Kanehira (Imai’s End) 兼平

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 13^th 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 12^th 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 (7^th 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.

Kanehira (Imai’s End)

Tr. Kenneth L. Richard

Type of Play: Shuramono or warrior play, type 2

Author:

Shite: (1st half): an aged boatman

Shite: (2nd half): the ghost of Imai Kanehira

Waki: traveling priest

Waki companion: traveling priest

Ai: keeper of the boat crossing

Setting: the journey, by boat from Yabase to Awadzu in the Province of Omi, modern Otsu in Shiga Pref. A summer day. In the second half, the setting switches to the meadow of Awadzu, on the next evening and on into the night.

Background of the Story: As with most of the warrior plays, type 2, in the Noh repertoire, the characters are drawn from incidents in The Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari- 13th c.). The play Kanehira concerns the battlefield deaths of both Minamoto Yoshinaka (Kiso no Yoshinaka as he is usually referred to) and his friend Imai Kanehira in 1184, during the winter, in one of the final battles of the war between the Minamoto and Taira families that brought an end to the Heian era and the beginnings of a new shogunal government in Kamakura. Though both Yoshinaka and Kanehira were on the winning side, they were attacked at Awadzu (modern Otsu) and brought down. They were attached emotionally through their bond as children who suckled at the breasts of the same wet nurse; thus, more than mere warriors, they were brothers in gi 義or military prowess and responsibility to the forces of the Minamoto, as well as brothers at heart,　in jo 情or mutual feeling. They make a pledge to die together rather than be taken by the enemy, but they also pledge their undying devotion to each other. That is the central point of the play.

Suicide (jigai 自害) is mentioned as an alternative to being murdered by an enemy troop of lesser standing. Both men agree to this plan, making their story a love story with a tragic ending in which principles of emotional attachment (jo) predominate over military honor (gi). The play’s appeal to the Japanese is less in its literary prowess and the final sacrifice the two men make for love, than in a long meisho-tsukushi (exhaustive compendium of place names) on Mt. Hiei, at the foothills of which the two had died. The focus of Kanehira is definitely on the taboo of the double suicide of Kanehira and Yoshinaka at the end, not on the litany to Mt. Hiei.

Here is a list of the taboos broken in this play:

Running away from the enemy. The two men find themselves alone with each other. Thus, they give up the idea of an ‘enemy.’ There is no more enemy, only themselves.

Agreeing to stand and fight together as a pair, instead of part of a larger army. Thus, they give up the idea of ‘loyalty.’

Proposing suicide, a love pact to ensure that the enemy does not win. Thus, they give up the idea of ‘victory’ or ‘defeat.’

Being caught from behind by an arrow, perhaps an allusion to homosexual sex. Thus, one of the partners (Yoshinaka) gives up the idea of recognition, being able to give his name (nanori名乗り), fight to an honorable death, be redeemed (jobutsu成仏).　

Falling against one’s sword from the backside, again an allusion to being penetrated by choice. Thus, one of the partners (Kanehira) denies the self, gives himself up to himself.

Finally, to me the effect of Kanehira seems to be pure release: no enemy, no loyalty no cause, no victory or defeat, no recognition, no self. Is it any wonder that Mt. Hiei is praised? For centuries, Hiei had been the center of male religious activism, including homosexuality. In a larger sense, mountains had always been the prime male symbol in the Japanese native belief system.

SHIDAI

Waki and waki companion

First time on a journey along the road through Shinano first time on a journey along the road from Shinano in search of Kiso’s final place

NANORI

Waki

I’m a priest from deep in the mountains of Kiso. Now, I have heard the story of how Kiso, of the same name, came to his end on the meadow of Awadzu in Goshu, and so I have hurried here now to enquire and to pray for him.

AGEUTA

Waki and waki companion

Road from Shinano famous for its bridge over the chasm at Kiso famous for its bridge over the chasm at Kiso to pray for a soul we make our pillows in the grassy [1]shade by the roadside nights become nights and days number until we come nearer to the road to Omi arriving now at Yabase inlet arriving at Yabase inlet.

ISSEI

Shite

Worldly deeds sad and floating reeds to float and pile in a boat of my own soul’s distress see how the fires of my mind singe before the reeds in turn are burned

MONDO

Waki

Hear, hear, your boat is our vehicle of delivery. We need it, hear me.

Shite

This is not the ferry of Yamada Yabase. See for yourself. I carry loads of firewood and brush. It cannot be your vehicle of necessity.

