Appendix II
Some of the facts brought to light by the discovery of Seami’s Works:—
(1) It had long been suspected that the current Kwadensho was not the work of Seami. The discovery of the real Kwadensho has made this certain.
(2) Traditional dates of Kwanami and Seami corrected.
(3) It was supposed that only the music of the plays was written by their nominal authors. The words were vaguely attributed to “Zen Priests.” We now know that in most cases Kwanami and Seami played the triple part of author,219 musical composer and actor.
(4) It was doubted whether in the fourteenth century Sarugaku had already become a serious dramatic performance. We now know that it then differed little (and in respect of seriousness not at all) from Nō as it exists to-day.
(5) It was supposed that the Chorus existed from the beginning. We now learn from Seami that it was a novelty in 1430. Its absence must have been the chief feature which distinguished the Sarugaku of the fourteenth century from the Nō of to-day.
(6) Numerous passages prove that Nō at its zenith was not an exclusively aristocratic art. The audiences were very varied.
(7) Seami gives details about the musical side of the plays as performed in the fourteenth century. These passages, as is confessed even by the great Nō-scholar, Suzuki Chōkō, could be discussed only by one trained in Nō-music.
Footnotes
1 For example in yuku kata shira-yuki ni... shira does duty twice, meaning both “unknown” and “white.” The meaning is “whither-unknown amid the white snow.”
2 These dates have only recently been established.
3 See p. 32.
4 Not to be confused with the forged book printed in 1600 and used by Fenollosa.
5 See note on Buddhism, p. 32.
6 The piece to be used as an introduction. Modern performances are not confined to full Nō. Sometimes actors in plain dress recite without the aid of instrumental music, sitting in a row. Or one actor may recite the piece, with music (this is called Hayashi); or the piece may be mimed without music (this is called Shimai).
7 An old shirōto, i. e. person not engaged in trade.
8 This shows that, in Seami’s hands, the device of making an apparition the hero of the play was simply a dramatic convention.
9 This, too, is the only aspect of them that I can here discuss; no other kind of criticism being possible without quotation of the actual words used by the poet.
10 See further my Zen Buddhism & its relation to Art. Luzac, 1922.
11 See p. 226.
12 Like Yukihira; see p. 227.
13 Atsumori must have done Kumagai some kindness in a former incarnation. This would account for Kumagai’s remorse.
14 Buddha.
15 I have omitted a line the force of which depends upon a play on words.
16 The Taira evacuated the Capital in the second year of Juyei, 1188.
17 Ichi-no-Tani means “First Valley.”
18 The name of so humble a thing was unfamiliar to the Taira lords.
19 Atsumori. This passage is mimed throughout.
20 A great preacher; died 1212 A.D.
21 The name given to streams which flow through temples. In this case the River Kamo.
22 Tadasu means to “straighten,” “correct.” The shrine of Kamo lay in the forest of Tadasu.
23 Adapted from a poem in the Shin Kokinshū.
24 Ikuta means “Field of Life.”
25 The relation between Tsunemasa and the Emperor is meant.
26 I. e. the wind sounds like rain; the sands appear to be covered with frost. A couplet from a poem by Po Chü-i.
27 Part of the poem which Tsunemasa gave to the Emperor before he went to battle.
28 Goddess of Music, who vowed that she would lead all souls to salvation by the music of her lute.
29 Different tunes were appropriate to different seasons.
30 A range of hills to the south of the Ninnaji. The name means the “Row of Hills.”
31 Quotation from Po Chü-i’s “Lute Girl’s Song”; for paraphrase see Giles’ Chinese Literature, p. 166.
32 The ghost must return at dawn.
33 The shēng.
34 Quotation from Chinese poem in Rōyei Shu.
35 He had died in battle and was therefore condemned to perpetual war with the demons of Hell.
36 “The wise man is like the autumn deer crying in the mountains; the fool is like the moth which flies into the candle” (Gempei Seisuiki, chap. viii.).
37 I. e. he is “attached” to earth and cannot get away to the Western Paradise.
38 I. e. the time of his encounter with Ushiwaka.
39 Aizen.
40 Devadatta, the wicked contemporary of Buddha.
41 The six paths to Bodisattva-hood, i. e. Almsgiving, Observance of Rules, Forbearance, Meditation, Knowledge and Singleness of Heart.
42 Actually from the Nirvana Sutra.
43 The Priest.
44 Koye-butsuji, “Voice-service.”
45 Yoshitsune (Ushiwaka) had run away from the temple where he was being educated and joined the merchant’s caravan; see p. 70.
46 Names of strokes in fencing.
47 I have thought it better to print these “recitals” as verse, though in the original (as obviously in my translation) they are almost prose.
