• Noh （夜桜能）: 夜討曽我 (Youchi Soga)

4/5/17 (Wed), Yasukuni Shrine

The cherry blossoms were in full glorious bloom for Yasukuni Shrine’s annual outdoor Noh series this year, so the setting was magnificent. Gensho, a National Living Treasure, had played the previous night in the wonderful Saigyozakura (西行桜), but I opted for tonight since it was a play I hadn’t seen. My friend was late, so I missed the torch lighting and had to watch the opening dance from the back. Grr.

The Noh piece, Youchi Soga, has an unusual pedigree. The author Miyamasu is a contemporary of the pioneering Zeami, but while the latter went all aristocratic once the shogun took him in, the former continued to write common man’s Noh – not a genre I was even aware of. His plays apparently are nearly all genzai plays featuring living people as opposed to ghosts, with actual plots and lots of characters. A good number are about the Soga brother vendetta that also features so prominently in Kabuki.

Brothers Juro and Goro are as usual invited to a hunting party, where their father’s murderer is also due to attend. This gives them their long-awaited chance to take their revenge. As is typical of Noh, the assassination itself is not the point – in fact, it’s not even shown. The boys, expecting full well to be killed themselves once they off the murderer, realize that they haven’t told their mother their plans. They give their servants keepsakes and order them to deliver these to the mom. The servants refuse to leave and insist on fulfilling their duty by dying at their masters’ sides, threatening to kill themselves if they are not allowed to serve to the end. (Translation found on Web: Servant 1: “I beg your pardon, sir, but I think Danzaburo and I must now stab each other to death.” Servant 2: “Yes, you are right. Let us stab each other to death.” Very civilized, these servants. It does sound better in Japanese.) The brothers finally convince the servants that their duty is to obey orders, and the servants sadly leave for home.

The brothers exit, and a man comes on briefly to relate how the brothers achieved their goal at the gathering. Four warriors then enter boldly from the hashigakari bridge with swords and move to stage left. Juro returns, escaping from a hostile crowd that has already killed his brother. He is attacked by the warriors, but slashes one and fends off the rest. He gropes about in the dark. One of the warriors disguises himself as a woman (represented by a white cloth that he holds over himself) and attacks the unsuspecting Juro when he wanders by. Juro throws him down in a bit of judo, but is eventually captured by the others and taken with impressive swiftness across the hashigakari and off stage. The final moment is given interestingly to a minor character, the main soldier, who stomps and slowly exits.

There was an unusual amount of action in this piece and no real dancing. I was surprised by the swordfighting and acrobatics toward the end, along with the danmari night-time search that pre-dates the Kabuki version by several centuries. It’s interesting to imagine how Noh might have developed if the shogun hadn’t happened upon Kanami and Zeami, which turned it into an upscale, abstract art. This show was neither. It was especially enjoyable for my friend, who was seeing Noh for the first time. A fascinating piece in context and a perfect choice for a first-timer.