• Bunraku: 鶊山姫捨松, 阿古屋琴責 (The Pine of the Abandoned Princess on Mt. Hibari, Akoya)

2/4/19 (Mon), Tokyo

Both shows this month were torture pieces (if such a genre exists) showing the heroines under intense interrogation; both also unusually featured a Chinese kokyu. I was surprised to see empty seats in the theater, not a typical sight for Tokyo Bunraku. I had expected more of a crowd at least for the popular Akoya, especially as the Kabuki version had just played in December. They missed a great combination.

Hibariyama Himesute no Matsu (The Pine of the Abandoned Princess on Mt.Hibari): A rarely performed piece based on an old legend, also portrayed in a Noh drama, of a woman who spun fabric into gold. In the opening, Princess Chujo is accused by her wicked stepmother Lady Iwane of stealing a precious Buddhist image. We learn that the stepmother has in fact ordered the theft herself in order to get rid of Chujo, part of a plot to take over the government.

As Act 2 opens, the girl is being led into the snow by two henchmen, beaten with bamboo poles and stripped of her outerwear in the shivering cold. Her former maid comes to the gate and, unable to enter, throws her jacket to the princess. Lady Iwane then comes down and inflicts her own punishment, grabbing her stepdaughter’s hair and pushing her face cruelly into the snow. The appalled maid breaks through the gate and grabs the pole in a challenge to Lady Iwane, who faces her down and dares her to act against her social superior. A government official orders another maid to help Iwane, and in the ensuing battle between the maids, Princess Chujo is struck and collapses. Lady Iwane and the government official, thinking the girl dead, beat a hasty retreat.

It then turns out, in a Bunraku version of The Sting, that the maids had set up their faux fight all along. They help up Chujo, who is extremely weak but very much alive. Her father, a high-ranking minister, shows up and pretends to talk to the “corpse” of his daughter in order to avoid implicating Iwane at this stage. He tells the maids to bury the body in Hibariyama, hinting that the daughter should hide there for now. The parent and child part in tears.

The story doesn’t bear up to much scrutiny but offers a number of highlights, especially the trembling princess being struck in the snow by the brawny men, the evil stepmother gleefully mistreating the princess, and the father tearfully saying goodbye to his daughter’s “corpse” to allow her to escape. The text allows for plenty of emotional highs and lows, which the narrator Chitosetayu had a field day with. I don’t know why this show dropped off the standard repertory – the plot is no screwier than some of the classics, and the melodrama is straightforward and interesting. A fun piece.

Akoya: Always good to see for the virtuoso instrumentals. Authorities on the lookout for a fugitive have taken his courtesan girlfriend into custody in hopes of squeezing information out of her. She insists she knows nothing of his whereabouts, but the two prosecutors aim to put that to the test. The more impetuous of the two, a red-faced comic figure, wants to torture her physically, but his superior takes a slier approach. He asks her to play three instruments, which as a courtesan she would be expected to have mastered. Only the pure of heart, he says, will be able to play them perfectly; any slipup will indicate that she is lying. They bring in a koto, shamisen and kokyu, each of which she plays in turn as the main prosecutor watches intensely.

In Kabuki, these are all played by the same actor, making it a real test of skill for the performer given that flawless playing is built into the plot; Tamasaburo was the only one capable of playing the role in recent years until two of his protégés appeared on stage in December. In Bunraku, a professional musician plays while the puppeteer mimics the movements, so the fun is watching the coordination between the two. There’s an added bit of comedy as the hotheaded younger prosecutor, getting lost in the music, takes chopsticks from the hibachi burner and unconsciously plays along in an exaggerated manner.

It must be said that the musical pieces chosen, while fine in themselves (and beautifully rendered), are unduly long as part of the drama. They should think about cutting these to size. They are all apparently famous works, which might make them difficult to trim, and music itself is vital to the otherwise paper-thin plot. But it’s too much of a good thing. That said, my friend, seeing Bunraku for the first time, was enthralled, particularly after seeing the Kabuki version just a few weeks earlier. So maybe I’m jaded. And when it’s performed as well as this, I suppose it’s churlish to complain. A deserved crowd pleaser.