Plays - Kinuta

Kinuta

Introduction

In Kinuta (“The Silk-board”) the plot is as follows:

The Waki, a country gentleman, has tarried long in the capital. He at last sends the Tsure, a maidservant, home with a message to his wife. The servant talks on the road. She reaches the Waki’s house and talks with the Shite (the wife). The chorus comments. Finally, the wife dies. The chorus sing a death-song, after which the husband returns. The second Shite, the ghost of the wife, then appears, and continues speaking alternately with the chorus until the close.

Characters

Waki, a country gentleman.
Tsure, the servant-maid Yugiri.
Shite, the wife.
Second Shite, ghost of the wife.

Husband	I am of Ashiya of Kinshu, unknown and of no repute. I have been loitering on in the capital entangled in many litigations. I went for a casual visit, and there I have been tarrying for three full years. Now I am anxious, overanxious, about affairs in my home. I shall send Yugiri homeward; she is a maid in my employ. Ho! Yugiri! I am worried. I shall send you down to the country. You will go home and tell them that I return at the end of this year.
Maidservant	I will go, Sir, and say that then you are surely coming. She starts on her journey. The day is advancing, and I, in my travelling clothes, travel with the day. I do not know the lodgings, I do not know the dreams upon the road, I do not know the number of the dreams that gather for one night’s pillow. At length I am come to the village⁠—it is true that I was in haste⁠—I am come at last to Ashiya. I think I will call out gently. “Is there any person or thing in this house? Say that Yugiri is here in the street, she has just come back from the city.”
Wife	Sorrow!⁠— Sorrow is in the twigs of the duck’s nest And in the pillow of the fishes, At being held apart in the waves, Sorrow between mandarin ducks, Who have been in love Since time out of mind. Sorrow⁠— There is more sorrow between the united Though they move in the one same world. O low “Remembering-grass,” I do not forget to weep At the sound of the rain upon you, My tears are a rain in the silence, O heart of the seldom clearing.
Maidservant	Say to whomsoever it concerns that Yugiri has come.
Wife	What! you say it is Yugiri? There is no need for a servant. Come to this side! in here! How is this, Yugiri, that you are so great a stranger? Yet welcome. I have cause of complaint. If you were utterly changed, why did you send me no word? Not even a message in the current of the wind?
Maidservant	Truly I wished to come, but his Honour gave me no leisure. For three years he kept me in that very ancient city.
Wife	You say it was against your heart to stay in the city? While even in the time of delights I thought of its blossom, until sorrow had grown the cloak of my heart.
Chorus	As the decline of autumn In a country dwelling, With the grasses failing and fading⁠— As men’s eyes fail⁠— As men’s eyes fail, Love has utterly ceased. Upon what shall she lean tomorrow? A dream of the autumn, three years, Until the sorrow of those dreams awakes Autumnal echoes within her. Now former days are changed, They have left no shadow or trace; And if there were no lies in all the world Then there might come some pleasure Upon the track of men’s words. Alas, for her foolish heart! How foolish her trust has been.
Wife	What strange thing is it beyond there that takes the forms of sound? Tell me. What is it?
Maidservant	A villager beating a silk-board.
Wife	Is that all? And I am weary as an old saying. When the wandering Sobu38 of China was in the Mongol country he also had left a wife and children, and she, aroused upon the clear cold nights, climbed her high tower and beat such a silk-board, and had perhaps some purpose of her heart. For that far-murmuring cloth could move his sleep⁠—that is the tale⁠—though he were leagues away. Yet I have stretched my board with patterned cloths, which curious birds brought through the twilit utter solitude, and hoped with such that I might ease my heart.
Maidservant	Boards are rough work, hard even for the poor, and you of high rank have done this to ease your heart! Here, let me arrange them, I am better fit for such business.
Wife	Beat then. Beat out our resentment.
Maidservant	It’s a coarse mat; we can never be sure.
Chorus	The voice of the pine-trees sinks ever into the web! The voice of the pine-trees, now falling, Shall make talk in the night. It is cold.
Wife	Autumn it is, and news rarely comes in your fickle wind, the frost comes bearing no message.
Chorus	Weariness tells of the night.
Wife	Even a man in a very far village might see.⁠ ⁠…
Chorus	Perhaps the moon will not call upon her, saying: “Whose night-world is this?”
Wife	O beautiful season, say also this time is toward autumn, “The evening moves to an end.”
Chorus	The stag’s voice has bent her heart toward sorrow, Sending the evening winds which she does not see, We cannot see the tip of the branch. The last leaf falls without witness. There is an awe in the shadow, And even the moon is quiet, With the love-grass under the eaves.
Wife	My blind soul hangs like a curtain studded with dew.
Chorus	What a night to unsheave her sorrows⁠— An hour for magic⁠— And that cloth-frame stands high on the palace; The wind rakes it from the north.
Wife	They beat now fast and now slow⁠—are they silk-workers down in the village? The moon-river pours on the west.
