Plays - Nishikigi

Nishikigi

Characters

The Waki: a priest
The Shite, or Hero: ghost of the lover
Tsure: Ghost of the woman; they have both been long dead, and have not yet been united.
Chorus

The Nishikigi are wands used as a love charm.

Hosonuno is the name of a local cloth which the woman weaves.

First Part

Waki	There never was anybody heard of Mount Shinobu but had a kindly feeling for it; so I, like any other priest that might want to know a little bit about each one of the provinces, may as well be walking up here along the much travelled road. I have not yet been about the east country, but now I have set my mind to go as far as the earth goes; and why shouldn’t I, after all? seeing that I go about with my heart set upon no particular place whatsoever, and with no other man’s flag in my hand, no more than a cloud has. It is a flag of the night I see coming down upon me. I wonder now, would the sea be that way, or the little place Kefu that they say is stuck down against it?
Shite	To Tsure. Times out of mind am I here setting up this bright branch, this silky wood with the charms painted in it as fine as the web you’d get in the grass-cloth of Shinobu, that they’d be still selling you in this mountain.
Shite and Tsure	Tangled, we are entangled. Whose fault was it, dear? tangled up as the grass patterns are tangled up in this coarse cloth, or as the little Mushi that lives on and chirrups in dried seaweed. We do not know where are today our tears in the undergrowth of this eternal wilderness. We neither wake nor sleep, and passing our nights in a sorrow which is in the end a vision, what are these scenes of spring to us? This thinking in sleep of someone who has no thought of you, is it more than a dream? and yet surely it is the natural way of love. In our hearts there is much and in our bodies nothing, and we do nothing at all, and only the waters of the river of tears flow quickly.
Chorus	Narrow is the cloth of Kefu, but wild is that river, that torrent of the hills, between the beloved and the bride. The cloth she had woven is faded, the thousand one hundred nights were night-trysts watched out in vain.
Waki	Not recognizing the nature of the speakers. Strange indeed, seeing these town-people here. They seem like man and wife, And the lady seems to be holding something Like a cloth woven of feathers, While he has a staff or a wooden sceptre Beautifully ornate. Both of these things are strange; In any case, I wonder what they call them.
Tsure	This is a narrow cloth called “Hosonuno,” It is just the breadth of the loom.
Shite	And this is merely wood painted, And yet the place is famous because of these things. Would you care to buy them from us?
Waki	Yes, I know that the cloth of this place and the lacquers are famous things. I have already heard of their glory, and yet I still wonder why they have such great reputation.
Tsure	Ah well now, that’s a disappointment. Here they call the wood “Nishikigi,” and the woven stuff “Hosonuno,” and yet you come saying that you have never heard why, and never heard the story. Is it reasonable?
Shite	No, no, that is reasonable enough. What can people be expected to know of these affairs when it is more than they can do to keep abreast of their own?
Both	To the Priest. Ah well, you look like a person who has abandoned the world; it is reasonable enough that you should not know the worth of wands and cloths with love’s signs painted upon them, with love’s marks painted and dyed.
Waki	That is a fine answer. And you would tell me then that Nishikigi and Hosonuno are names bound over with love?
Shite	They are names in love’s list surely. Every day for a year, for three years come to their full, the wands Nishikigi were set up, until there were a thousand in all. And they are in song in your time, and will be. “Chidzuka” they call them.
Tsure	These names are surely a byword. As the cloth Hosonuno is narrow of weft, More narrow than the breast, We call by this name any woman Whose breasts are hard to come nigh to. It is a name in books of love.
Shite	’Tis a sad name to look back on.
Tsure	A thousand wands were in vain. A sad name, set in a story.
Shite	A seedpod void of the seed, We had no meeting together.
Tsure	Let him read out the story.
Chorus	I At last they forget, they forget. The wands are no longer offered, The custom is faded away. The narrow cloth of Kefu Will not meet over the breast. ’Tis the story of Hosonuno, This is the tale: These bodies, having no weft, Even now are not come together. Truly a shameful story, A tale to bring shame on the gods. II Names of love, Now for a little spell, For a faint charm only, For a charm as slight as the binding together Of pine-flakes in Iwashiro, And for saying a wish over them about sunset, We return, and return to our lodging. The evening sun leaves a shadow.
Waki	Go on, tell out all the story.
Shite	There is an old custom of this country. We make wands of meditation, and deck them with symbols, and set them before a gate, when we are suitors.
Tsure	And we women take up a wand of the man we would meet with, and let the others lie, although a man might come for a hundred nights, it may be, or for a thousand nights in three years, till there were a thousand wands here in the shade of this mountain. We know the funeral cave of such a man, one who had watched out the thousand nights; a bright cave, for they buried him with all his wands. They have named it the “Cave of the many charms.”
Waki	I will go to that love-cave, It will be a tale to take back to my village. Will you show me my way there?
Shite	So be it, I will teach you the path.
Tsure	Tell him to come over this way.
Both	Here are the pair of them Going along before the traveller.
Chorus	We have spent the whole day until dusk Pushing aside the grass From the overgrown way at Kefu, And we are not yet come to the cave. O you there, cutting grass on the hill, Please set your mind on this matter. “You’d be asking where the dew is While the frost’s lying here on the road. Who’d tell you that now?” Very well then don’t tell us, But be sure we will come to the cave.
Shite	There’s a cold feel in the autumn. Night comes.⁠ ⁠…
Chorus	And storms; trees giving up their leaf, Spotted with sudden showers. Autumn! our feet are clogged In the dew-drenched, entangled leaves. The perpetual shadow is lonely, The mountain shadow is lying alone. The owl cries out from the ivies That drag their weight on the pine. Among the orchids and chrysanthemum flowers The hiding fox is now lord of that love-cave, Nishidzuka, That is dyed like the maple’s leaf. They have left us this thing for a saying. That pair have gone into the cave.
	Sign for the exit of Shite* and Tsure.*

