Kagetsu (Florimund) 花月
from
Pretty Boys in the Noh(2004)
Kenneth
L. Richard
The
Siebold University of Nagasaki
Abstract: ‘Pretty Boys in the Noh’
includes new translations of four plays from the traditional Noh repertoire:
1.) Matsumushi (Pinus Erectus) that is without a category, 2.) Kagetsu
(Florimund) also from category four and that appears here, with Pinus
Erectus, for the first time in English translation, 3.) Kanehira
(Imai’s End) from category two of warrior plays, and 4.) Yoroboshi (The
Beggar and His Saviour) from category four of people in various states of
mental confusion or those who change gender role or societal function. All four
plays are about men in love (Kanehira), men who have been sold into
sexual slavery and recover (Yoroboshi), a beautiful dancer and his
patrons (Kagetsu), and men who have died for love of the same sex (Matsumushi).
The plays I have chosen for analysis here re-privilege the appeal of beautiful
boys and strong warriors, as well as the homosocial society of the Buddhist
priesthood in Japan.
‘Living Noh’ is the title
given to a series of workshops held at the Nichibunken in Kyoto in 2001-02. I
was privileged to attend these sessions. As we read through often performed
plays as well as some that are not as well known or performed, I began to draft
my own answer to the question of what constitutes an idea of ‘Living Noh.’
After all, the main characters in a Noh play are mostly returned from the dead.
‘Living Noh,’ as I discovered, is a dramaturgy that has been re-evaluated,
restored to a more originally lucent spirit, and that is where I became
convinced that the widest variety of male responses to life and death was
central to the whole idea of Noh, and that this male response had been
undervalued, or truncated in the choice of plays performed for modern audiences.
Then, as now, Noh is filled
with beautiful moments when memory is exalted, and the soul saved. The texts
are central to the aesthetic beauty of the play, and actors and acting
traditions throughout the four eras since the first Noh was performed seek to
reinterpret, even reform plays to their ideals. In the Muromachi era when Zeami
and those who followed him were both actors and writers, a privileged class of
consumers of the art, the military class--both employed and unemployed,
patronized actors, encouraged them to write plays that would be well received,
and often took Noh players to bed. Actors in this era were an unprivileged
class. Many of their plays give witness to men like themselves who were at home
in the marketplace where they drank sake and then went to make love in the
surrounding fields. Matsumushi is an anonymous play but a good one,
because it deals with men who may have been friends of actors, not patrons. For
their patrons, witnessing Matsumushi and enjoying the eternal love of two
commoners, might have exalted the actors in the eyes of their audience. Because
Matsumushi so obviously restores the appeal of same sex relationships,
actors easily became samurai, shogunal lovers. These actors were rewarded both
for their drama, and for their good looks and character. The stories of Zeami
Motokiyo as shogunal lover to the Ashikaga are well known. Kagetsu,
though ostensibly a play about the reunion of a long, lost son with his father,
is really a story about how a young and beautiful boy found his way as a boy
lover to priests who then taught him the arts of music, dance, and repartee,
and who has, by the current time of the play, become a free agent for his
skills. Kagetsu is the epitome of the male prostitute, as entertainer
and actor, of the Muromachi era. He is a very talented dancer. His name
Florimund in my English translation is the name of the Prince in The
Sleeping Beauty ballet. As many of the principal male dancers in the
Russian ballet had same sex lovers, so does Kagetsu outside of the play text.
All consumers of the Noh in the Muromachi enjoyed stories of beautiful boys.
In the Edo Period, the second
of the greatest eras of purveyors and consumers of Noh, great acting families
grew into distinct acting traditions with specific plays privatized to their
house style. Noh took on a more specific canonical role as an entertainment for
the shogunal and samurai class. It legitimized the neoclassical stance of the kokugakusha,
the nativists, and others who touted Japanese classical literature over a
newfound interest in continental Chinese writers. At the same time, however,
newer theatrical performances by manipulated puppets, and then by professional
actors took over the intimate exchange of art and sex that had once been the
sole purvey of Zeami and his successors. Noh became ‘high art.’
