O-UMÈ'S GODS

CHARACTERS

O-Umè A Samurai Girl
Ama Her Servant, an old woman
Sanko A Young Samurai
and
A Young Jesuit Priest

O-UMÈ'S GODS

Time: The Sixteenth Century.

Place: Japan.

Scene: A room in the house of O-Umè in a province near the sea. Its shoji, or sliding paper doors, open in the rear upon a wistaria arbor over-hanging a river, upon which lighted lanterns, sent forth on the night of the Feast of the Dead, are dimly floating; while the moon above gleams upon the pale distant snow-cone of Fujiyama. The room with its deep straw mats and walls delicately portrayed with pine and bamboo has a paper-paned door on the right leading to a garden, and is lighted by andon—one beneath a shrine to Buddha on the left wall, and one to the left centre where O-Umè and Ama are sitting on their heels, constrained, foreboding and verging toward inevitable words.