"Noh", or, Accomplishment : a study of the classical stage of Japan |
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KINUTA |
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 | "Noh", or, Accomplishment : |  |
KINUTA
- a country gentleman.
- the servant-maid Yugiri.
- the wife.
- ghost of the wife.
Characters
Waki,
Tsure,
Shite,
Second Shite,
In Kinuta ("The Silk-board") the plot is
as follows:
The Waki, a country gentleman, has tarried
long in the capital. He at last sends the Tsure,
a maid-servant, home with a message to his
wife. The servant talks on the road. She
reaches the Waki's house and talks with the
Shite (the wife). The chorus comments.
Finally, the wife dies. The chorus sing a
death-song, after which the husband returns.
The second Shite, the ghost of the wife, then
appears, and continues speaking alternately
with the chorus until the close.
I am of Ashiya of Kinshu, unknown and of
no repute. I have been loitering on in the
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
Sorrow is in the twigs of the duck's nest
And in the pillow of the fishes,
Sorrow between mandarin ducks,
Who have been in love
Since time out of mind.
Sorrow—
There is more sorrow between the united
Though they move in the one same world.
O low "Remembering-grass,"
I do not forget to weep
At the sound of the rain upon you,
My tears are a rain in the silence,
O heart of the seldom clearing.
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
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
In a country dwelling,
With the grasses failing and fading—
As men's eyes fail—
As men's eyes fail,
Love has utterly ceased.
Upon what shall she lean to-morrow?
A dream of the autumn, three years,
Until the sorrow of those dreams awakes
Autumnal echoes within her.
Now former days are changed,
They have left no shadow or trace;
And if there were no lies in all the world
Then there might come some pleasure
Upon the track of men's words.
Alas, for her foolish heart!
How foolish her trust has been.
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.
Beat then. Beat out our resentment.
Maid-servant
It's a coarse mat; we can never be sure.
Chorus
The voice of the pine-trees, now falling,
Shall make talk in the night.
It is cold.
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?"
O beautiful season, say also this time is
toward autumn, "The evening moves to an
end."
Chorus
Sending the evening winds which she does not see,
We cannot see the tip of the branch.
The last leaf falls without witness.
There is an awe in the shadow,
And even the moon is quiet,
With the love-grass under the eaves.
Wife
My blind soul hangs like a curtain studded
with dew.
Chorus
An hour for magic—
And that cloth-frame stands high on the palace;
The wind rakes it from the north.
Wife
They beat now fast and now slow—are
they silk-workers down in the village? The
moon-river pours on the west.
(strophe)
And here in the East-sky the autumnal wind is working about from the West.
Wind, take up the sound she is beating upon her coarse-webbed cloth.
Chorus
(antistrophe)
Lest they confuse the sound.
Beware that you do not lose the sound of the travelling storm,
That travels after your travels.
Take up the sound of this beating of the cloths.
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,
me go on with my cloths!
Chorus
Is but for the one night in passing,
So thin are the summer cloths!
The river-waves of the sky
Have cut through our time like shears,
They have kept us apart with dew.
There are tears on the Kaji leaf,
There is dew upon the helm-bar
Of the skiff in the twisting current.
Will it harm the two sleeves of the gods
If he pass?
As a floating shadow of the water grass,
That the ripples break on the shore?
O foam, let him be as brief.
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
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.
Husband
Pitiful hate, for my three years' delay,
working within her has turned our long-drawn
play of separation to separation indeed.
Chorus
This we have heard from the eight thousand shadows.
Sorrow! to be exchanging words
At the string-tip—
Sorrow! that we can but speak
With the bow-tip of the adzusa!
The way that a ghost returns
From the shadow of the grass—
We have heard the stories,
It is eight thousand times, they say,
Before regret runs in a smooth-worn groove,
Forestalls itself.
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
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
Her tears are shed on the silk-board,
Tears fall and turn into flame,
The smoke has stifled her cries,
She cannot reach us at all,
Nor yet the beating of the silk-board
Nor even the voice of the pines,
But only the voice of that sorrowful punishment.
Aoi! Aoi!
Swift as the steeds of time,
By the six roads of changing and passing
We do not escape from the wheel,
Nor from the flaming of Karma,
Though we wanter through life and death;
This woman fled from his horses
To a world without taste or breath.
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
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.
| "Noh", or, Accomplishment : | |