Whereas the actors and
playwrights of an earlier era had the precedent of clawing their way up the
social ladder from waifs, to chigo or boys who were engaged in Buddhist
temples for the sexual satisfaction of priests, to private troupes for the
Shogunal authorities, the social agenda of the Edo schools of Noh was quite
different. A play such as Kanehira, based on characters and incidents
drawn from The Tale of the Heike from the 13th
century, helped to maintain a myth of the nobility of the warrior class and
might have been a staple of regular performances for the pleasure of the Edo
shoguns, for example. Because of the time lag between the active roles of the
Minamoto warriors in the 12th century historical narrative and the
mostly unemployed and idle samurai class in Edo and Osaka of the time,
Yoshinaka and his friend Imai Kanehira, in the play male lovers who promised to
die together, might have been an entertaining ideal state of Bushido, a state
of mind enacted on the battlefield, but kept as an emotional modus operandi
when the sword was laid down. Kanehira in performance restores the ideal
of the strong warrior, and reinforces the prevalence of sympathy for the fallen
hero among Japanese audiences. Both Kiso and Kanehira are from the winning side
in the war, but choose a form of liebestod, a love death, rather than
commit suicide in the face of the enemy. Kanehira continues to appeal in
performace to this day, despite the same sex vows the two men take before their
deaths.
Meiji and modern Noh performance, being so strongly tied to the
responsibilities of the acting families to teach the repertoire to amateurs, to
publish texts and annotations, to perform and introduce their art to audiences
throughout the world, and to live up to their canonization as so-called Japanese
‘living treasures,’ has taken the idea of purveyor and consumer a huge distance
away from the patronage of individuals and the sexual intimacies of the
Muromachi era. Now Noh is traditional, and classical. Very few plays are being
added to the regular repertoire, and very few actors adopted from completely
outside the acting families ever make it to the stage. Gone are the connections
between the Buddhist clergy, the temples, the chigo, and becoming an
actor. Many old plays considered inappropriate for foreign audiences were
dropped from the repertoire of all the acting families. There is a history of government
interference since the Meiji in the activities and repertoire of Japanese drama
and its venues. Iwata Jun’ichi’s Honcho nanshoku ko – nanshoku bunken shoshi
(Thoughts on Same-Sex Male Relations in Japan – Bibliography of Homosexual
Literature in Japan) published privately from his writings in the 1930’s
lists many Noh plays dealing with same sex relations that have been abandoned,
become haikyoku or lost repertoire. Matsumushi and Kagetsu
are both on Iwata’s list, and I have included them here in English translation
because at least the text is still available.
But I have also included here my translation of Yoroboshi
because, though quite acceptable to modern audiences because its text is loaded
with Buddhist terminology and because the setting at Tennoji is highly
nostalgic for audiences from Kyoto and Osaka, I believe the beggar yoroboshi
as he calls himself, is not a priest by any means, nor does he achieve
salvation in the context of the play, but a male prostitute now wizened and
wasted by venereal disease, who has come to Tennoji to receive alms on that
special day in Spring reserved to honor the memory of the temple’s founder
Prince Shotoku (7th century) whose reason for founding the temple
was to provide aid to the infirm, the ill, and to lost children. Yoroboshi fits
all these categories: he was thrown out of his home by his father for having
sold himself into sexual slavery, I believe, though the text is not specific
enough about this. He is ill with then incurable sexually transmitted disease,
and he is infirm, though young, because he says that his legs are wobbly, and
he makes constant use of a cane throughout the performance. The entire play is
a tribute to the Tennoji, not a deeply felt revelation of the why and how of Yoroboshi’s
unfortunate life. We want to know so much more about why the so-called father
wants to make contrition for throwing his only son out of his house. We want to
know so much more about how Yoroboshi made a living meeting strangers
along the road on the plains of Naniwa. We want to know whether Yoroboshi
really wants to go home to Takayasu with a man who only says he is his father.
In the last seconds of the play, Yoroboshi expresses legitimate doubt
about the revelation, and he has nothing by way of revelation to comfort his
father, and to acknowledge him before going off at the dawn bell from Tennoji
back to a place for which he must certainly not have a fond memory.
What to make of this? Because Yoroboshi
is a form of fallen hero, the Japanese audience may find him appealing enough.
But does he achieve the Buddhist salvation promised to those who accept alms on
this day at the Tennoji? We are left wondering. Of the four plays presented in
translation here, Yoroboshi is the most altered, cut, rewritten and
variant in performance. One cannot help but think that this editing process
happened in modern times.
