EA 120 Week 3b Reading and Discussion Questions

Week 3b The Poetics of Noh

a. Rhetorical Devices in Noh

b. Komachi and the Hundred Nights (Kayoi Komachi)

c. Komachi and the Hundred Nights analysis of opening scene

d. Sotoba Komachi (Komachi on the Stupa)

Background Information: Medieval Legends about Ono no Komachi

In this class we will be reading two Noh plays about the 9th century poet Ono no Komachi to think about how language is used in Noh. Although Komachi was singled out for praise in the first imperial anthology of Japanese poetry, almost nothing is known about her life except for what we can guess from a few brief prefaces to surviving poems, most of them love poems. Perhaps because of this paucity of factual evidence, she was the focus of a number of medieval stories. By the 14th century it had become established that when she was young she was very proud and very beautiful and had many suitors. She teasingly told one of her suitors, the Fukakusa Captain, that if he slept by a carriage shaft in front of her house for 100 nights, she would give herself to him. There are different versions of the ending to this story: in one variant his father dies on the 100th night, in another he dies of exposure to the elements. At any rate he is not able to complete his task. This story forms the basis for the plays Kayoi Komachi (Komachi and the 100 Nights), Sotoba Komachi (Komachi and the Stupa) and Sekidera Komachi (Komachi at the Sekidera Temple).

Later Komachi’s parents die, leaving her destitute, and she grows old, eventually wandering the countryside in a semi-mad state (Sotoba Komachi and Sekidera Komachi). She dies on Ichiwara moor. Not long afterward, the famous poet Ariwara no Narihira (the philandering husband in Izutsu), who according to medieval legend was also one of Komachi's lovers, is traveling through the desolate Ichiwara moor. During the night he hears a low moaning which takes the form of the first half of a poem: “when the autumn wind blows through my hollow eyes, oh the pain, the pain” (akikaze no/fuku ni tsuketomo/ aname aname). The phrase “aname” is an exclamation of pain which can also mean "eye-holes." The next day when he looks for the source, he finds a skull with pampas grass growing through its eyes, and he realizes this must be the skull of Ono no Komachi. He completes the poem: “I hate to say it, but this is Ono [a small field] overgrown with pampas grass” (ono to iwaji/susuki oikeri). He buried her remains where he found them.

If you are interested in reading more of Ono no Komachi's poetry, see the translations by Jane Hirschfield in The Ink Dark Moon, a collection of poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikubu (a 10th century female poet also well-known for her passionate love poetry).

READING QUESTIONS :

Komachi and the Hundred Nights and Sotoba Komachi (Komachi and the Stupa)

1. When is the dramatic present in each play, and how does it relate to the historical Ono no Komachi? (I.e. is Ono no Komachi still alive or is she long dead?)

2. How does time progress in the course of the play? (i.e., chronologically, possession causing a reenactment, danced reneactments, narrative retellings, etc.)

3. How does the story of Komachi's life (the chronology of her life story) as revealed in the plays differ from the plot (the order in which events are presented in the play)?

4. In each play, what does Komachi want? What is her relationship to the waki priest(s)? Compare the priest in Kayoi Komachi with those in Sotoba Komachi -- are they presented differently? How and why? In Sotoba Komachi what Buddhist doctrine does Komachi use to defend herself? Does she win her argument?

5. How would you describe Komachi's character in each play?

6. How is the relationship between Komachi and the Fukakusa Captain (Fukakusa Shôshô or Shii no Shôshô) depicted in each play? What role does possession play in each? In Sotoba Komachi, how is Komachi's posssession represented by a change of costume?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS DUE FRIDAY BEFORE DISCUSSION SECTION