Noh Drama and The Tale of the Genji: The Art of Allusion in Fifteen Classical Plays

by Janet Goff

Overview

The Japanese noh theater has enjoyed a rich, continuous history dating back to the Muromachi period (1336-1573), when virtually the entire repertoire was written. Some of the finest plays were inspired by the eleventh-century masterpiece of court literature, The Tale of Genji. In this detailed study of fifteen noh plays based upon the Genji, Janet Goff looks at how the novel was understood and appreciated by Muromachi audiences. A work steeped in the court poetry, or waka, tradition, the Genji in turn provided a source of inspiration and allusion for later poets, who produced a variety of handbooks and digests on the work as an aid in composing poetry. Drawing on such sources from the Muromachi period, Goff shows how playwrights reflected contemporary attitudes toward the Genji, even as they transformed its material to suit the demands of the noh as a theatrical form. This book includes annotated translations of the plays, many of them appearing in English for the first time. The translations are preceded by essays covering the history of each play and its use of Genji material.

Originally published in 1991.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691633534
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Library of Asian Translations , #1167
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.30(h) x 1.30(d)

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Noh Drama and The Tale of Genji

The Art of Allusion in Fifteen Classical Plays

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By Janet Goff

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1991 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06835-0

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CHAPTER 1

The Reception of the Genji in the Middle Ages

Few literary works have been as widely revered as Murasaki Shikibu's eleventh-century masterpiece, Genji monogatari. The author's position as a member of an empress's entourage enabled her to observe firsthand the workings of the court during its heyday. And even now, the Genji allows us a fascinating glimpse of that world, side by side with Murasaki's brilliant insights into the workings of human nature.

The tale begins with the birth of "Radiant" Genji, the son of an emperor by a low-ranking consort. To obtain political backing, he is married at age twelve to the daughter of a high-ranking court official but fails to get along with his aloof, aristocratic wife, and, living in a polygamous society, he seeks love and companionship elsewhere. The romantic adventures recounted in the early chapters of the Genji include his unsuccessful pursuit of a married woman named Utsusemi; his affair with the mysterious Yugao, whom he encounters one summer evening in the Fifth Ward; and his discovery of a young girl named Murasaki, who becomes his lifelong companion.

Eventually, Genji's amorous ways prove his undoing. His wife, Lady Aoi, is possessed by the jealous spirit of his proud mistress, Lady Rokujo, and dies after giving birth to a son, Yugiri. Genji is then forced into exile at Suma when his affair with the current emperor's favorite consort, Oborozukiyo, becomes known. His lonely existence takes a turn for the better when he moves across the bay to Akashi, where he meets a young lady who is destined to bear his only daughter. After three years in exile, he is recalled to the capital and showered with the highest ranks and honors. The sudden appearance of Yugao's daughter Tamakazura on the scene adds a new dimension to the plot before the installation of Genji's daughter as empress brings the first part of the work (chapters 1–33) to a close.

The middle section begins auspiciously with plans to celebrate Genji's fortieth birthday. His reluctant agreement to marry the third daughter of the Suzaku emperor, however, unleashes a disastrous train of events when Kashiwagi, an unsuccessful suitor, proves unable to forget the Third Princess. Kashiwagi's obsession culminates in a single meeting that leads to the birth of Genji's putative son Kaoru. Going into a fatal decline, the guilt-stricken courtier leaves his wife in the care of Yugiri, who becomes infatuated with his friend's widow, Princess Ochiba, arousing the jealousy of his own wife. The second part of the work (chapters 34–41) draws to an end with a close-up of Genji mourning the death of his beloved Murasaki.

The last part of the Genji opens with the announcement that Genji is dead. His place is taken by Kaoru, whom the world regards as his son, and Prince Niou, his grandson. As the final chapters (45–54) take place largely in Uji a few miles from Kyoto, where Genji's younger brother, the Eighth Prince, lives with two daughters, this section of the work is commonly known as the Uji jujo, or "the ten Uji chapters." Kaoru is drawn to Uji by word of the prince's saintliness and ends up falling in love with the older daughter, Oigimi, who rejects Kaoru's advances and dies. The grieving courtier is delighted to learn of the existence of an unrecognized daughter of the prince, Ukifune, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Oigimi. Ukifune is also pursued by Niou, and, unable to choose between the two suitors, she tries to drown herself in the Uji River; she is found lying beneath a tree and taken to live in Ono, where she attempts to enter the religious life. The long tale ends with her future in doubt.

In addition to being a remarkable achievement in its own right, the Genji has inspired countless generations of storytellers, artists, playwrights, and the like. During the middle ages, it was arguably in the realm of poetry that the work engendered the greatest interest and creativity. First in waka, and then in renga, poets turned to it as a source of inspiration and allusion. When a need arose for collated texts and commentaries, poets produced them, and when the demand for knowledge of the Genji in a more digestible form led to the compilation of handbooks and manuals, poets again played a key role. A major reason lies in the nature of the Genji itself.