The four plays follow in the
order that I have outlined. Matsumushi is timeless and seems to best
represent the older animistic beliefs of legend. It seems the oldest play to
me. Kagetsu plays upon the themes of Buddhist festival, the Kiyomizu
Temple in Kyoto, and on the boy kept as a male lover by priests. This play
seems closest in spirit to the joy and affirmation of same sex relations in the
Muromachi era. Kanehira, though clearly written in the time of Zeami, is
perhaps most representative of the type of play appreciated by Edo audiences,
even though the ending is shocking. Two men committing love suicide on the
battlefield seems remote indeed from the more pressing concern of urban
suicide, seppuku, ordered and honored by the shogunal government. There
is a choice in the romance of Kanehira and Yoshinaka, while none in most
sanctioned seppuku during the Edo era. That is why the drama of Chushingura
is so appealing now, as it was then. The 47 masterless samurai chose their
death. It was not ordered, at least in the dramatic version of events. We now
know that only after a long court case did the Tokugawa government permit the
band to avenge their lord’s untimely death, and that they all died the same day
as the edict was issued. In such an era, the purity of Kanehira surely
appealed to a samurai class under the constant watch of the shogunal
authorities, and for whom no battlefield was present, or in the offing.
Kagetsu (Florimund)
Tr.
Kenneth L. Richard
Author unknown (ancient play, perhaps
preceeding Zeami)
Shite:
Kagetsu, a kasshiki1
Waki: a
traveling priest (Kagetsu’s father)
Ai: a man
living in the vicinity of the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto
Setting:
Kyoto, Higashiyama, the precincts of the Kiyomizu Temple. One fine day, at the
height of Spring.
Background of the Story: A priest living
in the foothills of Mt. Hiko (the name means man, or Prince mountain) in
Tsukushi2 has gone to Kyoto and is about to make a
pilgrimage to the Kiyomizu Temple. He has become a priest after the
disappearance of his son, abducted and probably sold into slavery at age seven.
From a man who lives near the temple, the priest hears of a beautiful boy, a kasshiki,
who has remarkable talents. Soon after, Kagetsu appears and gives an account of
the meaning of his name. He then sings a kouta (an entertaining short
song, perhaps somewhat erotic), then takes aim with a bow at a warbler in a
flowering tree, and follows this elegant aside with a dance that tells the
story (engi) of the founding of Kiyomizu Temple. The priest is consumed
with interest at this sight, and realizes that the boy is indeed his long, lost
son. He declares that he is the father, but the boy remains suspicious. The
priest explains how his son had been taken from him before he took the tonsure.
The boy says he will show him the art of drumming. As Kagetsu drums, he tells
of how he had been abducted by tengu, taken through many mountains, etc.
In the end, Kagetsu joins the man who claims to be his father in a religious
pilgrimage.
The entire play is a simple, yet
elegant, progression of the artistic achievements of an accomplished male
dancer, going far beyond what is expected of a kasshiki. Here is the
menu of Kagetsu’s artistic charms:
1.) his name giving (nanori)名乗り.
2.) His small art song lieder (kouta)小歌
3.) His song of related imagery dan’uta 段歌, like part of a suite “ It is the willow…”
4.) His kusemai 曲舞 telling of the founding of the Kiyomizu Temple.
5.) His drumming (yappachi)八撥 and his story-telling about the tengu.
SHIDAI
Waki
Drifting
clouds left to the wind’s fancy. Drifting clouds left to the wind’s fancy.
Where will I lodge tonight?
Waki
I am a
priest who lives at the foot of Mt. Hiko in Tsukushi. When I was a layman, I
had a son, but he disappeared. That is why I thought of leaving the world, and
so I am as you see me, a wanderer about the Provinces.
Waki
If only
one knew of presentiment and destiny.
If only one knew of presentiment and destiny. Of what, then would a parent worry? What child would feel obliged to his
parent? A long journey seems not
far To lay down in pastures and in
mountains That is the true home I seek. To lay down in pastures and in
mountains That is the true home I
seek.
Waki
Ah, the
journey is soon over. I have
arrived in the capital. I must go
first of all to see the flowers blossoming at Kiyomizu.
I have
come from a very distant place. I want to go to Kiyomizu. May I ask you to
accompany me?