Waki

I see that it is a boat of brush portage yes, but allow me to see it as our vehicle of delivery. There is no other boat at the crossing. There shall be extra blessings for those who help the tonsured priest, and so I say set out your boat

Shite

Yes, as you say, since you are priests, you are bound to differ from ordinary souls. Besides, the sutras say that ‘blessed be the ferryman, for he has a boat.’ 1

Waki

My boat awaits as the day closes on your journey

Shite

Even at this hour of meeting, on the Sea of Omi2,

Unison of Shite and Waki

A boat shall set out from Yabase, and it shall be a sad ferry carrying travelers.

AGEUTA

Shite and Waki

It shall indeed be a boat on drifting waters a sad boat through the world where tear drenched sleeves shall not dry my rudder pole seeks the familiar water yet touches not those whom it steers But you being men of the cloth gives me no regret for my boat Hurry, hurry to board Hurry, hurry to board please.

MONDO

Waki

May I ask something of the captain of the boat? Is not the mountain I see in the background a famous place?

Shite

It is so. It is a famous place. Ask, and I shall tell you.

Waki

Is the peak directly across the great Mt. Hiei?

Shite

Indeed it is Mt. Hiei. At its foot are the 21 shrines of Sanno.3 In the forest is the shrine of the Eight Princes.4 It can be seen all the way to the townspeople’s houses in Tozu Sakamoto.5

Waki

And isn’t Mt. Hiei in the Northeast of the capital?

Shite

Indeed it is the mountain that saves us. It blocks the devils from entering, drives away evil spirits. That is not all. It is said to be a sacred peak of Becoming Buddha. It takes the shape of Vulture Peak where he preached the Lotus Sutra. It takes Tendai for its religious name, and like China, it has a cave at its summit.6 With one heart did the Emperor Kanmu and Dengyo Daishi see fit to create an edifice in the Enryaku years, and so we call it our protector.7 From here one can see as far as the main hall of the great temple.8

Waki

And so, is Omiya, what one calls Hashidono, also located in Sakamoto?9

Shite

Yes, indeed, at the bottom of the mountain. Do you see the heavily wooded area there in the shade? It is the Hashidono of which you speak, the Omiya shrine. Enter there.

Waki

Thanks be to you! When we consider that all living things are capable of Buddhahood, even we as humble priests should give our obeisance to such a god as Omiya.

Shite

Yes, please do. The Buddha belongs to everyone. If priests are to be one with him, even I should find no distance. The great and only Buddha vehicle (trails into the voice of the waki)

Waki

Lies on the peak where the forest of true words will protect the land

Shite

And in the foothills where the sea of the Great Vehicle will protect the land10

Waki (joins with the voice of the Shite)

And then shall we see visible the Three Learnings: precepts, meditation, and wisdom

Shite

Named the Three Stupa11

Waki

And so it is with men.

UTA

Unison

Three thousand worlds in a single vow manifested as a destiny leaving behind three thousand believers rising up until we see the fulsome moon over Yokawa cloudless then back again to the foothill shore of plashing waves to the lone pine of Karasaki in Shiga to the sacred palanquins of the seven shrines to the forest treetops where the Imperial visit blesses then plashing waves as the rudder pole that knows the water rows forward we reach the far away shore the far side of sad subsided waves until the forest of Awadzu nears waves plashing against distant memories where the mountain cherries are as green as the past vague shapes on the summer slopes of all that has past over the frothing sea until the brush cargo ship of souls timelessly as though reluctant to part with plashing waves draws near draw near! we pray hurry us to our rocky shore hurry us to Awadzu.

NAKAIRI

Shite (on arrival, the shite, as though he has been hiding his true identity, throws down the rudder pole, and exits. The waki debarks and takes his seat.)

AI (the real boatman now appears and announces that he is suspicious that others have been ferrying the priests across the lake. Asked by the priests, he begins to tell the tale of how Yoshinaka and Kanehira met their ends. As he speaks, the priests realize that their boatman had been none other than the ghost of Kanehira. They begin to pray.)

AGEUTA

Waki

Spread out our traveling clothes to catch the dew grass pillow spread out our traveling clothes to catch the dew grass pillow day grows dark and now it is night in the meadow of Awadzu a world filled with tragedy let us pray for their departed souls let us pray for their departed souls

SASHI

Shite (second part)

Flashing naked sword splinters bone and slashes my eye such pain my armor is sheathed in red waves of blood splattering like cut flowers on my quiver

ISSEI

Shite

Blessed by rain the morning breeze on the meadow of Awadzu blending in the voices of men building an camp the furor of a warrior melee

KAKEAI

Waki, to the shite

Strange indeed to a grass pillow on the meadow of Awadzu appears a figure dressed in armor and helmet who can he be?