48 Semimaru.
49 A tall, nodding hat.
50 1064 A.D.
51 I. e. Minamoto and Taira.
52 1156-1159 A.D.
53 Yoshi-iye.
54 Ushiwaka had not heard this conversation between the hatmaker and his wife, which takes place as an “aside.”
55 I. e. into power.
56 I. e. robbers. A band of brigands who troubled China in 184 A. D. were known the White Waves, and the phrase was later applied to robbers in general.
57 Torches were thrown among the enemy to discover their number and defences.
58 God of War and clan-god of the Minamotos.
59 He feels that he is too old for the work.
60 I. e. Ushiwaka.
61 1-3 A.M.
62 The Kurama Temple.
63 Flowers of the yūgao or calabash. There is a reference to Lady Yugao (see p. 142), who lived at Gojō.
64 Because he was a priest.
65 I. e. three incarnations.
66 Ushiwaka’s home.
67 The Tairas.
68 The Minamotos, who came into power at the end of the twelfth century.
69 The journey to look for her father.
70 Tōtōmi is written with characters meaning “distant estuary.” The whole passage is full of double-meanings which cannot be rendered.
71 The Capital.
72 Quotation from the Parable Chapter of the Hokkekyō.
73 A Chinese Pegasus. The proverb says, “Even Kirin, when he was old, was outstripped by hacks.” Seami quotes this proverb, Works, p. 9.
74 “Le vieux guerrier avengle, assis devant sa cabane d’exilé, mime son dernier combat de gestes incertains et tremblants” (Péri).
75 Yoshitsune.
76 Po Chü-i’s Works, iii. 13.
77 Alluding partly to the fact that he is snow-covered, partly to his grey hairs.
78 Kefu, “to-day.”
79 Buddhist ordinances, such as hospitality to priests.
80 Food of the poorest peasants.
81 After Shākyamuni left the palace, he served the Rishi of the mountains.
82 Using words from a poem by Michizane (845-903 A.D.).
83 For Japanese football, see p. 248. A different interpretation has lately been suggested by Mr. Suzuki.
84 I. e. Tokiyori.
85 Hōjō no Tokiyori ruled at Kamakura from 1246 till 1256. He then became a priest and travelled through the country incognito in order to acquaint himself with the needs of his subjects.
86 Sanskrit; Jap. sotoba.
87 See p. 32.
88 Now generally called Kayoi Komachi.
89 The Kōyasan is not so remote as most mountain temples.
90 See p. 113.
91 Seami, writing c. 1430, says: “Komachi was once a long play. After the words ‘Who are those,’ etc., there used to be a long lyric passage” (Works, p. 240).
92 “Heart flowers,” kokoro no hana, is a synonym for “poetry.”
93 Vajrasattva, himself an emanation of Vairochana, the principal Buddha of the Shingon Sect.
94 From the Nirvāna Sūtra.
95 From the Avatamsaka Sūtra.
96 Lit. “discordant karma.”
97 A wicked disciple who in the end attained to Illumination. Also called Datta; cp. Kumasaka, p. 63.
98 The Goddess of Mercy.
99 A disciple so witless that he could not recite a single verse of Scripture.
100 God of Wisdom.
101 From the Nirvāna Sūtra.
102 The riddle depends on a pun between sotoba and soto wa, “without” “outside.”
103 The words which follow suggest the plight of her lover Shōshō when he travelled to her house “a hundred nights all but one,” to cut his notch on the bench.
104 The spirit of her lover Shōshō has now entirely possessed her: this “possession-scene” lasts very much longer on the stage than the brief words would suggest.
105 Fukagusa the name of his native place, means “deep grass.”
106 See Hokkekyō, II. 18.
107 The colour of the saints in heaven.
108 Her “heart-flower,” i. e. poetic talent.
109 Ryōjin Hisshō, p. 135.
110 Or, according to another reading, “tales of Hell.”
111 The Fisher holds up his torch and looks down as though peering into the water.
112 I have omitted the line “Though this be not the river of Tamashima,” a reference to the Empress Jingō, who caught an ayu at Tamashima when on her way to fight the Coreans.
113 A name for Hades.
114 Good deeds were recorded in a golden book, evil deeds in an iron one.
115 He vowed that he would come as a ship to those drowning in the Sea of Delusion.
116 Here follow the twelve concluding lines, too full of Buddhist technicalities to interest a general reader.
117 A twelfth-century folk-song (Ryōjin Hisshō, p. 126), speaks of “The Way of Love which knows no castes of ‘high’ and ‘low.’”
118 A story from Huai-nan Tzŭ. What looks like disaster turns out to be good fortune and vice versa. The horse broke away and was lost. A revolution occurred during which the Government seized all horses. When the revolution was over the man of Sai’s horse was rediscovered. If he had not lost it the Government would have taken it.
