Outline of the Story
The play is based on a story told—or rather written down, for it was probably told long before then—a thousand years ago in the Yamato Monogatari, or Tales of Japan. It is the story of the love of two men for one woman, and the fatal consequences thereof for all concerned.
UNAI, a maiden living near Ikuta, was loved by two equally gifted men. On the selfsame day they each sent her a letter declaring their passion, but she could not decide between them, fearing the anger of either rejected suitor. Her father determined that the one who shot most accurately should win her, but in the contest the two men pierced the same wing of the same bird with their arrows. This bird was a mandarin duck, a creature whose lifelong faithfulness to its mate was proverbial in Japan. The girl felt bitterly that she was to blame for the death of the bird and the misery its mate endured, as well as for the strife between the two men. Hence she drowned herself. Then the two men, visiting her tomb, were filled with remorse, and killed each other beside her grave. This, however, only added to the girl’s guilt, and much of the play is taken up with vivid descriptions of her agonising torments in the eight hells believed in by popular Buddhism.
The play opens with a traveller Priest passing the village of Ikuta on his way to the capital. It is early spring, and the village maidens are out gathering the first green shoots of the “seven herbs,” which used to be eaten at the beginning of the year as a kind of ceremony. The city folk make this herb-gathering a pleasure picnic, but the poor girls going out of necessity into the biting cold of January are envious of those who are better off in cities. The spirit of the long dead UNAI has joined them in the form of a young girl, but she takes part in the opening dialogue. The “Maiden’s (i. e. UNAI’S) Tomb” is one of the famous places in the district, and the Priest asks to see it. UNAI’S spirit remains behind when the village girls have been driven home by the cold, and she conducts the Priest to the tomb, conversing with him, and telling him the story of UNAI. Her spirit’s materialisation as a maiden then vanishes, and UNAI appears as a Ghost, for whom the Priest prays. The Ghost laments over the tomb, and the Chorus gives expression to her longing for the human world. The Ghost expresses her thankfulness for the prayer uttered by the Priest, and recounts her agonising sufferings in the eight hells. The Priest makes some effort, but not a very determined one, to inculcate in the poor Ghost the higher Buddhistic belief that all these things, even the hells, are delusions, and her mind could free herself of them. The play closes with the Chorus telling of her miseries in hell.