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INTRODUCTION

Komachi at Sekidera belongs to the third category. It was probably written by Zeami, though some authorities hesitate to make the attribution. The play is considered to be the loftiest and most difficult of the entire Nō repertory. In the past century only a few great actors at the close of their careers have ventured to perform it. It enjoys its high reputation because it celebrates, with the most exquisite simplicity, the bittersweet delight of being alive. Childhood, maturity, extreme old age, the pleasure and pain of life, are immediately communicated. The play conveys a timeless moment in the brief interval between birth and death. Its subject is poetry. Much of the great poetry in Nō lies somewhat outside the main Japanese poetic traditions, but Komachi at Sekidera is at once a superb Nō play and a splendid expression of the sources of Japanese poetry. The shite role is considered so difficult because there is little an actor can add to the text unless he is supremely gifted. During the first hour of the performance Komachi hardly stirs.

The setting is wonderfully appropriate. The time is the festival of Tanabata, the seventh night of the seventh month: the one night of the year when the Cowherd star can cross the River of Heaven to join the Weaver-girl star. On earth all are celebrating

the lovers' brief reunion. Even at Sekidera, a place of quiet renunciation, the priests and child acolytes are about to observe the festival. But while talking about poetry with the aged woman who lives in a hut nearby, the abbot of the temple discovers she is none other than Ono no Komachi.

Komachi, a woman of great beauty and literary gifts, lived at the Heian court during the ninth century. She became a legend in later times, with many apocryphal stories surrounding the few known biographical facts. Five Nō plays about Komachi are in the present repertory; Komachi and the Hundred Nights presents another aspect of the Komachi legend, and Sotoba Komachi (translated in Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature) ranks nearly on a level with Komachi at Sekidera.

The structure of the play is classic, and remarkable for its economy and simplicity. Nothing jars, nothing is wasted. The moment when Komachi admits her identity to the Abbot is particularly touching because so unaffected.

Sekidera ("The Barrier Temple") still exists at Ōtsu, a city east of Kyoto; its modern name is Chōanji.

Komachi at Sekidera is in the repertory of all schools of Nō.