• Noh: 巣鴨塚 ハルの便り (Sugamozuka: The Tidings of Spring)

8/15/26 (Sat)

Photographer/artist Sugimoto Hiroshi commissioned this provocative Noh piece, which debuted last year, about Itagaki Seishiro, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army who oversaw the occupation of Manchuria and its conversion to a puppet state. He was later convicted of war crimes and executed as a Class A criminal at Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison. The performance is being held on the 81st anniversary of the war’s end.

Sugimoto had some time ago discovered an extended poem written impressively in ancient Chinese by Itagaki during his postwar imprisonment that provided an insight into his motivation and actions, with a healthy dose of self-justification. Itagaki contends that Japan took over Manchuria in order to save it from the corrupt Chinese government, which was bringing the people only misery. He aimed to build a US-type federation under his ideal of Five Races Under One Union (五族共和) in which the region’s five major ethnic groups (Manchus, Han Chinese, Japanese, Mongols, Koreans) could live in harmony. That is, the Japanese colonization of the region and establishment of Manchukuo was an act of altruism on behalf of the Manchu people.

That may very well be true, but Lenin and Mao could make the same claim on behalf of their actions. I don’t doubt Itagaki’s sincerity, but it would be more convincing had he deigned to ask the Manchurian people. His testament is further undermined by the reported behavior of the Japanese authorities and troops that he oversaw in that region, which is not remembered fondly. I happened the next day upon a quote by Solzhenitsyn maintaining that all men who commit evil think they are doing good, which seems the real theme here.

Writer Kawaguchi Kohei, a noted Noh performer hired by Sugimoto for this work, mentioned his discomfort in the subject in an essay on his website. He declared that he did not want to cast judgment on Itagaki but simply present the facts as they were, which is quite right. His text is beautifully written. It is crafted in the form of a shura Noh, referring to the circle of hell where former warriors are condemned to fight forever. It doesn’t seem quite right for Itagaki, whose sins are in the planning room rather than the battlefield, but it provides a convenient framework.

The music strangely begins offstage, after which the musicians enter and take their seats. This is followed by an entirely unnecessary opening act by a Kyogen performer (ai) and synchronized dance by Japanese and Chinese maidens, apparently representing the harmony of races that Itagaki alluded to. It had nothing to do with the Noh and hopefully will be excised in future performances.

The story proper opens tentatively as the Chinese priest (Mikariya Seigo) enters using classical Japanese language to describe booming present-day Tokyo, which is probably supposed to be amusing. He comes upon a lonely mound and wonders about its significance. Things quickly improve with the appearance of the keeper of the mound (Oshima Teruhisa), who enters with exquisite grace leaning on a fragile staff, reminding me of the great drama Yoroboshi. He holds a white chrysanthemum in his left hand. He tells the priest that the mound marks the site of the former Sugamo Prison, where seven men, including Itagaki, were executed after the war. (The prison itself, incidentally, was long ago demolished and turned into a 60-story shopping and commercial complex named Sunshine City.)

The man expounds on the history of the monument. The chorus sings how General Itagaki’s dream of a “paradise ruled by virtue” has dissolved into an illusion. The man indicates that he is the ghost of Itagaki and bemoans how people today live in prosperity with no memory of the suffering of previous generations. The chorus entreats us, “Do not awaken from the dream,” as the ghost withdraws. So far so Noh.

At this point, ghost dramas of this type typically have an interval where the ai retells the background story, basically filling in the time while the main character changes costume. Here, however, the interval is a key part of the play. After a useless section where the ai shows off a traditional Manchurian helmet and a sign taken from a Manchurian rail station (another part that can be dumped), he brings out a scroll with Itagaki’s prison text and asks the priest to read it. It is thus the priest who takes the main role in what proves an unexpected highlight. The composition in classical Chinese, a 100-line poem composed in 1947 while Itagaki awaited his fate, suggests a high level of education and erudition (a modern Japanese translation was provided in the program and the lights left on so that the audience could follow along). The text tells of the general’s classical and military upbringing, the occupation of Manchuria, the war with China and Pacific War, and the nation’s ignominious defeat, bringing the collapse of his ideals. While no one in the audience is likely to have understood the original text, the arguments were adeptly laid out. The emotionless tone of the chanting, expertly rendered by Mikariya, allows the text to be heard without judgment.

The priest offers the scroll at the mound along with a prayer. At this, Itazaki returns in full battle regalia and performs a vigorous dance effectively reenacting the dramatic events described in the poem. He takes up a spear at one point in a vibrant section connected with Japan’s Asian campaign. That ends in sorrow, of course, with explicit mention of the air raids on the homeland and the atomic bombs. He slumps to the ground and cries, “Though we [the accused] have committed no injustice, we bear upon our bodies an eternal crime and departed this world crying Banzai (Long Live the Emperor),” at which he raises both hands in a decidedly un-Noh like manner. The chorus sings that the ghost then vanishes into the mound. As the actor quietly leaves the stage, the chorus repeats the play’s opening lines, “Spring will soon take hold again in these withered fields. The turning wheel of karma will bring the spring,” suggesting perhaps a belief that prosperity will return as repayment for the nation’s sacrifices.

As always with Noh, the wordplay is not translatable into English. Eternal (永久 eikyu), for example, is a homonym for Class A (A級 A kyu) criminal. Similarly, spring (haru) is a homonym in Japanese for Hull, referring to the Hull Note (proposal sent by Secretary of State Cordell Hull) that is perceived in Japan as having triggered the Pacific War. The play’s subtitle “Tidings of Spring” (haru no tayori) thus acts as an important metaphor in the opening speech: “げに恐ろしいや春の便り… 春の訪れ恐しや” (Truly, the tidings of spring are terrifying… The arrival of spring is a dreaded thing”). In contrast, the English word “prison” comes as a jolt and feels cheap, especially as they went out of their way to Japanize “MacArthur” (Matsukasa = 松嵩).

The show certainly had a first-rate production, starting with solid performances by Oshima and Mikariya. The fantastic masks and costumes were largely from Sugimoto’s own collection. They were mainly from the Edo or near-Edo periods, but Itagaki’s masks in both the first and second halves were from the Muromachi Era (1336-1573), when Noh itself had its origins – a copy of one is in the National Museum. How did he get his hands on those?? The show was visually splendid.

The text draws from other Noh plays and Buddhist texts, such as the phrase 真如の月 (spiritual enlightenment, the light of the true nature of things), which was apparently taken here from Itagaki’s death poem. The play seems less about salvation than a plea to remember the noble aims of Itagaki’s actions as he sees them. Perhaps it can be interpreted as a warning against allowing such delusions to take hold, but that’s not how it sounds. The chorus sings, “If we go to sea, let our bodies sink beneath the waters; if we go to the mountains, let our bodies lie beneath the grass. To die thus is the true fulfillment of a warrior’s purpose.” I wonder how many Japanese soldiers in East Asia truly felt this way.

Nevertheless, while I’m not convinced at all by Itagaki’s rationale of his actions, however sincere and heartfelt, this was certainly a novel concept for a Noh play. It was not uninteresting in terms of Buddhist ideas of mercy – one thinks of the memorials laid in rural Japan during the war for executed American B29 pilots – but the Noh piece will have a hard time finding non-Japanese audiences. Without a continued strong push by Sugimoto, I suspect it won’t be welcomed by Japanese audiences either.