Chorus (strophe)	The wandering Sobu is asleep in the North country, And here in the East-sky the autumnal wind is working about from the West. Wind, take up the sound she is beating upon her coarse-webbed cloth.
Chorus (antistrophe)	Beware of even the pines about the eaves, Lest they confuse the sound. Beware that you do not lose the sound of the travelling storm, That travels after your travels. Take up the sound of this beating of the cloths. Go where her lord is, O Wind; my heart reaches out and can be seen by him; I pray that you keep him still dreaming.
Wife	Aoi! if the web is broken, who, weary with time, will then come to seek me out? If at last he should come to seek me, let him call in the deep of time. Cloths are changed by recutting, hateful! love thin as a summer cloth! Let my lord’s life be even so slight, for I have no sleep under the moon. O let me go on with my cloths!
Chorus	The love of a god with a goddess Is but for the one night in passing, So thin are the summer cloths! The river-waves of the sky Have cut through our time like shears, They have kept us apart with dew. There are tears on the Kaji leaf, There is dew upon the helm-bar Of the skiff in the twisting current. Will it harm the two sleeves of the gods If he pass? As a floating shadow of the water grass, That the ripples break on the shore? O foam, let him be as brief.
Wife	The seventh month is come to its seventh day; we are hard on the time of long nights, and I would send him the sadness of these ten thousand voices⁠—the colour of the moon, the breath-colour of the wind, even the points of frost that assemble in the shadow. A time that brings awe to the heart, a sound of beaten cloths, and storms in the night, a crying in the storm, a sad sound of the crickets, make one sound in the falling dew, a whispering lamentation, hera, hera, a sound in the cloth of beauty.
Maidservant	What shall I say to all this? A man has just come from the city. The master will not come this year. It seems as if⁠ ⁠…
Chorus	The heart, that thinks that it will think no more, grows fainter; outside in the withered field the crickets’ noise has gone faint. The flower lies open to the wind, the gazers pass on to madness, this flower-heart of the grass is blown on by a wind-like madness, until at last she is but emptiness. The wife dies. Enter the husband, returning.
Husband	Pitiful hate, for my three years’ delay, working within her has turned our long-drawn play of separation to separation indeed.
Chorus	The time of regret comes not before the deed, This we have heard from the eight thousand shadows. This is their chorus⁠—the shadowy blades of grass. Sorrow! to be exchanging words At the string-tip⁠— Sorrow! that we can but speak With the bow-tip of the adzusa! The way that a ghost returns From the shadow of the grass⁠— We have heard the stories, It is eight thousand times, they say, Before regret runs in a smooth-worn groove, Forestalls itself.
Ghost of the Wife	Aoi! for fate, fading, alas, and unformed, all sunk into the river of three currents, gone from the light of the plum flowers that reveal spring in the world!
Chorus	She has but kindling flame to light her track⁠ ⁠…
Ghost of the Wife	… and show her autumns of a lasting moon.39 And yet, who had not fallen into desire? It was easy, in the rising and falling of the smoke and the fire of thought, to sink so deep in desires. O heart, you were entangled in the threads. “Suffering” and “the Price” are their names. There is no end to the lashes of Aborasetsu, the jailor of this prison. O heart, in your utter extremity you beat the silks of remorse; to the end of all false desire Karma shows her hate.
Chorus	Ah false desire and fate! Her tears are shed on the silk-board, Tears fall and turn into flame, The smoke has stifled her cries, She cannot reach us at all, Nor yet the beating of the silk-board Nor even the voice of the pines, But only the voice of that sorrowful punishment. Aoi! Aoi! Slow as the pace of sleep, Swift as the steeds of time, By the six roads of changing and passing We do not escape from the wheel, Nor from the flaming of Karma, Though we wander through life and death; This woman fled from his horses To a world without taste or breath.
Ghost of the Wife	Even the leaves of the katsu-grass show their hate of this underworld by the turning away of their leaves.
Chorus	The leaves of the katsu show their hate by bending aside; and neither can they unbend nor can the face of o’ershadowed desire. O face of eagerness, though you had loved him truly through both worlds, and hope had clung a thousand generations, ’twere little avail. The cliffs of Matsuyama, with stiff pines, stand in the end of time; your useless speech is but false mocking, like the elfish waves. Aoi! Aoi! Is this the heart of man?
Ghost of the Wife	It is the great, false bird called “Taking-care.”
Chorus	Who will call him a true man⁠—the wandering husband⁠—when even the plants know their season, the feathered and furred have their hearts? It seems that our story has set a fact beyond fable. Even Sobu, afar, gave to the flying wild-duck a message to be borne through the southern country, over a thousand leagues, so deep was his heart’s current⁠—not shallow the love in his heart. Kimi, you have no drowsy thought of me, and no dream of yours reaches toward me. Hateful, and why? O hateful!
Chorus	She recites the Flower of Law; the ghost is received into Butsu; the road has become enlightened. Her constant beating of silk has opened the flower, even so lightly she has entered the seedpod of Butsu.