• Noh: 源氏供養 (Genji Kuyo)

5/19/24 (Sun)

Genji Kuyo (Commemorative Prayer for Genji) assumes an awareness of the 11th-century Tale of Genji, the classic story of the imagined romantic life of a randy former prince. The Noh play is based on the idea that fiction, being an invention of the mind, is a violation of Buddhist strictures against falsehoods and must be atoned for. The text alludes to a Tang Chinese poet’s musings on the sin of “wild words and flowery language” (狂言綺語). The anonymous drama has been around since at least 1464, when Genji would have been over 400 years old or as far as Shakespeare is from the present day.

The action takes place at Ishiyama Kannon Temple, south of Lake Biwa, where the noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu is said to have composed Genji (it’s still a tourist site). A visiting monk meets a woman who tells her that she wrote a novel but failed to dedicate it to Kannon, the goddess of mercy, a lapse that has kept her from salvation. He realizes that the woman is Shikibu’s spirit. She has written the Lotus Sutra over the scrolls and asks the monk now to pray for her. He does so, requesting in lieu of an offering that she dance for him, a nice excuse for a set piece. She agrees and performs a dance in joy at her enlightenment. She is recognized in the end as the manifestation of Kannon, who evidently appeared briefly in the world to write Genji specifically to teach that life is little more than a passing moment, noting that even the “floating bridge of dreams” referred to in the novel is itself just words expressed within a dream.

The text suggests that the focus of the prayer could be either Murasaki herself and/or Genji, who appears to be treated here as a real person. Seems rather confusing, since if he’s real, her work wasn’t fictional at all and thus not a sin. Then Murasaki turns out to be the goddess Kannon, which feels like an attempt by the playwright to justify the author’s sex-obsessed novel as an educational tract. Whatever. Umewaka Rosetsu, the head of the school, said in a program note that if he were the playwright, he would have made it all the woman’s dream, which would have solved the confusion to an extent. Still, he’s about 600 years too late.

The text is laden with Genji references, mainly puns on the name of chapters in the novel like “Cicada Shell”, “Morning Glory” (e.g., “Murasaki emerged like a flower in a moment of glory only to disappear from sight”) and “Falling Flowers”, as well as numerous mentions of lavender (murasaki). Still, while it may be helpful to know that, it’s not necessary in order to enjoy this amiable piece thanks to the lovely dance accompanying the text. Whatever the play is trying to say, it says it beautifully.