It is
an easy thing to do. I would be happy to accompany you.
Yes indeed.
There are always things of every shape and color here in the capital, but among
them, is a kasshiki by the name of Florimund, one possessed of a
remarkable body and arresting art. I must introduce him to you—today, everyone
goes to Kiyomizu. I shall accompany you there.
Shite
I am here, the one and only Florimund.
This is what I say to those who ask me of my name: ‘The moon is eternal, that
goes without saying; and if you ask me of the meaning of the ‘flower’ in my
name, I answer that the flower belongs to the Spring, as does the melon to
Summer, fruits and nuts to the Autumn, fire to Winter, and just as perfect
result belongs to fate, also a flower, I give you these lines till life be
done, and when you hear me
Unison
Know ye
that not even the highest priest of all, for all time, forgets to tell the
whole world, unafraid, that I am Florimund, the only one.
Ai
Yes, indeed,
well today I was detained at the Ungo Temple3
for there my heart was taken by the flowers, so to speak, shot by an arrow of
love. We friends of the Spring who
frolic together know nothing can separate us.
Shite
In the
beginning was the willow, then the cherry, followed then by the crying of
geese, and now the warblers.6 Yoyu
pitted against Florimund, different in name, but not a whit different in their
skill at the bow. Show us the
warblers. We say show us your
warblers. Kicking aside his fine and high fashion wooden clogs, hoisting
high his slatted pantaloons, pulling off the sleeve of his fine hunting cloak
to reveal his shoulder, he takes aim at the flowering branches, fires a shot,
whoosh. Everyone knows he means to
make a direct hit, but saved by Buddha’s law, he is held at the brink by the
admonition against taking a life.7
MONDO
Ai
Astounding
mind-boggling language. You’ve aroused everyone’s interest. I have heard that
there is a dance and a song with it about the temple’s history.8 Come pique our interest further. Sing us
a few lines.
Shite
It is
an easy thing to do Sir. I shall perform it for you.
SASHI
Shite
Kannon’s
great benevolence and compassion, like a Spring flower
Unison
Emanates
its fragrance upon a mortal world of Ten evils Autumn moonlight from her thirty-three forms casts its clear
shadow upon the waters of Five impurities.9
KUSE
Unison
The
temple of which I speak was founded in the Spring of the second year of Taito
by Sakanoue no Tamuramaro,10 and
still today there is nary a soul who does not come here to cup from its fresh
water pool, unblemished, formed of the droplets falling from the limbs of trees
high on the peak of Mt. Otowa. Once, the falling waters were tinged with the
five colors of paradise. In awe, men went up the mountain to investigate the
spring from whence the water flowed, and when they did, they found a tree
buried in the flowing water. Its name is ‘the old rotted tree Green Willow,’
and from it shone a light with a ethereal fragrance that cast a spell to the
four winds.
Shite
Let
there be no mistake.
Unison
Putting
their hands together in supplication, they asked if this could be an emanation
of the Kannon of the willow branch11,
and when the miracle was confirmed, they were asked to spread word of it, and
when they did, the old rotted tree sprouted with fresh green leaves, and even
old cherry trees, no longer recognizable, through this strange grace, blossomed
forth, and in a thousand new ways, flowers sprang from all the old trees, and
so it continues to this day.
Waki
How is
it that your name is Florimund?
Shite
What do
you wish to know?
Waki
Where
do you come from?
Shite
I am
from Tsukushi.
Waki
And how
did you come to wander through the various Provinces?
Shite
When I
was seven, I went up into Mt. Hiko, was taken by the tengu, and so I
traveled about.
Waki
Then
there can be no mistake. I am your father Saemon Ietsugi! Have you forgotten
me?
Ai
I say,
what is this priest saying?
Waki
It is
so. Florimund is my son from my days as a layman. That is the truth.
Kyogen actor
How can
I trust you? Stand aside. Let Florimund answer for himself. Play your drum12. Let us see what you mean.
Shite
Well
then, I climbed Mt. Hiko, and (addressing the audience) at the age of seven, by
the tengu
ISSEI
Unison
Was
taken on a journey through the
mountains I suffer to remember it.