The Genji and the Poetic Tradition

Although classified as a work of prose, the Genji contains 795 waka and hundreds of allusions to earlier poems. The waka were written as private reflections, as poetry exchanges between characters, or as poems composed for public occasions rather than for a specific individual. Three-quarters of the poems fall under the category of poetry exchanges, a reflection of the role of poetry as a form of social intercourse in the real world of the Heian court, especially in the realm of love, where waka served as an important means of communication between the sexes. As part of the Genji narrative, the waka and countless poetic allusions scattered through the text help to establish setting and tone and delineate character, as well as furthering the plot.

Around 1200, an essay on Japanese monogatari, or fiction, expressed wonder that a work as brilliant as the Genji could have come into existence without any apparent antecedent and concluded that it must have been divinely inspired. In truth, one can scarcely imagine this masterpiece being written in its present form without the prior existence of the first imperial anthology of waka, the Kokinshu (ca. 905). In addition to supplying a lexicon and innumerable allusions, the collection suggested ideas for the story and provided stylistic devices such as engo, or related words, and kakekotoba, pivot words or puns.

Before long, the Genji itself came to be reversed as a source of inspiration and allusion for poets. This attitude reached a peak in the age of the eighth imperial anthology, the Shinkokinshu (ca. 1205), when a neoclassical style of poetry predominated. The spirit of the age is exemplified by the popularity of the technique of honkadori, or "allusive variation," whereby poets drew upon the language or ideas of older poems in creating new ones. Language rich in associations taken from the classical tradition gave a poem a graceful, elegant effect, while the associations added depth or produced subtle overtones that enlarged the world created by the new work. Though opinions varied, it was generally held that at least one line and fewer than three full lines of an earlier poem could be used.

Japanese and Chinese prose classics could also serve as a source and were known as honzetsu. The Genji was held in particularly high esteem, for it was thought to embody the essence of Heian court culture, while its nearly 800 poems offered an invaluable guide to proper poetic expression in a wide range of circumstances. The attitude toward the Genji that prevailed is illustrated by the famous remark by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) in a judgment for the Roppyakuban utaawase (Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds; 1193), in which the great poet and critic declared that poets who had not read the Genji were to be deplored.

In the following centuries, poets played a key role in the transmission and appreciation of the Genji. Shunzei's son Teika (1162–1241), a renowned poet and classical scholar, established one of two main textual lines of the Genji, the Aobyoshi recension. The second one, known as the Kawachi recension, was begun by Minamoto no Mitsuyuki (1163–1244), a student of waka and the Genji under Shunzei. The project was continued by Mitsuyuki's son, who completed it around 1255. This textual line remained the principal one in circulation during much of the middle ages. Although the differences between the two traditions are not overwhelming, the Kawachi recension tends to compensate for obscurities by weaving explanations into the text, whereas the more literary Aobyoshi recension is thought to be closer to the original. Numerous variant texts, called betsubon, also circulated; the Aobyoshi recension, on the other hand, does not seem to have been widely available until the fifteenth century, when the apotheosis of Teika as a poet led to its elevation as the definitive text, a position that it continues to hold today.

Mitsuyuki and his successors were closely involved in the production of commentaries, which when compared with Teika's poetic approach showed a strong exegetical, if not pedantic, bent in defining difficult words, explaining court customs and practices, and citing literary and historical precedents. Meanwhile, Teika's heirs set up rival poetic houses that dominated the world of court poetry until well into the fourteenth century. Along with copies of the Heian classics, poetic treatises, diaries, and the like, they inherited Shunzei's and Teika's reverence for the Genji.

During this period, Genji appreciation was colored by an obsession with secret, privately transmitted knowledge about obscure passages. Like the compilation of commentaries, the accumulation of secret lore reflected the increasing remoteness of the Genji language and a growing unfamiliarity with the court customs and rituals depicted in the tale. In an age when knowledge was handed down orally or by means of painstakingly copied manuscripts, the transmission of secret information represented an effort to confer authority on the owner and establish a monopoly over Genji studies. Like the formation of hereditary poetic houses, this phenomenon occurred at a time when the aristocracy that had produced the splendid culture of the Heian court was in eclipse, having ceded power to the military at the end of the twelfth century.

Although the aristocracy clung tenaciously to its privileged position regarding knowledge of the court, the last bastion of courtier supremacy, by the fourteenth century waka—the symbol of that culture—was stumbling under the weight of its own tradition. To be sure, imperial anthologies continued to be compiled until 1439 with the backing of the shogunate, but the restricted vocabulary and traditional ways of handling poetic material that demanded years of personal instruction to master had robbed the venerable art form of vitality. The attenuation of waka was offset by the sudden efflorescence of renga (and the noh), which in less than two centuries produced some of the greatest artists and masterpieces in Japanese literature. The surge of creative energy reflected a demand for genres that were more attuned to the needs and interests of the day. It also signaled a fundamental change in the nature of the literary world, for once the position of the courtier class as guardian of the classical tradition was called into question, participants from all ranks of society began to play a more active part.