119 This simile, which passed into a proverb in China and Japan, occurs first in Chuang Tzŭ, chap. xxii.
120 Compare the “possession” in Sotoba Komachi.
121 Adapted from a poem in the Gosenshū.
122 Adapted from a poem in the Kokinshū.
123 The names of two of the Cold Hells in the Buddhist Inferno.
124 There is a legend that the fish who succeed in leaping a certain waterfall turn into dragons. So the Gardener’s attempt to raise himself to the level of the Princess has changed him into an evil demon.
125 Genji Monogatari (Romance of Genji), chap, iii., Hakubunkwan Edition, p. 87.
126 By Baron Suyematsu in 1881.
127 A miko or witch called Teruhi is the subject of the play Sanja Takusen.
128 Rokujō has left the “Burning House,” i. e. her material body. The “Three Coaches” are those of the famous “Burning House” parable in the Hokkekyō. Some children were in a burning house. Intent on their play, they could not be induced to leave the building; till their father lured them out by the promise that they would find those little toy coaches awaiting them. So Buddha, by partial truth, lures men from the “burning house” of their material lives. Owing to the episode at the Kamo Festival, Rokujō is obsessed by the idea of “carriages,” “wheels” and the like.
129 One day Rokujō saw a coach from which all badges and distinctive decorations had been purposely stripped (hence, in a sense, a “broken coach”) standing before Yūgao’s door. She found out that it was Genji’s. For Yūgao, see p. 142.
130 Rokujō went secretly to the Kamo Festival in a closed carriage.
131 Words from an old dance-song or “saibara.”
132 “That am a ghost,” but also “that have lost my beauty.”
133 Alluding to Aoi’s pregnancy.
134 A Sanskrit name for the “world of appearances.”
135 I. e. at the Palace.
136 It was the custom for wives who had been put away to ambush the new wife and strike her “to clear their hate.”
137 From the Sutrālankära Shāstra (Cat. No. 1182).
138 Rokujō’s.
139 Aoi.
140 I. e. recover.
141 The hero of the “Finding of Ukifune,” a later episode in the Genji Monogatari.
142 Founder of the sect of the ascetics called Yamabushi Mountaineers.
143 Mount Ōmine, near Yoshino, ritual ascents of which were made by Yamabushi.
144 Known as the Lesser Spell of Fudō. The longer one which follows is the Middle Spell. They consist of corrupt Sanskrit mixed with meaningless magic syllables.
145 From the Buddhist Sūtra known in Japan as the Hannya Kyō. It was supposed to have a particular influence over female demons, who are also called “Hannyas.”
146 In Japanese, Kantan.
147 Corresponds to the modern province Hupeh.
148 So, Chinese “Ch’u,” was formerly an independent feudal State. The name means “thorn,” as does the Japanese “ibara.” Chamberlain calls it “The Country of Ibara,” but in this case the reading “So” is indicated by both Ōwada and Haga.
149 Kings and princes are often called “thou above the clouds.”
150 Palaces of the First Emperor. An attendant has removed the pillow from the “bed.” From this moment the bed becomes a magnificent palace, as described in the verses which follow.
151 At this point the Boy Dancer enters.
152 Name of a famous Chinese palace.
153 Famous Gate in the palace of the T’ang Emperors.
154 These lines are from a poem by Yasutane, d. 997 A. D. (Chamberlain attributes them to Po Chü-i.)
155 Here the Boy Dancer begins to dance the Dream-dance.
156 On the third day of the third month people floated cups in the stream. Each person as the cup passed in front of him, had to compose a poem and drink the contents of the cup.
157 These words also describe the dancer’s movements.
158 The Moon.
159 See Waley, Japanese Poetry, p. 77.
160 I. e. Buddha, the Law and the Priesthood. A pious exclamation of astonishment like the Spanish “Jesù, Maria José!”
161 The Sun is male, i. e. fair. The Moon female, i. e. foul.
162 The demons of Delusion, of the Senses, of the Air and of Death.
163 The Sun.
164 The heresy of Nihilism. To say that phenomena do not exist is as untrue as to say that they exist.
165 He quotes a Zen text.
166 Iwa, “rock,” also means “not speak.”
167 Some actors, says Ōwada, here write in the air with their fan; but such detailed miming is vulgar.
168 An allusion to the cherry-trees at the Kiyomizu-dera.
169 Bamboo-strips rubbed together to produce a squeaking sound.
170 A Chinese couplet quoted from the Shih Jēn Yü Hsieh (“Jade-dust of the Poets”), a Sung Dynasty work on poetry which was popular in Japan.
