''Miidera'' was a
Noh
is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. It is Japan's oldest major theater art that is still regularly performed today. Noh is often based on tales from traditional literature featuri ...
play centred around a mad woman, and her search for her son at the temple complex of
Mii-dera
, also known as just Onjo-ji, or , is a Buddhist temple in Japan located at the foot of Mount Hiei, in the city of Ōtsu in Shiga Prefecture. It is a short distance from both Kyoto, and Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake. The head temple of t ...
near
Kyoto
Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...
.
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
Aestheticism (also known as the aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to b ...
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
is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...
quotes the play: "Hey there, wait a moment / before you strike the bell /at the cherry blossoms".
See also
*
Kagema
is a Japanese term for historical young male prostitution, prostitutes. were often passed off as apprentice kabuki actors (who often engaged in prostitution themselves on the side) and catered to a mixed male and female clientele. For male cli ...
*
Kannon
Guanyin () is a common Chinese name of the bodhisattva associated with Karuṇā, compassion known as Avalokiteśvara (). Guanyin is short for Guanshiyin, which means " he One WhoPerceives the Sounds of the World". Originally regarded as m ...
*
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 occasionally take human or part-human form, or are so depicted in art. ...
References
{{Reflist, 2}
Noh
Noh plays