Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  All the prayers I have made for this world

  To the gods and to the Buddha, I here and now

  Direct to the future: in the world to come

  May we be reborn on the same lotus!

  CHANTER:

  One hundred eight the beads her fingers tell

  On her rosary;20 tears increase the sum.

  No end to her grief, but the road has an end:

  Their minds are numbed, the sky is dark, the wind still,

  They have reached the thick wood of Sonezaki.

  Shall it be here, shall it be there? When they brush the grass, the falling dew vanishes even more quickly than their lives, in this uncertain world a lightning flash—or was it something else?

  [OHATSU]: I’m afraid. What was that now?

  [TOKUBEI]: That was a human spirit.21 I thought we alone would die tonight, but someone else has preceded us. Whoever it may be, we’ll have a companion on the journey to the Mountain of Death. Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu.22

  CHANTER: She weeps helplessly.

  [OHATSU]: To think that others are dying tonight too! How heartbreaking!

  CHANTER: Man though he is, his tears fall freely.

  [TOKUBEI]: Those two spirits flying together—do you suppose they belong to anyone else? They must be yours and mine!

  [OHATSU]: Those two spirits? Then are we dead already?

  [TOKUBEI]: Normally, if we saw a spirit, we’d knot our clothes and murmur prayers to keep our souls with us,23 but now we hurry toward our end, hoping instead our two souls will find the same dwelling. Do not mistake the way, do not lose me!

  CHANTER: They embrace, flesh to flesh, then fall to the ground and weep—how pitiful they are! Their strings of tears unite like entwining branches or the pine and palm that grow from a single trunk, a symbol of eternal love. Here the dew of their unhappy lives will at last settle.

  [TOKUBEI]: Let this be the spot.

  CHANTER: He unfastens the sash of his cloak. Ohatsu removes her tear-stained outer robe and throws it on the palm tree; the fronds might now serve as a broom to sweep away the sad world’s dust. Ohatsu takes a razor from her sleeve.

  [OHATSU]: I had this razor prepared in case we were overtaken on the way and separated. I was determined not to forfeit our name as lovers. How happy I am that we are to die together as we hoped!

  [TOKUBEI]: How wonderful of you to have thought of that! I am so confident in our love that I have no fears even about death. And yet it would be unfortunate if because of the pain we are to suffer people said that we looked ugly in death. Let us secure our bodies to this twin-trunked tree and die immaculately! We will become an unparalleled example of a lovers’ suicide.

  [OHATSU]: Yes, let us do that.

  CHANTER: Alas! She little thought she would use her light blue undersash in this way! She draws it tight and, with her razor, slashes it through.

  [OHATSU]: The sash is cut, but you and I will never be torn apart.

  CHANTER: She sits, and he binds her twice, thrice to the tree, firmly so that she will not stir.

  [TOKUBEI]: Is it tight?

  [OHATSU]: Very tight.

  CHANTER: She looks at her husband, and he at her—they burst into tears.

  [BOTH]: This is the end of our unhappy lives!

  [TOKUBEI]: No I mustn’t give way to grief.

  CHANTER: He lifts his head and joins his hands in prayer.

  [TOKUBEI]: My parents died when I was a boy, and I grew up thanks to the efforts of my uncle, who was my master. It disgraces me to die without repaying his kindness. Instead I shall cause him trouble that will last even after my death. Please forgive my sins. Soon I shall see my parents in the other world. Father, Mother, welcome me there!

  CHANTER: He weeps. Ohatsu also joins her hands.

  [OHATSU]: I envy you. You say you will meet your parents in the world of the dead. My father and mother are in this world and in good health. I wonder when I shall see them again. I heard from them this spring, but I haven’t seen them since the beginning of last autumn. Tomorrow, when word reaches the village of our suicides, how unhappy they will be! Now I must bid farewell in this life to my parents, my brothers and sisters. If at least my thoughts can reach you, please appear before me, if only in dreams. Dear Mother, beloved Father!

  CHANTER: She sobs and wails aloud. Her husband also cries out and sheds incessant tears in all too understandable emotion.

  [OHATSU]: We could talk forever, but it serves no purpose. Kill me, kill me quickly!

  CHANTER: She hastens the moment of death.

  [TOKUBEI]: I’m ready.