Shite, to the waki

Foolish of you to ask have you come so far to pray for my departed soul and not noticed me? I am none other than Kanehira.

Waki, to the Shite

Imai Kanehira, by the name of Shiro, is no longer in this world. You must then be a dream?

Shite

Could I be merely a dream? Have you so soon forgotten the reality of a pole rudder that knew the waves, the tale that you heard in the boat that now takes shape?

Waki to the Shite

Surely what we heard in the boat came from the boatman from Yabase.

Shite

That boatman was none other than the real Kanehira

Waki to the Shite

From the beginning he seemed a man with a purpose. Who, then, was the boatman?

Shite

He was not a boatman

Waki

Nor a fisherman

Shite

Was he.

AGEUTA

Unison

Ferryman of Yabase Cove, that place of warriors ferryman of Yabase Cove It was me you saw By the same light, I now ask you to make of this boat a final barge of the Buddhist law and take me to the other side Save me

KURI

Chorus

Indeed in the melee of a delusionary world where life and death come and go as an instant, the young, the old, who precedes, who follows after, it’s all the same, what is not a dream, a phantom froth, mere shadow?

SASHI

Shite

A flower in full bloom is glorious for only a day

Unison

The moon shines clearly on the house of arrows and horses when there were a handful of warriors left and only seven horses Kiso rode away down the Omi road and Kanehira rode to meet him from Seta12 when they met there were over 300 riders

Shite

We fought many battles along the way all the horses were hit save two

Unison

Their strength exhausted Kanehira urged that they escape to that meadow of pines and there to disembowel themselves and so depressed and lonely reduced to two mounts they fled to the pine meadow of Awadzu.

KUSE

Unison

Kanehira speaks: the enemy, in great numbers, caught up to us from the rear we turned our horses around so that we could shoot defensive arrows when Kiso spoke to me about a promise he had made to himself---no matter how many of the enemy we repulsed, he wanted in the final moment for us to be together I knew there was purpose in his wish, so my answer was ‘yes.’ Kanehira speaks again: it is a selfish promise you have made think of all that you have set your hand to do in life, think of the shame you would bring on your family, is suicide the only answer? Imai turned away; reprimanded as Kiso was by Kanehira, he continued to retreat Yet later, Kiso, lonely and depressed, turned his remaining horse back toward the inner meadow of Awadzu, back to the field of pine.

Shite

The time was at the end of the first month

Unison

Moments of Spring fell back into freeze storm winds from Mt. Hiei blew the snow clouds until they blackened the sky foul, foul in his retreat knowing not the end nor the snow nor the thinly layered ice he bent his horse back toward Fukata he retreated, yet made no progress he fought yet made no gain until finally when he could no longer make out the head of his trusted horse Mochizuki he thought it would all end in futility and so he decided to commit suicide at that very place putting his hand to his sword he turned to look back in the direction in which Kanehira had retreated thinking of how far away from him he must now be, when

Shite

From whence it came I know not

Unison

This is the last moment when the life force is spent a single arrow reached him streaming directly in under his helmet wounded unable to bear the agony he fell from his horse and crashed to the ground Pray not for me pray first for my Lord it would not be fitting

RONGI

Chorus

What a painful story indeed! And what, then, happened to Kanehira in his final moment?

Shite

Though I knew not what had happened I continued to fight hiding in my heart that final wish of friends

Chorus

Later, quite unexpectedly I was told by the enemy

Shite

Kiso has been shot

Chorus

He heard the voice calling to him

Shite

What more have I to hope for?

Chorus

His mind made up, Kanehira

Shite

Makes a bold confession of love

NAKANORIJI

Chorus

Pressing down on the stirrups

Shite

Screaming, I, Imai Shiro, rushed into the straggling band that had slain Kiso

Unison

Declaring his name as Kanehira surrounded on both sides he gave them ample evidence of his bravado enemy quelling technique revealing his secret then chasing and cornering the troops at the beach at Awadzu he abruptly grabbed the reins of his horse cutting back through enemy troops flailing wildly as though he had the arms of a spider swinging figure eights in the air until he cut them all down and then as though it were a model exercise in suicide he bit his long sword between his teeth then fell forward until it pierced him dead Kanehira’s behavior at the end made all eyes take notice made all eyes take notice.13

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.