• Noh: 江口、邯鄲 (Eguchi, Kantan)

3/17/19 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater, Tokyo

I showed up early for what I thought was a 1:00p curtain (so to speak) to discover that the show was underway after a rare 11:00a start. Several dance pieces had come and gone, and Eguchi was already into its second half. Nuts. Fortunately I know the plot: a monk visiting a village comes upon the grave of a harlot named Eguchi, famed for refusing lodging to the legendary priest Saigyo in a complicated metaphor related to the renunciation of worldly pleasures (temporary lodging = our transient existence). Quoting the poem to himself, the monk is approached by a woman who turns out to be the ghost of Eguchi. In a brief exchange, she cautions the monk not to depend on the impermanent and exits. Returning in a boat, she reveals herself to be the incarnation of the bodhisattva Fugen. The boat becomes a white elephant, Fugen’s traditional mount, and takes her to the heavens. The text is profound and beautifully written, and the staging wonderful. I did catch the final 40 minutes, the dance highlight, so not all was lost.

The show shared similar features with the day’s other big offering, Kantan: it has deep Buddhist underpinnings, involves temporary lodgings (the latter show actually references the Saigyo-Eguchi legend), features a splendid vehicle with large casts (Eguchi’s three-woman boat-cum-flying elephant, Kantan’s palanquin-cum-bed) and is beautifully written with abundant references to early Chinese and Japanese poetry.

The story of Kantan is straightforward. A man in China wandering without purpose happens upon an inn in a village named Kantan. The innkeeper offers him a magical pillow that will allow him to see the future. She goes off to cook millet while he sleeps. He is awakened by an imperial envoy, who tells him he has succeeded to the throne. The man, surprised, rides a splendid palanquin that carries him to a dazzling palace. In an instant, fifty years have passed, and he is being celebrated for a peaceful and prosperous reign. The seasons then turn rapidly before him, and time melts away in a rather psychedelic passage. He awakens to discover that this was just a dream lasting only as long as it took the innkeeper to cook the millet (“All is but the dream of a millet” げに何事も一炊の夢). The incident has taught him the ephemeral nature of life – “The sage he sought was this very pillow” (知識はこの枕なり) – and he leaves satisfied for his home town.

The mask of the young man (which is named after this show) is exceptionally evocative. The large cast includes court officials, a dancer, the envoy and two palanquin bearers, giving us a clear feel for the splendor of the imaginary palace. The dancer, played by a small boy (who was clearly struggling after sitting motionlessly on his knees for nearly an hour), has a brief moment in the spotlight. The best moments in an evening full of them were both toward the end: when the man races swiftly to the bed (not easy with the mask on) after the dream splinters and the court officials leave, and immediately thereafter when the music abruptly stops as the innkeeper taps his fan lightly on the bed to wake the man for his millet. That sole tapping sound in particular, done in otherwise total silence, brings us brilliantly back to the real world after the magic ride through distance and time.

The man’s dance could have been trimmed substantially as is often the case with these dream pieces, but the text and theme, less abstract than the complex exploration in Eguchi, were gorgeously rendered. I loved this show.

Three English versions of the much-translated text presented an interesting contrast, as these two samples suggest.

• So this is the pillow, the Pillow of Kantan that I have heard such strange tales of? Heaven has guided me to it, that I who came out to learn the secret of life may taste the world in a dream. (Arthur Waley)
• So this is the celebrated pillow of Kantan!
  Now I shall set out to know the truth,
  Testing this pillow and the sacred dream
  That Heaven no doubt will vouchsafe to me. (Royall Tyler)
• Oh, this is the famous pillow of Kantan. If I receive a revelation through a dream before resuming [my journey of] self-seeking, it must be a gift from heaven. I’m curious indeed. (the-noh.com)

• “I watched the seasons pass:
  Spring, summer, autumn, winter; a thousand trees,
  A thousand flowers were strange and lovely in their pride.
  So the time sped, and now
  Fifty years of glory have passed by me,
  And because they were a dream,
  All, all has vanished and I wake
  On the pillow where I laid my head,
  The Pillow of Kantan. (Arthur Waley)
• So the seasons turn before my eyes,
  Spring and summer, autumn, winter,
  Trees and grasses bloom within a day.
  How beautiful! How wondrous a sight!
  So time passes and the years slip by,
  So time passes and the years slip by,
  Till fifty years of glory reach an end,
  And melt away to nothing. They are gone,
  For all these things happened in a dream.
  There upon the Pillow of Kantan,
  The sleeper’s dream is broken, and he wakes. (Royall Tyler)
• Four seasons develop in front of my eyes. The trees, flowers and grasses of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, all bloom at once. What a miracle! How amusing! The time flies in this manner. The prosperous fifty years have ended. Actually, this all happened in a dream. All the glory is therefore fading away slowly and gradually. I have awakened from the dream, which I had on the pillow of Kantan. (the-noh.com)