  CHANTER: He swiftly draws his dagger.

  [TOKUBEI]: The moment has come. Namu Amida. Namu Amida.

  CHANTER: But when he tries to bring the blade against the skin of the woman he’s loved and held and slept with so many months and years, his eyes cloud over, his hand shakes. He tries to steady his weakening resolve, but still he trembles, and when he thrusts, the point misses. Twice or thrice the flashing blade deflects this way and that until a cry tells it has struck her throat.

  [TOKUBEI]: Namu Amida. Namu Amida. Namu Amida Butsu.

  CHANTER: He twists the blade deeper and deeper, but the strength has left his arm. When he sees her weaken, he stretches forth his hands. The last agonies of death are indescribable.

  [TOKUBEI]: Must I lag behind you? Let’s draw our last breaths together.

  CHANTER: He thrusts and twists the razor in his throat, until it seems the handle or the blade must snap. His eyes grow dim, and his last painful breath is drawn away at its appointed hour.24 No one is there to tell the tale, but the wind that blows through Sonezaki Wood transmits it, and high and low alike gather to pray for these lovers who beyond a doubt will in the future attain buddhahood. They have become models of true love.

  [Chikamatsu jōruri shū jō, NKBT 49: 21–36, translated by Donald Keene]

  THE DRUM OF THE WAVES OF HORIKAWA (HORIKAWA NAMI NO TSUTSUMI, 1707)

  The Drum of the Waves of Horikawa, a three-act contemporary-life play, was first performed at the Takemoto Theater in Osaka in the Second Month of 1707. Like The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, Horikawa draws on a contemporary scandal. In the Sixth Month of 1706, a vendetta was carried out in Kyoto during the Gion Festival by a samurai called ōkura Hikohachirō, in the service of the lord of the Tottori Domain, who was assisted by his son Bunshichi, his younger sister Kura, and Fuu, the younger sister of his wife. In the Sixth Month of 1705, Hikohachirō had gone to Edo, following his lord on the alternate attendance system, and had stayed there until the Fifth Month of the following year. During his absence his wife, Tane, committed adultery with Miyai Den’emon, who was the domain drummer as well as the drum teacher of Hikohachirō’s children. Rumors of the affair spread, and the younger sister Kura informed Hikohachirō in Edo. Deeply angered, Hikohachirō immediately took leave, returned to his domain, and questioned his wife, who confessed to the entire matter. On the sixteenth of the Fifth Month, Hikohachirō killed his wife, received permission to hunt down the adulterer, and, on the seventh of the Sixth Month, entered Den’emon’s house and killed him.

  Chikamatsu changed the names of the chief figures only slightly: Ōkura Hikohachirō became Ogura Hikokurō; the drum teacher Miyai Den’emon is Miyaji Gen’emon; Bunshichi became Bunroku; Kura takes the name Yura; and Fuu was changed to Ofuji. While preserving the outlines of the incident, Chikamatsu created a new drama by adding the villain Isobe Yukaemon and by focusing on the wife, Otane, whom he transformed into a sympathetic and tragic protagonist who, despite her weakness for alcohol, remains devoted to her husband. Although Chikamatsu’s contemporary-life plays generally deal with the lives of urban commoners, this one describes the lives of the samurai, who normally were depicted in history plays, and ends with a vendetta (katakiuchi), which was standard fare for such history plays.

  Adultery was a serious crime in samurai society, and the Tokugawa military government made every effort to maintain the special authori
ty of the warrior class. Family succession was decided through the male line, from father to eldest son, and because adultery jeopardized the authority of the family head, it was severely punished, with the samurai husband given the right to kill his wife and carry out a vendetta on the male adulterer. In this play, adultery takes the role that economic disaster (theft, embezzlement, and the like) does in Chikamatsu’s chōnin (urban commoner) plays. Significantly, the three adultery plays written by Chikamatsu—Gonza the Lancer (Yari no Gonza, 1717), The Drum of the Waves of Horikawa, and The Calendar Maker (Daikyōji mukashi goyomi)—all concern privileged classes, particularly the samurai.

