
Hear soothsay,
Now is there meeting between us,
Between us who were until now
In life and in after-life kept apart.
A dream-bridge over wild grass,
Over the grass I dwell in.
O honoured! do not awake me by force.
I see that the law is perfect.
Shite
(supposedly invisible)
A service that spreads in two worlds,
And binds up an ancient love
That was stretched out between them.
I had watched for a thousand days.
I give you largess,
For this meeting is under a difficult law.
And now I will show myself in the form of Nishikigi.
I will come out now for the first time in colour.
All that is but an old story.
Shite
Three years. . . . And the meeting comes now!
This night has happened over and over,
And only now comes the tryst.
Chorus
Beneath the stems of the Suzuki.
From under the shadow of the love-grass,
See, see how they come forth and appear
For an instant. . . . Illusion!
Shite
No distinction between princes and commons;
Wretched for me! 'tis the saying.
Waki
Is all glittering-bright within,
Like the flicker of fire.
It is like the inside of a house.
And heaping up charm-sticks. No,
The hangings are out of old time.
Is it illusion, illusion?
Tsure
We have been astray in the flurry.
You should tell better than we
How much is illusion,
You who are in the world.
We have been in the whirl of those who are fading.
Shite
(And he has vanished with the years),
"Let a man who is in the world tell the fact."
It is for you, traveller,
To say how much is illusion.
Waki
Or what you will, I care not.
Only show me the old times over-past and snowed under;
Now, soon, while the night lasts.
Faint as the shadow-flower shows in the grass that bears it;
And you've but a moon for lanthorn.
Tsure
She sets up her loom there
For the weaving of Hosonuno,
Thin as the heart of Autumn.
Shite
Knocks on a gate which was barred.
Tsure
No secret sound at all
Save . . .
Shite
. . . the sound of the loom.
Tsure
A thin sound like the Autumn.
Shite
It was what you would hear any night.
Kiri.
Shite
Hatari.
Tsure
Cho.
Shite
Cho.
Chorus
(mimicking the sound of crickets)
Kiri, hatari, cho, cho.
The cricket sews on at his old rags,
With all the new grass in the field; sho,
Churr, isho, like the whirr of a loom: churr.
Chorus
(antistrophe)
Kefu, the land's end, matchless in the world.
Shite
But this priest would look on the past.
Chorus
Even if we weave the cloth, Hosonuno,
For a thousand, a hundred nights;
Even then our beautiful desire will not pass,
Nor fade nor die out.
Shite
And is remembered in song.
Chorus
Even in our faint substance.
We will show forth even now,
And though it be but in a dream,
Our form of repentance. [Explaining the movement of the Shite and Tsure.
There he is carrying wands,
And she has no need to be asked.
See her within the cave,
With a cricket-like noise of weaving.
The grass-gates and the hedge are between them,
That is a symbol.
Night has already come on. [Now explaining the thoughts of the man's spirit.
As high as the charm-sticks,
As high as the charm-sticks, once coloured,
Now fading, lie heaped in this cave;
And he knows of their fading. He says:
I lie a body, unknown to any other man,
Like old wood buried in moss.
It were a fit thing
That I should stop thinking the love-thoughts,
The charm-sticks fade and decay,
And yet,
The rumour of our love
Takes foot, and moves through the world.
We had no meeting.
But tears have, it seems, brought out a bright blossom
Upon the dyed tree of love.
Shite
Or known what a heap of my writings
Should lie at the end of her shaft-bench?
Chorus
Of twisting, encumbered sleep,
And now they make it a ballad,
But until the days lie deep
As the sand's depth at Kefu.
Until the year's end is red with autumn,
Red like these love-wands,
A thousand nights are in vain.
I, too, stand at this gate-side:
You grant no admission, you do not show yourself
Until I and my sleeves are faded.
By the dew-like gemming of tears upon my sleeve,
Why will you grant no admission?
And we all are doomed to pass
You, and my sleeves and my tears.
And you did not even know when three years had come to an end.
Cruel, ah, cruel!
The charm-sticks . . .
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?
Now comes the eve of betrothal:
We meet for the wine-cup.
Chorus
That are like snow-whirls!
Shite
Tread out the dance.
Chorus
This dance is for Nishikigi.
Shite
And for the weaving.
Chorus
It is a reflecting in the wine-cup.
Chorus
The dawn!
Come, we are out of place;
Let us go ere the light comes. [To the Waki.
We all will wither away,
The wands and this cloth of a dream.
Now you will come out of sleep,
You tread the border and nothing
Awaits you: no, all this will wither away.
There is nothing here but this cave in the field's midst.
To-day's wind moves in the pines;
A wild place, unlit, and unfilled.
| "Noh", or, Accomplishment : | |