(The beating of his drum)
DAN’UTA
Unison
Taken
on a journey through the mountains
he suffers to remember it
Firstly, in Tsukushi it was Mt. Hiko with particular deep awe for the temple of the Four Deva
Kings, then in Sanuki it was to Matsuyama, and then to the white peak of
Shiromine in the falling, drifting snow, and then to Mt. Daisen in Hoki to Mt. Daisen in Hoki yes, and after
that to place even more dreadful than my Tengu captors, the infamous Devil’s
parapet on the border between Tango and Tanba13.
Unison
And
then to the mountains nearest to Kyoto, then to the mountains nearest to Kyoto
yes, to the first hut on Mt. Atago, then to the second camp on the top of Mt.
Hirano, then to the famous peak of Mt. Hiei on to the next
was my mind able to feel the clarity of the moon shining over the stream at Yokawa? and my favorite as the saying goes ‘is
once enough for this to pass?’14 of Mt.
Katsuragi, yes, and then on to Mt. Takama, Sanjo Peak and Mt. Shaka, climbing
even to the lofty peak of Mt. Fuji15 where
one rises and sleeps in the clouds is this enough for you to see me whirling
about my mind in as much chaos as
the sound of my sasara rattle16 sarasara sarasara singing as I rattle, dancing as I count
them mountain after mountain after
peak after peak village after
village going in a circle coming round to meet you, my
priest how happy I am to meet
you henceforward I shall cast aside my dancing
rattle and together with you my
priest set off on a journey that
is the way of the Buddha setting
off with you on a journey to
Buddha’s way how happy I
am to
go how happy I am to go !
Bibliography
Iwata, Jun’ichi. 2002. Honcho nanshoku ko – nanshoku bunken shoshi (Thoughts on Same Sex Male Relations in Japan – Bibliography of Homosexual Literature in Japan). Tokyo: Hara shobo
Kanehira 兼平 (2) Jones Monumenta Nipponica (MN) 18:1/4
(1963), also in Keene 1970;. Sieffert II 1979
Koyama, Hiroshi et.al. 1973. Nihon koten bungaku zenshu 34 Yokyokushu. Tokyo:Iwanami shoten
List of Noh Plays in Translation at
http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/biblio/noh-trans.html#biblio
Nihon Keizei Shimbunsha ed. 2003 Tokyo National Museum catalogue Kamakura-The Art of Zen Buddhism 鎌倉――禅の源流
Nishino, Haruo. 1998. Yokyoku hyakuban in Shin nihon koten bungaku taikei vol. 57. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten
Shimazaki, Chifumi. 1993. Battle Noh Book 2. Published as: Warrior Ghost plays from the Japanese Noh Theater. Ithaca: East Asia Program, Cornell University. [5: Kanehira, Michimori, Tomoakira, Tomoe, Yashima, Yorimasa]
Watson, M. Pre-Modern Japanese Literature Listserve at
http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/biblio/noh-trans.html
Yokomichi Mario, Omote Akira eds. 1963. Yokyokushu Ge in Nihon koten bungaku taikei vol. 41. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten
Yoroboshi 弱法師 (4) Nipon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (NGS) III 1960.
1 The kasshiki 喝食were boys beloved of priests in the Zen temples where they assisted at table, as well as in the beds of their masters. So much attention was lavished on kasshiki by senior monks, that medieval shoguns issued edicts preventing them from wearing elaborate dress and makeup. Obviously, Kagetsu learned all of his skills before such edicts were passed! The mask for a beautiful youth, in the Noh drama, is called kasshiki.
2 Mt. Hiko sits at the boundary between the modern prefectures of Fukuoka and Oita, in northern Kyushu. The mountain has been known, since antiquity, as a place frequented by the yamabushi, or mountain ascetics, who are one of the esoteric bands in Japanese Buddhism. Mt. Hiko is said to have been inhabited by tengu, goblins resembling large beaked birds.
3 Once in the vicinity of Kodai Temple in Higashiyama, Kyoto, this temple has burned several times and no longer exists.
4 ‘brazenly disarrayed the blossoms’ comes from a phrase in a Chinese poem called ‘Ode to the Red Wall’ 赤壁賦 Sekiheki no Fu by Soshoku（Jp.）Su Tung-p’o (1036-1101), the most reknown poet of the Northern Sung dynasty. The composer Nakanoshima Kin’ichi wrote a piece for shakuhachi in 1934 by the same name that contains the lyrics, in Japanese, of Su’s ode. Here is an English translation by Tsuge Gen’ichi. I am endebted to the International Shakuhachi Society’s webpage: http://www.komuso.com/pieces/Sekiheki_no_Fu.html
………………….Under the full moon
Only a handful of stars.