  Some scholars have treated Horikawa as a samurai play because of the class of the protagonists. In contrast to samurai history plays, which uphold giri (duty/principle) over ninjō (emotion) at tragic human cost, the contemporary-life plays deal with the weakness of the individual for ninjō, with the ascendancy of ninjō over giri leading to tragic circumstances. Interestingly, Horikawa combines both dynamics, of succumbing to ninjō and upholding giri: Otane fails to maintain her obligations to her husband but commits suicide as a sign of her continued devotion to him, and Hikokurō puts aside his feelings for Otane to carry out his duty as a samurai in slaying the drum teacher. Significantly, the tragedy is almost as much on the side of the husband as the wife, with the end of the second act an implicit commentary on the harshness of samurai law.

  Horikawa is of considerable interest for its exploration of female sexuality and its implicit critique of the life of lower-level samurai, who were separated from their wives for extremely long periods of time. The first act suggests—especially through its allusions to nō plays, particularly Wind in the Pines (Matsukaze)—a world of dream and illusion, a nightmare world of desire and intoxication. The second act takes place in the daytime and is a sober samurai view of public law in which crimes of passion are punished by death. The third act, which occurs during the Gion Festival, a time of daytime intoxication, echoes the first act but focuses on violence rather than sexuality. In the third act, which has been omitted here, Hikokurō and his entire family single-mindedly hunt down the drum teacher in Kyoto and kill him.

  The interest that this play has had for modern readers is reflected in the production of the postwar film Night Drum (Yoru no tsuzumi), directed by Imai Tadashi and based on this play.

  CHARACTERS

  [OGURA] HIKOKURŌ, a samurai of low status in Inaba Province (present-day Tottori Prefecture)

  [MIYAJI] GEN’EMON, a drum teacher from Kyoto

  BUNROKU, Hikokurō’s adopted son

  [ISOBE] YUKAEMON, a samurai attracted to Otane

  OTANE, wife of Hikokurō and daughter of Naruyama Chūdayū

  OFUJI, younger sister of Otane in the service of a samurai mansion

  YURA, younger sister of Hikokurō and wife of a samurai (Masayama Sangohei)

  ORIN, Otane’s maid

  Act 1

  Scene 1: The courtyard of a house in Tottori, the seat of the daimyō of Inaba. The house belongs to Chūdayū, the father of Otane and Ofuji. The sisters are hanging out the laundry while a lesson in the music of the nō play Matsukaze is being taught inside the house.

  CHANTER (chants in nō style):

  And so three years of weary exile

  Yukihira whiled away aboard his boat,

  His heart illumined by the moon of Suma Bay.

  He chose two sisters as his maids in waiting,

  Fishergirls who dipped the evening tide,

  And named one Pine-Breeze and one Spring-Shower,25

  Names he thought well suited to the time of year.

  The sisters changed the clothes they wore,

  Fishergirls of Suma, familiars of the moon,

  When burning salt along the shore,

  For robes of damask burned with faint perfumes.

  Those were fishergirls’ clothes, but here a matron is fulling her robes, her occupation during her husband’s absence, in service at Edo. Her younger sister Ofuji fortunately happens to be at home today and offers to help, tying back her sleeves with a cotton cord. The sisters apply starch and wring out the clothes with dripping sleeves, so lovely a sight, it is clear why their charms are celebrated throughout the fief.

  [OTANE]: It’d be best for you, Ofuji, to stay in service permanently. Remember always to keep your master pleased, and don’t get married. I know that only too well from my own experience. Hikokurō and I were childhood sweethearts before our marriage, and I can’t tell you how happy I was to become his bride. But it’s hard being of low rank. Every other year Hikokurō must spend in Edo. Even when he’s here, he must report every day at the castle, and ten nights each month it’s his turn to stand guard duty. We’ve never spent a single relaxed night in conversation together like other couples. Hikokurō has the samurai spirit, and he encourages me by saying that unless he exerts himself as he does he’ll never be able to make his mark in his profession. All the same, I can just see the expression on his face when he left for Edo last July. “I won’t be seeing you again till I come back with his lordship next July,” he said. “Take care of yourself and watch after the house.” Yes, I’ve never for a moment forgotten that look. It’s as if I could see him now before my eyes. I wait here as though we were lovers who met every day, wondering when, when he’ll return.

  CHANTER: She stretches the silk with clothespins and ties it with cords to the pines; talking in this way has helped relieve her grief.26 Her sister Ofuji bursts out laughing.

