as none of the prose in the least corresponds to our prose, and as it is not given in the ordinary speaking voice of the Japanese, but is always specially intoned, it seems to me much more suitable and harmonious to render the whole utai in verse of various kinds.
Even this little book has been the task of years, despite its many imperfections. It was undertaken primarily because I delighted in the Nō, and the labour of bringing it through the Press was rendered lighter by the hope that it might give pleasure to the English reading public to see, even “through a glass darkly,” something of the beauty of this unexplored literature. I have already described the effect these plays have on the Japanese and on me. That I have caught perhaps an echo of their spirit I am encouraged to think, because on the two occasions when one or other of these translations have been read to audiences it has been reported to me that several of those who heard them were in tears. That strikes the right note. For with all their literary richness and their descriptions of beautiful scenes and of heroic deeds, the ground note of the Nō is human tragedy. Their tragedy is of the fundamental, elemental kind that depends upon the very nature of our being, that turns upon the terrible fact which the trivialities of the material world so readily delude us into forgetting—that we are fleeting as a drop of dew.
Marie C. Stopes.
[THE MAIDEN’S TOMB]
Authorship of the Play
This piece is now commonly attributed to Kiyotsugu, and is supposed to have been produced at the end of the fourteenth century. Its exact date is not known, but Kiyotsugu was born in 1354 and died in 1406; yet it is most likely that he was an adapter and not the original author of the utai, parts of which were probably written long before his time. The play is still one of the most important of the Nō, and is indeed a test piece, as parts of the Shite’s chanting are exceptionally difficult. A foreigner cannot judge of this, but from my own point of view it is perhaps the finest of all the Nō.
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.