171 Masse here means, I think, “future generations,” not “this degraded age.”
172 When an angel is about to die, the flowers of his crown wither, his feather robe is stained with dust, sweat pours from under the arm-pits, the eyelids tremble, he is tired of his place in heaven.
173 The sacred bird of heaven.
174 Izanagi and Izanami.
175 The “Katsura” tree, a kind of laurel supposed to grow in the moon.
176 Lit. “dividing my body,” an expression used of Buddhist divinities that detach a portion of their godhead and incarnate it in some visible form.
177 Fuji.
178 The inner and outer temples at Ise.
179 Quoting an ancient prayer for the Mikado.
180 Sumeru is the great mountain at the centre of the universe. Its west side is of rubies, its south side of green stones, its east side of white stones, etc.
181 Called in Sanskrit Mahāsthāma-prāpta, third person of the Trinity sitting on Amida’s right hand. The Moon-God is an emanation of this deity.
182 Of Buddha.
183 Here follows a long lyric passage describing their journey and ascent. The frequent occurrence of place-names and plays of word on such names makes it impossible to translate.
184 I have only summarized the last chorus. When the pilgrims reach the summit, they pray to their founder, En no Gyōja, and to the God Fudō that the boy may be restored to life. In answer to their prayers a Spirit appears carrying the boy in her arms. She lays him at the Priest’s feet and vanishes again, treading the Invisible Pathway that En no Gyōja trod when he crossed from Mount Katsuragi to the Great Peak without descending into the valley.
185 The play is given in a list of Seami’s works composed on the authority of his great-grandson, Kwanze Nagatoshi, in 1524. Ōwada gives it as anonymous.
186 “Wakare no tori,” the bird which warns lovers of the approach of day.
187 Turn it into a Buddha.
188 The fact that Haku is a foreigner is conventionally emphasized by his pronunciation of this word. The fishermen, when using the same word later on, called it “Nihon.”
189 The Chinese call him Fan Li. He lived in China in the fifth century B.C. Having rendered important services to the country of Yüeh (Etsu), he went off with his mistress in a skiff, knowing that if he remained in public life his popularity was bound to decline. The Fishermen are vaguely groping towards the idea of “a Chinaman” and a “boat.” They are not yet consciously aware of the arrival of Rakuten.
190 Haku throughout omits the honorific turns of speech which civility demands. The Fishermen speak in elaborately deferential and honorific language. The writer wishes to portray Haku as an ill-bred foreigner.
191 “Uta,” i. e. the thirty-one syllable Japanese stanza.
192 Quotation from the Preface to the Kokinshū (“Collection of Songs Ancient and Modern”). The fact that Haku continues the quotation shows that he is under a sort of spell and makes it clear for the first time that his interlocutor is not an ordinary mortal. From this point onwards, in fact, the Fisherman gradually becomes a God.
193 The priest’s acolyte had died. The nightingale was the boy’s soul.
194 They do not appear on the stage.
195 The love-adventures of Narihira (825-880 A.D.) in 125 episodes, supposed to have been written by Narihira himself.
196 The husband puts up the bride’s hair.
197 Reigned 507-531.
198 In this play as in all the part of Emperor is played by a young boy or “child-actor.”
199 A Chinese Emperor of the Han dynasty and his concubine.
200 The time before his accession.
201 Ominabeshi (or ominameshi, ominayeshi), “Ladies’ Meal,” but written with Chinese characters meaning “ladies’ flower,” a kind of patrinia.
202 Ceremonial white vestments, hakuye.
203 For “Zen” see Introduction, p. 32.
204 Lit, Kikenjō, one of the Buddhist paradises.
205 Priest.
206 Acted by a kyōgen or farce-character.
207 Sayohime who, when her husband sailed to Korea, stood waving on the cliff till she turned into stone.
208 The headquarters of the Tendai sect of Buddhism.
209 The sasara (split bamboos rubbed together) and yatsubachi, “eight-sticks,” a kind of vulgar drum.
210 A sort of maypole set up at the Gion Festival.
211 Literally “waking.”
212 “Il aperçut un cerf et une biche qui s’accouplaient. La passion impure s’excita en lui.... La biche... se trouva grosse.” Péri, Les Femmes de Çakyamouni, p. 24.
213 Sometimes called Bijin-zoroye or Bijin-zoroi.
214 The cell of the Zen priest.
215 Kyōgen Zenshū, p. 541. This farce is a parody of such Nō-plays as Ukai.
216 The Buddhist “Six Ways,” Rokudō.
217 See Ukai, p. 127.
218 Or, according to Fenollosa, bought a stage belonging to an ex-daimyō.
219 Or rather “arranger,” for in many instances he adapted already existing Dengaku or Kōwaka.