  [OFUJI]: You’re asking for too much, Otane! Look at the marvelous powers of endurance I have, with no husband whatsoever! And they’re so strict about discipline at his lordship’s mansion. It’s forbidden for me to spend one single night away, even here, in my own family’s house. I’m sure you’d die in such a place! Anyone hearing you complain would laugh!

  [OTANE]: Listen—there’s drum practice going on inside. You mustn’t talk so loud. Hush!

  CHANTER: She stretches the cloth on the clothesline and peers through a crack in the fence. Vague yearnings for her husband are stirred by the beat of the drum. As she hangs his robes on the pine to dry, the piece ends with a final cry.

  (Chants) “This keepsake

  Now is my enemy.

  Without it

  There might be a chance to forget.”

  The poet was right—

  Keepsakes only deepen one’s longing.27

  [OTANE]: Oh I’m so happy! Look, my husband’s returned! I must go welcome him!

  CHANTER: She runs up to the tree.

  [OFUJI]: Are you out of your mind, Otane? That’s just a garden pine tree. Hikokurō’s in Edo. Are you mad?

  CHANTER: She reproaches her sister.

  [OTANE]: Silly Ofuji! What makes you think I’m mad? The only solace for my boredom while Hikokurō’s away is to pretend he’s returned. Here we are in Inaba, just as in that piece they’re playing. Listen to the words—“When I hear you’re waiting, I’ll come back again.” Oh, that song and the beat of the drum give me hope again!

  CHANTER (chants):

  His song fills me with hope—

  “Though I leave now I will return

  Otane, in work gear, hanging out the laundry. (Photograph courtesy of Barbara Curtis Adachi Collection, C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University)

  If I hear you pine like the pines

  Growing on Inaba Mountain’s peak.”28

  He spoke of the pines of far-off Inaba,

  But these are the pines of Suma’s curving bay

  Where once he lived, that dear prince.

  If Yukihira returns, I will approach

  The shade of that pine tree, tenderly.

  Oh, that familiar pine on the beach, I love it!

  The wind blows wild in the pines.

  Now, when her loneliness is most intense

  For the husband who is far away,

  The drum has comforted her heart:

  The drum brings rumors that her husband

>   Will presently return from the East.

  The wind is cool as she washes and stretches

  The thin raw silk of her husband’s hakama;29

  The mild spring sun will dry it soon.

  [OTANE]: I’m glad I’ve done something useful. And now I shall wait for my husband’s return from Edo and listen to the wind in the pines.

  CHANTER: She speaks in high spirits. Bunroku calls from inside.

  [BUNROKU]: Mother! I’ve finished my drum practice. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about my teacher, Miyaji Gen’emon. Wouldn’t you like to come in and meet him?

  [OTANE]: I would indeed. I was thinking of it a while ago, but I was so busy hanging up the clothes that the time went by before I knew it.

  CHANTER: She unties the cords tucking up her sleeves and smoothes her clothes. When she enters the sitting room, Gen’emon at once changes to a formal sitting posture.

  [GEN’EMON]: I live in Kyoto, at Horikawa near Shimotachiuri. I have the honor to teach the drum to the gentlemen of this fief, and I come here quite frequently now that my pupils are about to be permitted to serve in the palace. Sometimes I stay for three or four months or even a whole year at a time, but I have never had the pleasure of meeting your husband, Hikokurō. Recently your son Bunroku expressed a desire to learn the drum, and I agreed to take him as my pupil. He’s quite exceptionally talented, and I can imagine how proud of him his mother must be.

  CHANTER: He speaks very politely. Otane acknowledges his compliments with a bow of the head and a smile.

  [OTANE]: Calling me Bunroku’s mother makes Hikokurō and myself sound like old people. Actually, Bunroku is my younger brother. My husband adopted him as his son. We’re people of very modest means, and for the time being we’ve put Bunroku under the protection of a certain gentleman in his lordship’s household. His grandfather was anxious for Bunroku to learn—with your kind help—at least one drum piece well enough to appear personally before his lordship. That was why he decided, even though my husband’s away, to ask you to teach him. I expect my husband to be returning with his lordship in July, and I’ll be very grateful if Bunroku is able to perform a piece for his father then.