University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

The Shrine in the Fields, a play of the third category, has traditionally been ascribed to Zeami, but in recent years some scholars have expressed doubts about this attribution, largely for technical reasons of style. It is hard, however, to imagine who else but Zeami could have written so hauntingly evocative a work. Perhaps he wrote it in the last years of his life, a period not covered by the critical writings that are the firmest evidence for attribution; or perhaps, as Professor Konishi Jin'ichi has suggested, Zeami's second son, Motoyoshi, who is not credited with any plays in the repertory, may have written The Shrine in the Fields, Yuya, and various other masterpieces whose authorship is uncertain.

The play recalls the love affair between Prince Genji and Lady Rokujō, here called by her title, Miyasudokoro. Readers of The Tale of Genji will remember Rokujō mainly as the proud and elegant woman whose jealousy led to the death of Genji's wife, Aoi; this story is treated in the play Aoi no Ue, translated by Arthur Waley in The Nō Plays of Japan. In The Shrine in the Fields, however, Rokujō is treated with the utmost sympathy, and

nothing suggests that her living ghost killed Aoi. The scenes from The Tale of Genji which provided material for the play include: Genji's visit to Rokujō; the humiliation of Rokujō when Aoi's carriage forced back her own at the Kamo Festival; and the visit to Nonomiya, the Shrine in the Fields, by Genji, when Rokujō's daughter, the new Virgin of the Ise Shrine, was in residence there.

The Emperor was always represented at Ise by a virgin of imperial blood. When a new virgin was appointed, before going to Ise she would reside for a considerable period just outside Kyoto at Nonomiya. (The word miya primarily means a shrine, but can also mean a palace.) Nonomiya was intimately associated with Ise, the chief shrine of the Sun Goddess. It served its main function only intermittently, however, and was therefore built like a temporary shrine with a torii of logs.

The season is the end of autumn and an air of melancholy and impermanence dominates the play.

The Shrine in the Fields is performed by all schools of Nō.