Nō drama plays an important role in Japanese literature. It was an important entertainment in the old days. It also was significant in reflecting the Buddhist view of existence.1 Most of the Nō dramas were written according to popular novels or prose works. In this essay, I would like to introduce two Nō dramas, Atsumori and Nonomiya, as well as the respective sources references.
Atsumori is a Nō play written by Zeami. This is classified as the second category of Nō drama, which talks about warriors. The plot of this play is base on the Heike Monogatari, and the story happens in the late 12th century at Ichinotani, the place where Atsumori was killed by Kumagai no Jirō Naozane. In the Heike Monogatari, two large clans of Minamoto and Taira were fighting each other. Atsumori was a member of the Taira clan, while Kumagai was a member of the Minamoto clan. During the war, there was a battle occurred at Ichinotani. Kumagai eventually killed Atsumori when Atsumori was about to leave the region at the shore. Kumagai was sad because after cutting off Atsumori’s head, because he killed a gentle high-born person, who was as young as his own son. This incident had strengthened Kumagai’s will to become a monk.2
The Nō play of Atsumori starts after the incident. By that time, Kumagai had already become a monk named Renshō. He went back to Ichinotani in order to comfort the spirit of Atsumori. He met a group of young reapers at the place. A youth in the group claimed that he has a tie with Atsumori, and told Renshō to pray for the spirit of Atsumori. Renshō also asked a villager about Atsumori’s story, and he prayed for the spirit at night. Finally, Atsumori’s ghost came to Renshō. Atsumori no longer hate Renshō, and he asked Renshō to p...
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...forted. Same as Rokujō, even she was alive; she could not be enlightened or get release from the painful memory unless she realizes she is too attached to the world.
In conclusion, the Nō drama was important to Japanese people in that period in the way of Buddhism teaching, as well as entertainment. The dramas were written based on famous stories and tales. These works provided the dramas with backgrounds, settings, and characters. Even in nowadays, Nō dramas are popular in Kyōto, and it is a culture for people to go to the theatre to watch the Nō plays.
Works Cited
1. Encyclopedia of Japan: Nō http://www.jkn21.com.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/body/display/
2. Visiting Historical Sites of Noh no.1: ATSUMORI
http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/fujinone/e_atsumoritop.html
3. Noh Plays Database: Nonomiya
http://www.the-noh.com/en/plays/data/program_018.html
Zeami Motokiyo, one of the best-known n writers, is the author of Tadanori. The setting is in Suma during the autumn season. Tadanori is considered a warrior play, shura mono, because the story deals with a warrior who died in battle. This, however, is not the main focus of the drama. Due to his untimely death and the defeat of the Taira clan, Tadanori’s spirit lingers on in the world for wanting a poem to be in an imperial anthology with his name as the author.
Throughout history artists have used art as a means to reflect the on goings of the society surrounding them. Many times, novels serve as primary sources in the future for students to reflect on past history. Students can successfully use novels as a source of understanding past events. Different sentiments and points of views within novels serve as the information one may use to reflect on these events. Natsume Soseki’s novel Kokoro successfully encapsulates much of what has been discussed in class, parallels with the events in Japan at the time the novel takes place, and serves as a social commentary to describe these events in Japan at the time of the Mejeii Restoration and beyond. Therefore, Kokoro successfully serves as a primary source students may use to enable them to understand institutions like conflicting views Whites by the Japanese, the role of women, and the population’s analysis of the Emperor.
Gatten, Aileen. "Review: Criticism and the Genji." The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 22.1 (1988): 84. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
“Until the seventeenth century, Japanese Literature was privileged property. …The diffusion of literacy …(and) the printed word… created for the first time in Japan the conditions necessary for that peculiarly modern phenomenon, celebrity” (Robert Lyons Danly, editor of The Narrow Road of the Interior written by Matsuo Basho; found in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Second Edition, Volume D). Celebrity is a loose term at times; it connotes fortune, flattery, and fleeting fame. The term, in this modern era especially, possesses an aura of inevitable transience and glamorized superficiality. Ironically, Matsuo Basho, (while writing in a period of his own newfound celebrity as a poet) places an obvious emphasis on the transience of life within his travel journal The Narrow Road of the Interior. This journal is wholly the recounting of expedition and ethos spanning a fifteen hundred mile feat, expressed in the form of a poetic memoir. It has been said that Basho’s emphasis on the Transient is directly related to his and much of his culture’s worldview of Zen Buddhism, which is renowned for its acknowledgement of the Transient as a tool for a more accurate picture of life and a higher achievement of enlightenment. Of course, in the realization that Basho does not appear to be unwaveringly religious, perhaps this reflection is not only correlative to Zen Buddhism, but also to his perspective on his newfound celebrity. Either way, Matsuo Basho is a profound lyricist who eloquently seeks to objectify and relay the concept of transience even in his own name.