Laying aside their arms.
Warriors
Might have once sung
With the magpies flying south.
Warriors,
Triumphant in victory -
How changed the times!
Where are they now?
Far from the fleeting world,
Light in spirit
On a leaf-like craft.
Let us toast
The moonlit night.
How wonderful!
This ephemeral life
(If extinguished,
A dream,
A gossamer shimmer?)
Put into such a world -
How short, how short!
On the Great Wide River
Flowing to eternity
We drink to the moon
The whole night through -
Goblets
And goblets,
Back and forth.
The new moon waxes,
If the clouds clear
(They laugh, then cry)
The full face
Of the moon.
Ah, the flowing river
Day and night it courses
Though one thousand autumns,
Ten thousand ages.
Why falter
Over small illusions?
That full moon
Over the mountain pass!
The reflected image
On the river surface!
However long one watches,
There is no tiring.
However much one takes in,
There is no end.
Glowing and shining,
One thousand miles
The moon floats
Into ten thousand homes.
How elegant!
How elegant!
Well,
Let us have another!
Let the current
Take us,
Let the current
Take us.
5 Yoyu (Jp.) 養由（基）appears in the oldest of the Chinese dynastic histories, the Shih Ching where it is reported that he was a master archer in the period of the Spring and Autumn Annals, and that he could shoot a fine willow leaf at one hundred paces.
6 Yoyu’s story from the Chinese annals deals only with his aiming for a single willow leaf. Aiming for a cherry has no literary antecedent, but aiming toward the sound of a crying goose is a story from the 4th Book of The Tales of Heike called Nue 鵼in which Minamoto Yorimasa, in 1161, while serving at the Palace in Kyoto, is instructed to fire his expert arrow at a menacing black cloud that had several times before brought misfortune. The could contained the strange and ghostly bird called a nue with the head of a monkey, the body of a badger, the tail of a viper, and the legs of a tiger. The story of Yoyu appears in the narrative, mistakenly attributing his skill to shooting down a goose far above the clouds. No Chinese records mention this. They do mention, however, that Yoyu shot a monkey. The story of the Nue is also a Noh play.
7 The abrupt intrusion of a Buddhist injunction certainly is not in keeping with the merry atmosphere of Florimund’s virtuoso performance. Perhaps the line is inserted because this is going on within the precincts of the Kiyomizu Temple.
8 Florimund is about to perform a Kusemai 曲舞, a popular form of dance in the medieval period that consisted of a narrative song accompanied by a drum. The dance was a simple addition to the drumbeat and the song. Not to be confused with the more elaborate dance at the end of a Noh play. (See note 26 by Prof. Nishino Haruo, p. 297 of the Yokyoku hyakuban edition of this play.)
9 Ten evils 十悪and Five impurities五濁 are associated with the sins of the mortal world that the Goddess of Mercy, Kwanyin (Ch.) or Kannon (Jp.) sweeps away with her compassion and light of her goodness. The Ten evils stem from the sango 三業 (Body, Mouth, and Will): 1.) taking of life, 2.) thievery, 3.) adultery, 4.) slander, 5.) lies, 6.) verbal abuse, 7.) deception, 8.) coveting, 9.) anger, and 10.) stupidity. The Five impurities refer to the pollutions resulting from improper modes of life: 1. from outbreaks (famine, epidemics, and war), 2.) from overcrowded massed life (deterioration of body and mind), 3.) from desire (the strife the comes from lust and love), 4.) from seeing (wrong philosophies), and 5.) from destiny (a life that ends at 10 years). The thirty-three manifestations of the Kannon (Avalokitesvara), as given in the Lotus Sutra, are often portrayed in painting and sculpture. Some of them are: white-robed Kannon白衣観音, nyoirin Kannon如意輪観音, thousand-armed Kannon千手観音, eleven-headed Kannon十一面観音, and horse-headed Kannon馬頭観音.That Florimund should invoke the image of Avalokitesvara (Kannon) here is appropriate because the goddess is often pictured with both feminine and masculine attributes, and is always beautiful. The senior monks who kept beautiful boys probably saw the kasshiki as emanations of Kannon. There is a lovely painting of a white-robed Kannon, almost nude, with both masculine beauty (a moustache) and feminine hands and feet, seated on a fur cushion on a rock, in the collection of the Zen monastery, the Kenchoji建長寺in Kamakura. The painting appears to be in the Sung style, but is probably of a favorite kasshiki. It was shown as part of an exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum in honor of the 750th anniversary of the Kenchoji, in June-July, 2003. See the catalogue TNM, Nihon Keizei Shimbunsha ed.2003 Kamakura-The Art of Zen Buddhism 鎌倉――禅の源流, pp. 172 and 148-49.
