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List Of Noh Plays
This is a complete list of extant pre-modern Noh plays, their supposed authors, and categorisations. A short English translation of the title is given where one exists. A list of those plays which have a separate article on Wikipedia can be found : Noh plays, here. Categories of plays Some plays are given different names by different schools. The words ''bangai kyoku'' signify that a play is no longer part of current repertoire. The number in parentheses after the play title refers to the play type: (1) god plays; (2) warrior plays; (3) woman plays; (4) madman plays; and (5) devil plays. The first group of plays are congratulatory pieces and have the atmosphere of rejoicing. The shite is a god who praises the peace and prosperity of the land and performs a dance in celebration. Famous examples are ''Takasago'' and ''Chikubu-shima''. The second group of plays features a shite that is generally a famous warrior of either the Taira or the Minamoto clan. In most plays, the gho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kokaji
' is a Japanese Noh play by an unknown author. A popular noh play centered around the creation of a sacred sword and the ''kami'' ''Inari'', it has influenced other works of art, including several bunraku and kabuki plays. It belongs to the fifth category. It has been praised as a piece whose "sharp movements and invigorating chants never allow the audience to become bored". Plot Emperor Ichijo (980-1011) receives a message from the kamis in his dreams, telling him to commission a special sword from Sanjō no Kokaji Munechika. He sends Tachibana no Michinari, an imperial messenger, to deliver this order to Munechika. Munechika receives the messenger, but he is hesitant to accept the request, as he has no smithing partner at his own level. After reluctantly accepting the order, he heads to the Inari shrine Fushimi Inari-taisha to pray for divine help in order to fulfill the request from the emperor. There he meets a mysterious boy that already knows about the commission of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Priest And The Willow
is a Noh play based on the experiences of the 12th-century poet and travelling-monk Saigyō. Original kernel Saigyō was travelling to North Japan, when he sat in the shade of a willow-tree, later identified by Bashō as being close to the village of Ashino, and wrote a waka: " ‘Just a brief stop,’/ I said when stepping off the road/into a willow's shade/where a bubbling stream flows by,/as has time since my ‘brief stop’ began". Main theme A wandering priest, Yugyō Shonin, is given directions by an old man who recites Saigyō's poem before vanishing: the priest then realises it was the spirit of the willow tree. By reciting a prayer to Amida Buddha, he enables the spirit to attain Buddhahood, for which the willow spirit thanks him in a dance sequence. Later developments Buson wrote a haiku on rocks and willows underneath the Pilgrim's Willow Tree, alluding to the Noh play.L Zolbrod, ''Haiku Painting'' (Tokyo 1982) p. 12 See also * ''Eguchi'' (play) *'' Matsuyama t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ukai (play)
''Ukai'' (The Cormorant-Fisher) is a Noh play of around 1400, attributed to Enami no Sayemon. Because of the lowly occupation of the leading character, Ukai is known as one of the Three Ignoble Plays. Plot Two travelling monks meet a cormorant fisher at the Isawa River. Though unable to persuade the fisher to abandon his life-taking trade, one of the monks remembers having received a meal from a cormorant fisher a few years back. The old fisherman explains that that cormorant fisher had since been killed for practicing his trade, before revealing himself as the cormorant fisherman's ghost. The ghost then re-enacts the sinful pursuit that still ties him to the material world: "In the joy of capture/ Forgotten sin and forfeit/ Of the life hereafter!". After he leaves, the priest enacts a rite for his soul, before Yama (Buddhism), Yama, King of Hell appears, to proclaim that the fisherman has been freed from his sins: "because he once gave lodging to a priest...The fisher's boat is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Take No Yuki
is a Noh play by Seami. Theme A man separates from his first wife and his daughter, but keeps his son with his second wife, who is urged by him to look after both the boy and the bamboo grove while he is on pilgrimage. Suspecting the son has complained of her to his actual parents, the stepmother sends him out, coatless, to brush the winter snow off the bamboos. After the boy dies of exposure in the bamboo grove, his sister and mother sing a song of despair, before the pious reconciliation of father and mother brings the dead boy back to life at the close. Later allusions *In a haiku offered to a family who had lost their own child, Bashō alludes to the Noh play: “Withered and bending / Dejected world upside-down / Bamboo of the snow” *Prints based on the play’s story were not uncommon. See also * Torioi(bune) *Wicked stepmother *Yuki-onna is a spirit or yōkai in Japanese folklore that is often depicted in Japanese literature, films, or animation. She may also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taema (Noh Play)
is a Noh play of the fifth category, Kiri Noh, attributed to Zeami, and centred around the origin legend of the Taema Temple in Nara Prefecture, Japan. Background The play draws the traditional stories of otogizoshi, with their merger of elite and popular concerns, and their focus on miracles and origin stories. In particular, it is concerned with the role of Princess Chujo-hime in creating the Taima Mandala. Plot A relatively undramatic play, Taema recounts how an old man visits the temple and learns the legend of the Princess from an old nun, who is revealed as the Bodhisattva Kannon. Thereafter the Princess herself appears, and dances in a representation of the Pure land. Recent history Though rarely performed, 2012 saw a performance in Japan featuring (equally rarely) a central role for a female actor. See also * Mandala * Pure Land Buddhism Pure Land Buddhism or the Pure Land School ( zh, c=淨土宗, p=Jìngtǔzōng) is a broad branch of Mahayana, Mahayana Buddh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sotoba Komachi