Second Part

	The Waki* has taken the posture of sleep. His respectful visit to the cave is beginning to have its effect.*
Waki	Restless. It seems that I cannot sleep For the length of a pricket’s horn. Under October wind, under pines, under night! I will do service to Butsu. He performs the gestures of a ritual.
Tsure	Aie! honoured priest! You do not dip twice in the river Beneath the same tree’s shadow Without bonds in some other life. Hear sooth-say, Now is there meeting between us, Between us who were until now In life and in afterlife kept apart. A dream-bridge over wild grass, Over the grass I dwell in. O honoured! do not awake me by force. I see that the law is perfect.
Shite	Supposedly invisible. It is a good service you have done, sir, A service that spreads in two worlds, And binds up an ancient love That was stretched out between them. I had watched for a thousand days. Take my thanks, For this meeting is under a difficult law. And now I will show myself in the form of Nishikigi. I will come out now for the first time in colour.
	The characters announce or explain their acts, as these are mostly symbolical. Thus here the Shite, or Sh’te, announces his change of costume, and later the dance.
Chorus	The three years are over and past: All that is but an old story.
Shite	To dream under dream we return. Three years.⁠ ⁠… And the meeting comes now! This night has happened over and over, And only now comes the tryst.
Chorus	Look there to the cave Beneath the stems of the Suzuki. From under the shadows of the love-grass, See, see how they come forth and appear For an instant.⁠ ⁠… Illusion!
Shite	There is at the root of hell No distinction between princes and commons; Wretched for me! ’tis the saying.
Waki	Strange, what seemed so very old a cave Is all glittering-bright within, Like the flicker of fire. It is like the inside of a house. They are setting up a loom, And heaping up charm-sticks. No, The hangings are out of old time. Is it illusion, illusion?
Tsure	Our hearts have been in the dark of the falling snow, We have been astray in the flurry. You should tell better than we How much is illusion; You who are in the world. We have been in the whirl of those who are fading.
Shite	Indeed in old times Narihira said, —and he has vanished with the years⁠— “Let a man who is in the world tell the fact.” It is for you, traveller, To say how much is illusion.
Waki	Let it be a dream, or a vision, Or what you will, I care not. Only show me the old times over-past and snowed under⁠— Now, soon, while the night lasts.
Shite	Look then, the old times are shown, Faint as the shadow-flower shows in the grass that bears it; And you’ve but a moon for lantern.
Tsure	The woman has gone into the cave. She sets up her loom there For the weaving of Hosonuno, Thin as the heart of Autumn.
Shite	The suitor for his part, holding his charm-sticks, Knocks on a gate which was barred.
Tsure	In old time he got back no answer, No secret sound at all Save.⁠ ⁠…
Shite	The sound of the loom.
Tsure	It was a sweet sound like katydids and crickets, A thin sound like the Autumn.
Shite	It was what you would hear any night.
Tsure	Kiri.
Shite	Hatari.
Tsure	Cho.
Shite	Cho.
Chorus	Mimicking the sound of crickets. Kiri, hatari, cho, cho, Kiri, hatari, cho, cho. The cricket sews on at his old rags, With all the new grass in the field; sho, Churr, isho, like the whir of a loom: churr.
