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    Japanese Plays: Classic Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki Works
    Japanese Plays: Classic Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki Works
    Japanese Plays: Classic Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki Works
    Ebook390 pages6 hours

    Japanese Plays: Classic Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki Works

    By A. L. Sadler and Paul S. Atkins, Ph.D.

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    About this ebook

    Classic works from Noh, Kyogen, and Kabuki theaters

    Nothing reflects the beauty of life as much as Japanese theater. It is here that reality is held suspended and the mind is filled with words, music, dance, and mysticism. In this groundbreaking book, Professor A.L. Sadler's translations come alive, bringing the mysteries of Noh, Kyogen, and Kabuki to modern readers worldwide. This influential classic provides a cross-section of Japanese theater that gives the reader a sampler of its beauty and power.

    Sadler includes 40 plays spanning the following three genres

  • Noh--As the oldest form of Japanese drama, Noh is remarkable for its unique staging. It has a powerful ability to create a world that represents the iconic attributes that the Japanese hold in the highest esteem: family, patriotism, and honor.

  • Kyogen--Kyogen plays provide comic relief and typically center around the inversion of social hierarchies. Oftentimes, they are performed between the serious and stoic Noh plays. Similarly, Sadler's translated Kyogen pieces are layered between the Noh and the Kabuki plays in this book.

  • Kabuki -- The Kabuki plays were the theater of the common people of Japan and are characterized by visual spectacle. The course of time has given them the patina of folk art, making them precious cultural relics of Japan. Sadler selected these pieces for translation because of their lighter subject matter and relatively upbeat endings. These plays are more linear in their telling and pedestrian in the lessons learned, and show the difficulties of being in love when a society is bent on conformity and paternal rule.

    The end result found in Japanese Plays is a wonderful selection of classic Japanese dramatic literature sure to enlighten and delight.
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTuttle Publishing
    Release dateJun 7, 2011
    ISBN9781462900527
    Japanese Plays: Classic Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki Works

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      Book preview

      Japanese Plays - A. L. Sadler

      NOH PLAYS

      TADANORI

      ACT I

      PRIEST: I am one who has seen the vanity of this world. Even the flowers and the moon viewed through the clouds no longer attract me. Formerly I was a retainer of the Lord Shunzei, but when my master died I forsook the world and put on this priestly garb, and since I have never visited the western provinces, I bethought me to make a pilgrimage to those parts. So now I have come to the neighborhood of the capital, and look on the ruins of palace and mansion that have passed away, impermanent as a journey where there is no abiding-place. We who must mix with the filth of this world and yet have abandoned all its ties are too sad even to listen to the sighing of the wind in the trees or the sound of the rippling of the waves. The boom of the distant bell awakes us to the vanity of this world as it arouses the traveler from his rest.

      WOODMAN: A hard life it is that I lead. When I am not carrying sea water for salt I am laden with wood to boil it, and what with one and the other my garments are never dry. Like the ceaseless cry of the birds is the hoarse voice of the fisherman at his nets. This shore of Suma has a name for loneliness, as the poet Narihira wrote:

      "How I spend my days,

      Should my friends chance to inquire,

      You may tell them this.

      On the lonely Suma beach,

      I am cutting wood for salt."

      On the hills near Suma there is a cherry tree that recalls the memory of one long dead, and when in spring it puts forth its flowers, and I happen to go that way, I break offa branch as an offering to the departed spirit.

      PRIEST: Ha, old man! And are you one of the woodmen of these hills?

      WOODMAN: It may be that I am a fisherman on that beach.

      PRIEST: But if you were a fisherman your dwelling would be by the sea, and I take you for a woodman because your occupation seems to be in these hills.

      WOODMAN: How else should I get wood to boil my salt water?

      PRIEST: True, true. And so we see the smoke go up at eve.

      WOODMAN: To feed it I must tramp to fetch the fuel.

      PRIEST: By various paths to hamlets far away,

      WOODMAN: By Suma beach are people rarely seen.

      PRIEST: But in the hills behind,

      WOODMAN: That’s where the brushwood is ...

      CHORUS: That’s where the brushwood is, and so he goes for fuel to boil his salt.

      WOODMAN: Indeed your words are not a little simple, priest.

      CHORUS: In truth the bay of Suma is not as other places, for flowers dislike the boisterous mountain breezes that sweep down from the hills and send them flying. But here ’tis otherwise, for Suma’s mountain cherry was smitten by a blast that blew from seaward.

      PRIEST: See now, old man, the day is drawing to a close. I pray you give me lodging for the night.

      WOODMAN: The shadow of this cherry tree is all the lodging I can offer.

      PRIEST: Indeed it is a very bower of blossom. And who can be the host, I wonder.

      WOODMAN:

      "Now the daylight dies,

      And the shadow of a tree

      Serves me for an inn.

      For the host to welcome me

      There is but a wayside flower."

      He who wrote these lines lies deep beneath the moss, but even we poor fishers often gather to say a requiem for him, so why do not you, a priest, take the opportunity of acquiring merit by repeating a prayer in passing?

      PRIEST: That verse is Satsuma-no-kami Tadanori’s, is it not?

      WOODMAN: Indeed it is. And when he fell in the battle that was fought hard by some friend planted this tree in his memory.

      PRIEST: How strange a chance. For I am of the House of Shunzei.

      WOODMAN: His master and beloved fellow poet.

      PRIEST: So here I stay tonight.

      CHORUS: So let him hear the blessed sound of prayer, and may he take his seat on heaven’s flowery terraces.

      WOODMAN: I am most grateful for these prayers said for me, and do rejoice that thereby I grow in enlightenment.

      CHORUS: How strange his words! It seems that this old man takes to himself these holy prayers and is much comforted. How can this be?

      WOODMAN: ’Twas for the prayers of this priest that I came hither.

      CHORUS: And now sleep soundly ’neath this cherry tree, and in a dream you shall be told the message I will have taken to the capital. (And suddenly he disappears none knoweth whither.) Yes, hurry hence back to the capital and tell these things to Teika, Shunzei’s son. Now the moon rises high, sadly the sea birds flit. The sea breeze scarcely sighs, soundly the traveler sleeps, by Suma’s ancient strand where once the guard-house

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