10 The second year of Taito is 806 a.d. and Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758-811) was a military official in the early Heian court. He is credited with the founding of the Kiyomizu Temple. Its first head was the Abbot Enchin 延鎮.
11 Another of the 33 manifestations of Kannon, not mentioned above, is the green willow image in which the figure holds a sprig of willow in its right hand. 楊柳観音
12 the drum in question here is the kakko 鞨鼓, a set of four or so small drums on a wooden pole, each with a set of attached sticks that when manipulated, punctuate the rhythm of a dance.
13 the temple of the Four Deva Kings (四王寺), as is Mt. Hiko（彦山）, is also in Fukuoka Prefecture, old Chikuzen 筑前Province. No longer extant, it was on Mt. Ono小野山. Sanuki 讃岐Province was in the northeast of Shikoku. The Matsuyama 松山of the text may not be the same modern city of Matsuyama which would have been in the old Province of Iyo伊予. Mt. Shiromine白峰 is part of Sanuki Province, again in Shikoku. Mt. Daisen大山, in the old Province of Hoki伯耆 refers to the present mountain Daisen on the border between the modern Prefectures of Tottori鳥取 and Okayama岡山, on Honshu. Mt. Daisen and most of the others mentioned figure prominently in the activities of the yamabushi 山伏and their sect of Shugendo修験道. The yamabushi were Kagetsu’s abductors, from whom he obviously learned his artistic craft as well as his somewhat occult knowledge.
14 ‘is once enough for this to pass’ is taken from an anonymous poem on Love in the Shin Kokin Wakashu of the early 13th century (SKKS XI:990): ‘Yoso ni nomi, mite ya yaminan, katsuragi ya, takama no yama no, mine no shirakumo’ Is once enough, from afar, for this to pass? Think of the high peaks of Katsuragi, then of Takama; think of the white clouds wreathing the peak. In certain context, this poem could be construed in a sexual manner. The poem occurs in the even older Wakan roeishu和漢朗詠集of 1012, and the poet Minamoto Toshiyori 源俊頼（1055―1129）(Shunrai) used it as an exemplar in his Toshiyori zuino、a book of poetic criticism and analysis written during his lifetime for the daughter of a Fujiwara court noble.
15 Mt. Atago愛宕-in modern Kyoto in Ukyo-ku, to the west of Takao高雄, domain of the yamabushi.
Mt. Hirano比良野-on the Western shore of Lake Biwa.
Mt. Hiei比叡山-in the Northeast of the modern city of Kyoto, its tutelary peak.
Yokawa-横川the site of hermitages on the slopes of Mt. Hiei. Figures in the
last chapters of The Tale of Genji.
Mt. Katsuragi葛城 and Mt. Takama高間-both the domains of the yamabushi, these peaks are part of a number of mountains on the border between the old Provinces of Yamato大和 and Kawachi河内, modern Nara Pref. and the Osaka region. The most reknown of the peaks in this area is Mt. Kongo金剛山.
Sanjo Peak山上大峰 and Mt. Shaka釈迦の嶽-both in the center of the Yoshino吉野 area of modern Nara Prefecture, and again, the exclusive domain of the yamabushi.
Mt. Fuji-the most sacred mountain of Japan to the Shugendo sect, well known today by the same name.
16 known also as the binzasara編木子, a flexible rattle with a number of clackable plates sewn together as a string and played with both hands. Used originally in performances of dengaku田楽and utabikuni歌比丘尼, popular entertainments at agriculturally important solstices, and popular songs by nuns in search of alms, actually a form of prostitution.