University of Virginia Library

KOMACHI AT GATEWAY TEMPLE
(Sekidera Komachi: a woman play or a miscellaneous play)

Komachi at Gateway Temple takes place on the seventh night of the seventh moon of the year. This is the night of Tanabata, a festival which is still celebrated in Japan. Nowadays Tanabata is on the night of July 7, in the height of summer. In the lunar calendar, however, the seventh day of the seventh moon falls several weeks later, at the start of fall. A month in the solar calendar is not the same as a 'moon.' Nor indeed was an 'hour' in pre-modern Japan the same as one of our hours. Day and night were divided into six periods each, no matter what the season, so that each period waxed and waned in length through the year.

On Tanabata, or Seventh Night, the two celestial lovers meet: the Herd-Boy star (Altair) crosses the River of Heaven (the Milky Way) to the Weaver star (Vega) over a bridge formed of the joyously-linked wings of magpies. In this play, a celebration is being offered at Gateway Temple for the occasion. There is to be music and dancing, and many bamboo wands tied with streamers of five colors. These wands are prayer sticks, to pray for various blessings including skill in poetry.

To hear more about poetry, some priests and children from the temple go to visit an old lady who lives nearby. She turns out to be Ono no Komachi, who in her youth was a peerless beauty and a great poet. Now she is only a year short of one hundred, the forgotten ruin of a woman.

The historical Ono no Komachi was active in the mid-ninth century,

and left behind her a vivid legend. There is no other record of her having retired to Gateway Temple, below the eastern slope of Osaka Pass, but it is fitting that at the gates of death, she should live in such a place. Osaka Pass was indeed the gateway from Miyako toward what were in Komachi's time the wilds of the east and north, and it was famous for painful separations.

Several passages of Komachi at Gateway Temple are taken from the preface to the Kokinshū, which was the canonical statement on poetry. It is this preface which singles out the 'Naniwa Harbor' and 'Mount Asaka' poems for special comment. Naniwa was a port on the site of modern Osaka, and the poem goes, 'At Naniwa Harbor it blooms! this flower winter-long shut in, now spring is here it blooms! this flower.' The 'Mount Asaka' poem can be roughly translated: 'Mount Asaka, reflecting you the rocky pool's shallow this heart is not in desire.' The ancient story goes that when the King of Kazuraki visited northern Japan, he felt poorly received and refused to eat or drink until a serving girl came up to him with a full wine cup, tapped him on the knee, and recited this verse; everything went smoothly from then on. It is also the Kokinshū preface that describes Komachi's poetry as 'affecting, but not strong.'

Komachi at Gateway Temple mentions 'cloud walkers,' meaning the nobles of the imperial court, for the Emperor's own palace is known as the 'cloud dwelling.' Figuratively speaking, all of Japan was one mountain, on top of which was the Imperial Seat—this is the meaning of the word miyako which became the common name for the Capital. One always traveled 'up' to Miyako, and 'down' from it.

Komachi at Gateway Temple is held to be the loftiest play in the repertoire, and only a senior and distinguished actor would dare to perform its main role. Some say the role is so difficult and so lofty because Komachi does not move at all during the first hour or so of the play—as though loftiness were measured by the obligation to tolerate, toward some esoteric end, intolerable boredom. There is some truth in this, but surely the real loftiness comes from the play's transparent simplicity of tone. There are masterpieces, but this is a past-masterpiece, beyond praise. Zeami, who may possibly have written it, says that an old actor who has truly mastered the 'flower' of the art will always be perfectly fresh even though he is long past the age for brilliance. His acting will be like blossoms on an old bough. In Komachi at Gateway Temple, this image is applied to Komachi herself, as she dances at last. The whole play, though, is actually like that. Beside an old, old woman whose age has brought her out of the world into a second innocence, one sees the children, dressed in their best, gravely dancing for the Stars.