Yamanba
The Mountain She-Devil
Characters
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Hyakma Yamauba, a singer.
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Yamauba, the mountain she-devil, appearing at first in the play as an old woman.
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Chorus. This chorus sometimes speaks in place of the characters, sometimes explains the meaning of their movements.
Act I
| Servant | We seek a temple for its blessed shadow of light. I am from the capital; the lady with me here is a renowned singer commonly called Hyakma Yamauba. She is known by that name, because she sings in her song of how Yamauba, a she-devil, wanders round the mountain. She has not yet visited the holy Zenkoji temple; so accompanied by myself, she is going now toward it. |
| Chorus |
We left the capital, took a boat at ripple-kissing Shiga no Ura to cross the lake; then passed over Arichi no Yama Hill, and reached the Tamaye bridge studded with the jewel-dews. We loitered by the singing shade of the Shiwokoshi pine-tree at Adaka, whose smoke-like leaves were ruffled by the evening wind; we climbed the highest point of Tonami Mountain as keen as the Buddha’s law that will cut asunder our sins. But our goal is still remote underneath the dim clouds. Oh, how far behind is the capital! … Now we arrived at Sakaigawa. |
| Servant | So we have now arrived at Sakaigawa between Echigo and Etchu Provinces. I think we must study which way to take. |
| Singer | I am told that the Azero mountain pass is the only one straight road leading to the Zenkoji temple, and finally to a western Pure Land a billion miles away. We should leave our palanquins here and go on barefoot, since ours is a holy journey for austere practice. |
| Servant | How strange! Oh! How mysterious! The day grows ere the time suddenly dark. What shall we do now? |
| Old Woman | Ho, ho, travellers, come, come stop over the night at my little mountain hut! The day has already set. This, the Azero mountain pass, is a place far away from human dwellings. |
| Servant | How glad! We are taken aghast by this early unexpected sun-setting. We will accept your kind invitation with thanks. |
| Old Woman | There is a particular reason for my offering you a lodging for the night. Let me hear a bit of the song on Yamauba. That is a desire I have cherished for a long long time. For this purpose I intentionally made the day grow dark, and even offered a lodging. By all means, sing, pray, sing! |
| Servant | What a strange request is yours! For whom do you take us? Why do you wish for the song on Yamauba? |
| Old Woman | Conceal it not—the lady I see is nobody but Hyakma Yamauba, the renowned singer of the capital. Her song begins, I understand, by describing how Yamauba wanders round the mountain. That is merely a she-devil of her song. But do you know what the real Yamauba looks like? |
| Servant | It is told in her song, I believe, that Yamauba is an evil spirit living in the mountain. |
| Old Woman | An evil spirit in the mountain indeed! Since I too live amid the verdant hills, that means to say that her song concerns my own self. The fact that this renowned singer sings it for many years, not pitying me at all, is the very cause of my resentment. Oh! How heartless! What an affront! She owes it to the song certainly that she has become famous, her life’s sweet flower blooming perfectly. Therefore, I beg her to say Mass for my soul with dancing and music; then let me escape from the merciless pains of transmigration, and enter into the natural righteous final realm. I am nothing but the very spirit of Yamauba, now making her resentful presence before you, O lady. |
| Singer | Alas, you, the real Yamauba! |
| Old Woman | Yes, I came from afar to hear about myself in your own song. Pray, sing, sing! |
| Singer | It is not right, of course, to refuse you further. |
| Old Woman | But wait, wait, oh, lady! You would better sing the song after dark, under the shining moon; I will then reveal to you my true ghastly form. |
| Chorus | The sad mountain valley that ever hurries to grow dark is now clothed by the sudden streaming clouds, in whose mystery, lo, Yamauba hides away, saying that she will again appear later, and dance wildly to the singer’s nocturnal song. |
Act II
| Singer | Oh! How surprising! How incredible! |