Chorus (antistrophe)	Let be, they make grass-cloth in Kefu, Kefu, the land’s end, matchless in the world.
Shite	That is an old custom, truly, But this priest would look on the past.
Chorus	The good priest himself would say: Even if we weave the cloth, Hosonuno, And set up the charm-sticks For a thousand, a hundred nights, Even then our beautiful desire will not pass, Nor fade nor die out.
Shite	Even today the difficulty of our meeting is remembered, And is remembered in song.
Chorus	That we may acquire power, Even in our faint substance, We will show forth even now, And though it be but in a dream, Our form of repentance. Explaining the movement of the Shite* and Tsure.* There he is carrying wands, And she has no need to be asked. See her within the cave, With a cricket-like noise of weaving. The grass-gates and the hedge are between them; That is a symbol. Night has already come on. Now explaining the thoughts of the man’s spirit. Love’s thoughts are heaped high within him, As high as the charm-sticks, As high as the charm-sticks, once coloured, Now fading, lie heaped in this cave. And he knows of their fading. He says: I lie a body, unknown to any other man, Like old wood buried in moss. It were a fit thing That I should stop thinking the love-thoughts. The charm-sticks fade and decay, And yet, The rumour of our love Takes foot and moves through the world. We had no meeting But tears have, it seems, brought out a bright blossom Upon the dyed tree of love.
Shite	Tell me, could I have foreseen Or known what a heap of my writings Should lie at the end of her shaft-bench?
Chorus	A hundred nights and more Of twisting, encumbered sleep, And now they make it a ballad, Not for one year or for two only But until the days lie deep As the sand’s depth at Kefu, Until the year’s end is red with Autumn, Red like these love-wands, A thousand nights are in vain. And I stand at this gate-side. You grant no admission, you do not show yourself Until I and my sleeves are faded. By the dew-like gemming of tears upon my sleeve, Why will you grant no admission? And we all are doomed to pass, You, and my sleeves and my tears. And you did not even know when three years had come to an end. Cruel, ah cruel! The charm-sticks.⁠ ⁠…
Shite	Were set up a thousand times; Then, now, and for always.
Chorus	Shall I ever at last see into that room of hers, which no other sight has traversed?
Shite	Happy at last and well-starred, Now comes the eve of betrothal: We meet for the wine-cup.
Chorus	How glorious the sleeves of the dance, That are like snow-whirls!
Shite	Tread out the dance.
Chorus	Tread out the dance and bring music. This dance is for Nishikigi.
Shite	This dance is for the evening plays, And for the weaving.
Chorus	For the tokens between lover and lover: It is a reflecting in the wine-cup.
Chorus	Ari-aki, The dawn! Come, we are out of place; Let us go ere the light comes. To the Waki. We ask you, do not awake, We all will wither away, The wands and this cloth of a dream. Now you will come out of sleep, You tread the border and nothing Awaits you: no, all this will wither away. There is nothing here but this cave in the field’s midst. Today’s wind moves in the pines; A wild place, unlit, and unfilled.