In the early nineteenth century there was a trend toward portraying all types of evil—such as torture, incest, and sadism—on stage, and after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 a movement was started to adapt Kabuki to the spirit of the modern world. Be that as it may, even as Kabuki has created in style and substance, it holds a hefty portion of the components it obtained amid the 1700s, from the physical virtuosity of its performers to the utilization of beautiful ensembles and portrayal of shocking occasions. Because of the emphasis in Kabuki on performance, there is little interest among scholars in offering critical analyses of its most important plays; many feel, in fact, that to read a Kabuki play in print gives the reader no indication of its artistic power. Pundits writing in English about seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Kabuki have in this manner tended to focus on the social and chronicled setting encompassing the improvement of the shape or on imaginative components, for example, acting, organize procedures, and music. The Kabuki play that has garnered the most critical attention is Chūsingura (1748; The Treasury of the Loyal Retainers). This play, about retainers' loyalty to a feudal lord even beyond his death, contains all the elements that make for great, melodramatic Kabuki theater,
Suzuki, Tomi. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996.
In the same way Japanese poetry often alludes to or derives from the canon of poetry that precedes it, noh plays are often based off of classical Japanese literary sources that form the framework for the play’s themes and moral message. Many of these plays reference poems from revered anthologies, such as the Shinkokinshū, within the play’s dialogue, but it is the monogatari or tales that provide the foundation for certain noh plotlines because of their vast array of character references and plotlines. These tales are the primary sources of information for two plays in particular written by the famous Japanese playwright Zeami: Atsumori and Matsukaze. The warrior-play Atsumori draws from the famous war epic The Tale of Heike to further an anti-war message grounded in the original text, as well as to further explore Buddhist themes of attachment and karmic ties. Matsukaze draws its origins and background from Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji and Ariwara no Narihira’s The Tales of Ise for location, tone, and themes of longing in order to juxtapose the Buddhist duality of attachment and detachment from this world.
Noh theatre came about at the same time Buddhism started having an influence on Japanese culture. They each affected the other. Noh theatre took the beliefs and the ideas of Buddhism and intertwined it with ancient Japanese beliefs to create a magnificent form of drama. Buddhism took those ancient Japanese beliefs and rituals to make a unique religion. Zeami took all of it and wrote some of the most influential plays of Japan. In fact, Zeami’s Noh plays are classified as the highest classics of Noh drama and of Japanese literature (Tsuchiya 104). Noh drama had a major influence on Japanese culture. A quarter of the eight hundred plays ever written and performed are still performed today (Magill 2423). This shows how important Noh theatre was in not only the fourteenth century, but in present day.
Shirane Haruo. et al. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900. New York: Colombia University Press, 2002. Print.
In Zeami Motokiyo’s Noh play, Atsumori, he retells the story of Atsumori as seen in Heiki Monogatari. The story revolves around the young Taira no Atsumori who was killed at the age of fifteen by Kumagai of the Minamoto clan during the Genpei War at Ichinotani. Atsumori was left behind and spotted by Kumagai along the Suma shore. Kumagai felt sorry for Atsumori because he was about the same age as one of his sons and was torn between whether or not to kill him. He decides to kill Atsumori because if he did not, then someone else from his clan would. He figured it would be better for him to do it because he would pray for Atsumori after his death. Shortly after killing Atsumori, Kumagai renounces his ways and becomes a monk name Rensho and travels back to Ichinotani to pay his respects to and pray for the soul of Atsumori. This play is a continuation from Heike Monogatari because it tells the tale of Kumagai and what he encounters in his new life as a monk while stressing the importance of Buddhist values, such as nonattachment and karma, and character transformation of warrior to priest and enemy to friend.
The Heian period(794-1185), the so-called golden age of Japanese culture, produced some of the finest works of Japanese literature.1 The most well known work from this period, the Genji Monogatari, is considered to be the “oldest novel still recognized today as a major masterpiece.”2 It can also be said that the Genji Monogatari is proof of the ingenuity of the Japanese in assimilating Chinese culture and politics. As a monogatari, a style of narrative with poems interspersed within it, the characters and settings frequently allude to Chinese poems and stories. In addition to displaying the poetic prowess that the Japanese had attained by this time period, the Genji Monogatari also demonstrates how politics and gender ideals were adopted from the Chinese.
Okonkwo is one of the respected leaders of his village. When a man from a neighboring village kills one of the women from Okonkwo 's village, a peace settlement requires the son of the man who killed the women to come live in Okonkwo 's village. Unfortunately, a decision is made to kill the boy. After the boy dies, Okonkwo accidentally kills Ezeudu’s son. For his crime, the village determines he must spend seven years in exile to appease the gods.
For as long as humankind exists, theatre will always take on an important function within its cultures. Through theatre, a culture expresses itself, reflects its society, and displays its individuality. It invites people to experience other cultures.
The drama surrounds the story of a young woman called Anowa who disobeys her parents by marrying Kofi Ako, a man who has a reputation for indolence and migrates with him to a far place. Childless after several years of marriage Anowa realises that Kofi had sacrificed his manhood for wealth. Upon Anowa’s realisation Kofi in disgrace shoots himself whiles Anowa too drowns herself.
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