In the beginning, renga was little more than a waka poem created by two people, with one person composing the first seventeen syllables and the other the last fourteen. The practice of linking verses eventually evolved into a highly complex art form in which sequences—typically a hundred verses—were composed extemporaneously by a group of poets in turn following fixed rules of composition and linkage.

It is not known when renga first became popular among commoners, although Teika's diary shows that the pastime had spread beyond the ranks of the courtiers in Kyoto by the first quarter of the thirteenth century. The transformation of renga into a serious art rivaling waka in the fourteenth century was accomplished by combining the freshness and vigor of commoners' renga with the aesthetic ideals of waka. During the Muromachi period, renga became a veritable craze encompassing all levels of society. It had a major impact on newer art forms such as the noh and profoundly affected the way in which the Genji was understood and appreciated.

The Reception of the Genji in the Muromachi Period

The person most responsible for the metamorphosis of renga was a courtier, Nijo Yoshimoto (1320–1388). The scion of one of five houses in the ancient Fujiwara clan qualified by birth to serve as regent for the emperor, Yoshimoto stood at the apex of the court hierarchy. As a representative of the courtier class, advisor on court matters to members of the warrior elite, and patron of renga poets from the ranks of commoners, he occupied a key place in the new society that was emerging.

An experienced, if undistinguished, waka poet, Yoshimoto sponsored many poetry gatherings and wrote influential treatises on the art. A treatise composed jointly with his waka teacher in 1363 displays the typical interest of a poet in the Genji as a source of allusion. For instance, he notes:

As far as alluding to an earlier source [honzetsu] is concerned, a person may compose a poem based on the spirit of a Chinese poem. The same is of course true of Chinese prose. Is there any obstacle, then, regarding prose from the Genji or Sagoromo monogatari? In a decision in the Roppyakuban utaawase, Lord Shunzei declared that any poet who had not read the Genji was to be deplored. In that case, may one allude in poetry to Genji language that is imbued with elegance and grace [yugen]?

His remarks drew the following response from his teacher, the poet-priest Ton'a:

With respect to an earlier source or text, I was taught that one should use restraint in incorporating the spirit of a Chinese poem or Japanese fiction [monogatari], and yet it seems to be done all the time. The idea conveyed by the words "beneath the wormwood" [yomogiu no moto] in the Genji poem or "fields of grass" [kusa no hara] in Sagoromo monogatari, to be sure, is often encountered. But I was taught that in the case of the Genji it is better to allude to the prose than to the poetry.

The fondness for allusions to the Genji in Yoshimoto's writings and references to him in other medieval sources point as well to his deep knowledge of the work, but whom he studied under is not known. Nor did he leave behind any treatises on the Genji as his grandson Ichijo Kanera (1402–1481) would do.

Today Yoshimoto is best remembered for his contributions to the art of renga. He compiled the first anthology of linked verse, Tsukubashu (1356), with the help of the foremost renga poet of the day, Gusai (or Kyusei), who came from the ranks of commoners. The anthology was modeled after imperial waka collections and, like them, was officially recognized by the emperor, an honor that did much to enhance the status of renga in the eyes of the world. Yoshimoto also compiled a set of rules for composing renga called Oan shinshiki (New Rules for the Oan Era; 1372). The rules covered the number of times and manner in which lexical items could be used in a hundred-verse sequence. The code was not the first of its kind: its significance lies in Yoshimoto's attempt to supplant the conflicting sets of rules in circulation and establish a universal standard. In addition, he wrote a series of treatises for high-ranking members of the court and military aristocracies, in which he expounds upon the technique of linking verses and more practical matters such as the correct procedures to follow at renga sessions.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Noh Drama and The Tale of Genji by Janet Goff. Copyright © 1991 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• Illustrations, pg. ix
• Acknowledgments, pg. xi
• A Note on Sources and Abbreviations, pg. xiii
• Introduction, pg. 1
• Chapter 1. The Reception of the Genji in the Middle Ages, pg. 14
• Chapter 2. Noh Dramaturgy and the Literary World, pg. 30
• Chapter 3. The Genji and the Noh, pg. 45
• Chapter 4. Medieval Sources of the Genji Plays, pg. 62
• Chapter 5. Plays about Utsusemi, pg. 87
• Chapter 6. Plays about Yugao and Her Daughter Tamakazura, pg. 102
• Chapter 7. Plays about Lady Rokujō, pg. 125
• Chapter 8. Plays about Genji and the Akashi Lady, pg. 150
• Chapter 9. Plays about Princess Ochiba, pg. 166
• Chapter 10. Plays about Ukifune, pg. 182
• Chapter 11. Praying for Genji, pg. 198
• Appendix A. Genii Chapter Titles, pg. 211
• Appendix B. A Note on the Translations, pg. 212
• Notes, pg. 217
• Glossary, pg. 279
• Bibliography, pg. 283
• Index, pg. 291

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