Certain Noble Plays of Japan Part 5

PRIEST No, Hakuryo is not one to give back the robe.

TENNIN Power does not attain....

PRIEST To get back the robe.

CHORUS Her coronet [1] jewelled as with the dew of tears, even the flowers that decorated her hair drooping, and fading, the whole chain of weaknesses [2] of the dying Tennin can be seen actually before the eyes. Sorrow!

[Footnote 1: Vide examples of state head-dress of kingfisher feathers, in the South Kensington Museum.]

[Footnote 2: The chain of weaknesses, or the five ills, diseases of the Tennin: namely, the hanakadzusa withers; the Hagoromo is stained; sweat comes from the body; both eyes wink frequently; she feels very weary of her palace in heaven.]

TENNIN I look into the flat of heaven, peering; the cloud-road is all hidden and uncertain; we are lost in the rising mist; I have lost the knowledge of the road. Strange, a strange sorrow!

CHORUS Enviable colour of breath, wonder of clouds that fade along the sky that was our accustomed dwelling; hearing the sky-bird, accustomed and well accustomed, hearing the voices grow fewer, the wild geese fewer and fewer along the highways of air, how deep her longing to return. Plover and seagull are on the waves in the offing. Do they go, or do they return?

She reaches out for the very blowing of the spring wind against heaven.

PRIEST (to the Tennin) What do you say? now that I can see you in your sorrow, gracious, of heaven, I bend and would return you your mantle.

TENNIN It grows clearer. No, give it this side.

PRIEST First tell me your nature, who are you, Tennin? give payment with the dance of the Tennin, and I will return you your mantle.

TENNIN Readily and gladly, and then I return into heaven. You shall have what pleasure you will, and I will leave a dance here, a joy to be new among men and to be memorial dancing. Learn then this dance that can turn the palace of the moon. No, come here to learn it. For the sorrows of the world I will leave this new dancing with you for sorrowful people. But give me my mantle, I cannot do the dance rightly without it.

PRIEST Not yet, for if you should get it, how do I know you'll not be off to your palace without even beginning your dance, not even a measure?

TENNIN Doubt is fitting for mortals; with us there is no deceit.

PRIEST I am again ashamed. I give you your mantle.

CHORUS The young maid now is arrayed; she a.s.sumes the curious mantle; watch how she moves in the dance of the rainbow-feathered garment.

PRIEST The heavenly feather-robe moves in accord with the wind.

TENNIN The sleeves of flowers are being wet with the rain.

PRIEST The wind and the sleeve move together.

CHORUS

It seems that she dances.

Thus was the dance of pleasure, Suruga dancing, brought to the sacred east.

Thus was it when the lords of the everlasting Trod the world, They being of old our friends.

Upon ten sides their sky is without limit, They have named it on this account, 'the enduring.'

TENNIN The jewelled axe takes up the eternal renewing, the palace of the moon-G.o.d is being renewed with the jewelled axe, and this is always recurring.

CHORUS (commenting on the dance) The white kiromo, the black kiromo, Three, five into fifteen, The figure that the Tennin is dividing.

There are heavenly nymphs, Amaotome, [3]

One for each night of the month, And each with her deed a.s.signed.

[Footnote 3: Cf. 'Paradiso,' xxiii, 25. 'Quale nei plenilunii sereni Trivia ride tra le ninfe eterne.']

TENNIN I also am heaven-born and a maid, Amaotome. Of them there are many. This is the dividing of my body, that is fruit of the moon's tree, Katsuma.

[4] This is one part of our dance that I leave to you here in your world.

[Footnote 4: A tree something like the laurel.]

CHORUS The spring mist is widespread abroad; so perhaps the wild olive's flower will blossom in the infinitely unreachable moon. Her flowery head-ornament is putting on colour; this truly is sign of the spring. Not sky is here, but the beauty; and even here comes the heavenly, wonderful wind. O blow, shut the accustomed path of the clouds. O, you in the form of a maid, grant us the favour of your delaying. The pine-waste of Miwo puts on the colour of spring. The bay of Kiyomi lies clear before the snow upon Fuji. Are not all these presages of the spring? There are but few ripples beneath the piny wind. It is quiet along the sh.o.r.e. There is naught but a fence of jewels between the earth and the sky, and the G.o.ds within and without, [5] beyond and beneath the stars, and the moon unclouded by her lord, and we who are born of the sun. This alone intervenes, here where the moon is unshadowed, here in Nippon, the sun's field.

[Footnote 5: 'Within and without,' gei, gu, two parts of the temple]

TENNIN The plumage of heaven drops neither feather nor flame to its own diminution.

CHORUS Nor is this rock of earth over-much worn by the brus.h.i.+ng of that feather-mantle, the feathery skirt of the stars: rarely, how rarely.

There is a magic song from the east, the voices of many and many: and flute and shae, filling the s.p.a.ce beyond the cloud's edge, seven-stringed; dance filling and filling. The red sun blots on the sky the line of the colour-drenched mountains. The flowers rain in a gust; it is no racking storm that comes over this green moor, which is afloat, as it would seem, in these waves. Wonderful is the sleeve of the white cloud, whirling such snow here.

TENNIN Plain of life, field of the sun, true foundation, great power!

CHORUS Hence and for ever this dancing shall be called, 'a revel in the east.'

Many are the robes thou hast, now of the sky's colour itself, and now a green garment.

SEMI-CHORUS And now the robe of mist, presaging spring, a colour-smell as this wonderful maiden's skirt--left, right, left! The rustling of flowers, the putting-on of the feathery sleeve; they bend in air with the dancing.

SEMI-CHORUS Many are the joys in the east. She who is the colour-person of the moon takes her middle-night in the sky. She marks her three fives with this dancing, as a shadow of all fulfilments. The circled vows are at full.

Give the seven jewels of rain and all of the treasure, you who go from us. After a little time, only a little time, can the mantle be upon the wind that was spread over Matsubara or over As.h.i.+laka the mountain, though the clouds lie in its heaven like a plain awash with sea. Fuji is gone; the great peak of Fuji is blotted out little by little. It melts into the upper mist. In this way she (the Tennin) is lost to sight.

k.u.mASAKA

A PLAY IN TWO ACTS BY UJIn.o.bU, ADOPTED SON OF MOTOKIJO.

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

A PRIEST

FIRST s.h.i.+TE, OR HERO The apparition of k.u.masaka in the form of an old priest

SECOND s.h.i.+TE The apparition of k.u.masaka in his true form.

CHORUS This chorus sometimes speaks what the chief characters are thinking, sometimes it describes or interprets the meaning of their movements.

Plot: the ghost of k.u.masaka makes reparation for his brigandage by protecting the country. He comes back to praise the bravery of the young man who killed him in single combat.