domestic plays was murder. Namboku's murder scenes are brutal and savage, but the horror in Mokuami's bloody scenes is greatly ameliorated by the poetic language employed and by the use of music and stylized, almost choreographic, movements. (In this play, Motome dies of a self-inflicted injury, but Seishin believes himself to be the boy's murderer; he also causes the death of Izayoi.) Another crime-extortion figured so frequently in late Tokugawa domestic plays that the term "extortion scene" came into existence. (In the present play, it occurs at the beginning of Act VI where Seishin and Izayoi blackmail her former protector. Their scheme is successful but it ends with an ironic twist of fate: their victim is exposed as a thief and it is his long-lost brother who does this.) And so many robbers figure in Mokuami's plays that he was known as "the thieves' playwright."
Some remarks must be made about the language and stylistic devices used by Mokuami. In the scenes leading up to a climax the speeches are all in the vernacular. In the climactic scenes they are written in the consciously heightened form of poetry, and in classical Japanese this means the use of the basic pattern of alternating lines in five and seven syllables; the "pivot word," which runs together, with no hint of transition, two separate ideas; and "related words," which are words related to one another by class or quality and are woven into the text. An example of the pivot word is found in the opening line of the Kiyomoto lyrics in Act II, Scene 2: "Even on a hazy moonlit night the images of the stars number one, two, three, four, five. 'Five strokes on the alarm bell?'" (p. 24). The reckoning of the stars slips at the number "five" into the number of bell strokes which Izayoi fears is the alarm raised at the discovery of her flight. In this literary device the logical conclusion of the first part and the beginning of the second are left unexpressed. An example of the "related words" is found in Act II, Scene 4. Seishin begins by referring to the river on whose banks he and Motome have met. This then calls forth such words as "current," "ice," "freeze," and "waves." (p. 60.) Mokuami was also fond of splitting lines so that the thought expressed by the first character is carried on by a second (or third or fourth) and then tossed back to the first and brought to a conclusion (pp. 23-24, 38-39, 48-49, 60, 123).
These literary devices present problems of varying difficulty for the translator. The "split dialogue" and the "related words" are relatively easy. The pivot word, however, can only be translated literally in a clumsy way or explained in elaborate footnotes. When they occur in this play, the cunning effect has been sacrificed for the meaning. No attempt has been made to retain the syllabic count; this is an impossibility.
Another problem is the structure of the play. Western readers expecting a long sweep leading to a climax will be disappointed. As in most kabuki plays, there are several climaxes distributed in each act. The most important in this play occur as follows: Act II: the encounter of Izayoi and Seishin, Motome's death, and Seishin's metamorphosis in character; Act IV: Izayoi's renunciation of the world; Act VI: the extortion scene and the discovery of the fraternal relationship between Seishin and Hakuren; Act VII: Izayoi's death and Seishin's suicide. The structural balance is further upset by the almost equal importance of three characters—Seishin, Izayoi, and Hakuren. (In Act IV Seishin does not appear, and Hakuren is the leading character.) Moreover, too much is made of the haiku poet and his comic junkman friend in Act IV.
This can be explained by the fact that the kabuki has always been a repertory theater with a full complement of actors signed for the season. Once the company was assembled, it was the playwright's responsibility to provide each actor with roles within his specialty. (Actors specialized in the following parts: young man, adult male, villain, old man, adolescent boy, comic, young girl, adult woman, old woman, and child. In the 1859-1860 season there happened to be three senior actors and a popular comedian at the theater for which Mokuami was the house writer.) This necessity sometimes led Mokuami and others to write a big scene for each actor to play. A glaring example here is the death of Ofuji in Act VI. Hakuren's wife has been a secondary character until attention is suddenly focused upon her in a contrived and unbelievable scene. She pretends to turn informer on her husband after the revelation that he is a thief, in order to force her husband to kill her. It was a role tailored to the personality of an actor who specialized in playing noble women.
The use of music by Mokuami has been mentioned. He was partial to the Kiyomoto school for its pensive and melancholy melodic line which made it peculiarly suitable for sad love scenes. He used it in Act II, Scene 2, in the encounter of Izayoi and Seishin. (It must be noted here that the narrator, or chanter, and a samisen player accompany the scene in full sight of the audience. The chanter in other scenes of the play is normally concealed.) The lyrics for this scene were written by Mokuami, but he often appropriated them from other Kiyomoto pieces or from the narratives of puppet plays. In the latter case, Mokuami sets the scene so that the music comes from a neighboring house. This procedure is sometimes unsatisfactory. The emotional state of the actors onstage and the characters in the music may coincide in general, but not always in detail. In Act VII, Seishin's overwrought condition as he prepares to kill his son is echoed in the narration from a puppet play about a father's anguish at the impending execution of his wayward daughter. There is a concurrence in pathos, but the narrative is so famous that it serves to distract rather than intensify the tragic mood. But perhaps a similarity in mood was all that Mokuami's audiences required, for in the face of the overall impact of the scene, niceties of musical appropriateness were of small import.
In treating the theme of retribution in terms of human passions at a less-than-princely level, Mokuami was in his element. The fate of a monk torn between the demands of the flesh and the spirit, and the consequences of his easy capitulation to worldly desires, were more readily understandable to audiences than, say, the fate of an ambitious warrior. They could also sympathize with a prostitute more than with a princess. Monk and prostitute, bound by karma, lurk in the shadowy edge of society, and even as they alter their course (he turns thief; she becomes successively a kept woman, nun, wife and mother), each new development brings them a step closer to their ultimate destiny. Mokuami was aware of the importance of contrasting moods in creating greater dramatic force. Each of the four acts has a comic opening which leads to one or more moving climaxes, some of which are characterized by poetic passages of great beauty. All of the leading roles are eminently playable—another reason why this play, which is representative of the works of one of the major playwrights in the kabuki, and typical of a dramatic genre, has remained a favorite in the kabuki repertory for over a hundred years.
SYNOPSIS OF
HISTORY PLAYS
ACT ONE
Koizuka Motome, Izayoi's brother and a page in the Ōe household, is injured by a stray arrow during an archery contest. Motome refuses monetary compensation, but when he learns that his father is trying desperately to raise an impossibly large sum, he accepts. Carrying the money, he starts home, unaware that it is meant for Seishin, his sister's lover, whom he has never met.
Yaegaki Monza, a lordless samurai, is accepted as retainer to the Ōe family on the recommendation of the wicked advisor, Kageyama Budayū, who has seen evidence of Monza's skill with the sword and wishes to use him for his own ends. Budayū binds Monza to him by giving him a sword and the promise of his daughter's hand in marriage.
ACT THREE
On the night of the wedding of his daughter to Monza, Budayū reveals his plan of overthrowing the Ōe family and demands that Monza join him. Monza is forced to agree, but realizing that his loyalty to the Ōe family is greater, he changes his mind, kills Budayū who turns on him, and escapes. Seishin, now a thief, has broken into Budayū's house to steal an heirloom sword, and observes Monza's flight. Monza is accused of the theft. It is this sword which Seishin restores to Budayu's son Shigenojō in Act VII, Scene 2.
ACT FIVE
Shigenojō