''Sotoba Komachi'' is a Noh play written by Kan'ami, and is one of the most compelling and best-known of the type. Plot and themes Much of the strength of the play derives from the variety provided by the three main and distinct sections: lament for lost beauty; witty religious debate; and ghostly possession. The play begins with an encounter between two priests and an old beggar-woman, lamenting how she was “lovelier than the petals of the wild-rose open-stretched / In the hour before its fall. / But now I am grown loathsome even to sluts”. She later admits that she is the famed ''waka'' poet Ono no Komachi. Because she is seated on a Buddhist stupa, a holy marker, she is challenged by the priests for creating bad karma, but in a witty debate uses Zen-like sophistries to defeat them: “Nothing is real. Between Buddha and Man is no distinction”. The priests then lament in turn her loss of beauty; before in the final sequence she is possessed by the angry ghost of a form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanemori
''Sanemori'' (Kyūjitai: ; Shinjitai: ) is a Noh play by Zeami Motokiyo about a troubled warrior spirit, unusual because of the great age of the warrior in question. Theme was a samurai warrior who fought in the Genpei War, and died at the Battle of Shinohara when he was seventy-three years old. In Zeami's play, a travelling monk encounters a ghost who reveals himself to be Sanemori, having spent the two centuries since his death dwelling “among the Asuras/ Enduring pains too horrible to tell”. Redeemed by prayers to Amida Buddha, the ghost then tells the story of his last fight, and how the dyed locks on his severed head moved his adversaries to respect and awe at his courage in fighting despite his advanced age: “Alas for the old warrior! Utterly spent with fighting, Like a dying tree storm-smitten...” Later echoes Bashō wittily quoted from the Noh play in an early haiku – “The old-lady cherry / Is blossoming, a remembrance / Of years ago – where the closing ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saigyōzakura
is a Noh play by Zeami about the famous poet Saigyō, regarding his well-known love for cherry blossoms. Background Saigyō was renowned for his love of the flowering cherry - what he himself once called "my lifelong habit of having my mind immersed in blossoms". As a recluse however, he sometimes found himself in conflict with the Japanese habit of collective blossom viewing: as he wrote in his Sankashū, "Leave me in solitude/O Cherry flowers./Draw not people,/for they come in crowds". Plot Wishing to be alone with his cherry-blossoms, Saigyō is annoyed by the arrival of a party of (potential) viewers; and, on admitting them, composes a waka blaming the cherry tree for their intrusive presence. That night he is visited by the spirit of the cherry-tree, who rebukes him by pointing out the separateness and independence of all living creatures from human concerns. The two then converse, before the play ends with an extensive dance celebrating cherry flowers, exceptional sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miidera (play)
''Miidera'' was a Noh play centred around a mad woman, and her search for her son at the temple complex of Mii-dera near Kyoto. Plot Driven mad by the loss of her young son, possibly abducted as a boy prostitute, the heroine is urged in a dream to seek him at Miidera temple. There the woman is much impressed by the temple bell, and recounts a long list of episodes involving temple bells. When she finally draws attention to herself by striking the bell, she is recognised by and reunited with her son - the aesthete Oswald Valentine Sickert considering that "The sounding of the bell is the hinge of everything, a thing of great sentiment". Literary links An early haiku quotes the play: "Hey there, wait a moment / before you strike the bell /at the cherry blossoms". See also *Kagema *Kannon *Nāga In various Asian religious traditions, the Nāgas () are a divine, or semi-divine, race of half-human, half-serpent beings that reside in the netherworld (Patala), and can occasion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matsuyama Tengu
''Matsuyama tengu'' (松山天狗 ''Goblins of Matsuyama'') is a Noh play revolving around the ex-emperor Sutoku and his ghostly encounter with the poet Saigyō. Historical background The failure of the attempt by retired emperor Sutoku to seize power in the Hōgen rebellion led to his exile in Shikoku. His former associate Saigyō was shocked by the events: "A great calamity shook society, and things in the life of Retired Emperor Sutoku underwent inconceivable change". Saigyō thereafter kept in touch with his former emperor, and after his death made a pilgrimage to his place of exile, Matsuyama. There he wrote the tanka: "Let it be, my lord./ Surely this is nothing/ like the jewel-floored/ palaces of your past, but can/ anything alter what’s occurred?". Theme Saigyō's poem played a key role in the Noh play ‘Goblins of Matsuyama'. There, however, it formed part of the encounter between Saigyō and (the spirit of) Sutoku, figured in goblin form, and as a demonic influenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mari (Noh Play)
is a Noh play that is no longer part of the current repertoire.Plays outside the current repertoire and that are no longer performed are referred to as . The noh play ''Mari'' is distinct from the kyōgen or comic Noh interlude . A Japanese text of ''Mari'' may be found in ''Kōchū Yōkyoku sōsho'' 校註謡曲叢書 第3巻 補遺 3–6, by Haga and Sakaki 芳賀矢一, 佐佐木信綱. Background The Mari was the football in the ancient Japanese game of Kemari, a non-competitive form of Keepie uppie popular in the Heian period. The object of the game was to keep the deerskin ball aloft as long as possible without using one's hands. The game was popular among samurai, the youthful Saigyō, for example, being an expert player. Plot The death of a prominent footballer drives his widow mad, and she prepares a kind of kemari funeral-service for him: the eight football players are taken as equivalent to the eight chapters of the Hokke Scripture; with the four posts added, they cor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