| Chorus | The winds blew their flutes through the long forests of pine-trees—the long mournful sound echoing to the clear depth of a valley stream. How the moon finds her lonely home in the silvery heart of the water! What silence of the mountains— |
| Yamauba | What a nocturnal ghastliness! There a maddening spirit beats his own corpse in a cold forest and with tears repents over the sins of his previous life. Here a glad angel offers flowers to her own corpse in a deep field and with smiles delights in the worthy acts of her former life. To say good or bad, right or wrong, that is after all nothing so different;—what has one to repent? And what has one to delight in? Go to Nature. Learn there a lesson of true perception! The waterfall rushes down, and the rocks are steep. Lo, mountain over mountain! What carver carved such a wonderful shape of green granites? Lo, water on water! What dyer dyed such a pleasing colour of blue brocade? |
| Singer | Alas and alas! What a fearful face from amid the shadowy gloom of mountains and trees! Ah, are you Yamauba? |
| Yamauba | Do not fear, do not be afraid of me! |
| Chorus | Though I speak a human tongue— |
| Yamauba | my hair is thorn-like, icy-white— |
| Chorus | my eyes are star-flaming— |
| Yamauba | and my face is red— |
| Chorus | like a red demon-tile threatening the world from the roof of a house. |
| Singer | Oh, the fear that never struck me before! |
| Chorus | If I were devoured at one mouthful! What terror! Oh! What a horror! |
| Yamauba | The lovely moment of the spring like this night is valued beyond a thousand pounds. There is fragrance in the flowers; a shadow with the moon. Pray, do not idle away these precious spring moments. Sing quickly, sing quickly! |
| Singer | Now I will sing— |
| Chorus | making the waterfall beat a sound of the drum— |
| Singer | with a flute played by the pine-tree. |
| Chorus | Oh! What a sight to see how the dark ghost wanders round the mountain! |
| Yamauba | The mountain rising first from a bit of dust, will thrust itself through the sky and clouds;— |
| Chorus | the sea that began with a moss-dew, enfolds the million waves. |
| Yamauba | Behold, the wonder of my sylvan home, with the lofty mountains, and the seas anear! The valley is deep. Faraway the water resounds. |
| Chorus | The boundless sea before me nestles the moon, tranquil in her heart; the deep pine forests behind will scatter away life’s delusive dream with a wand of magic wind. |
| Yamauba | Here in the empty valley is no voice to be heard, here are only the fireflies on wings. No echoes run from tree to tree, no bird is alarmed. |
| Chorus | The peak of Hosho no Mine Mountain makes one aspire toward a peak of Nirvana; the bottomless depth of the Mumyo valley makes him lament over the bottomless delusion of human life. This Yamauba, the mountain she-devil, knows not where she was born or where is her home. Carried ever by a cloud or water, she does know no place where she can not wander. Sometimes she helps the poor woodman with his heaviest load, and kindly sees him off out of a mountain with the sunken moon. Sometimes she slides herself into the weaver’s busy window, and lightens the work of the woman with tangled threads. |
| Yamauba | But she is not a human being— |
| Chorus | as light as a cloud, as free as the water, she will transform herself into any existence, at her momentary whim. Since good and wrong are the same, nothing different, she embraces the Buddha’s understanding as well as the human fallacy. There is a Buddha, and so here is human being too—a Buddha, when you attain to perception, and a mere human, when you are caught by deception. There is the human being, and so here is a Yamauba too. Oh! What varied lives! What an interesting world! Oh what a beautiful Nature! Behold, the willow leaves ever so green, the flowers ever so red! Oh, be true like Nature herself! |
| Yamauba | What am I? What am I?—I am nothing but the ever wandering spirit of life, when called by spring in the trees, to wander round a mountain for the smiling flower;— |
| Chorus | in autumn— |
| Yamauba | to wander after the lovely shadow of the moon;— |
| Chorus | in winter— |
| Yamauba | to wander for the flashing beauty of snow. |
| Chorus | Oh! What a sight to see how the dark ghost wanders round the mountain! |
| Yamauba | How restless I am in the human delusion, bound with the sad transmigrating pains! |
| Chorus | Yamauba born out of life’s dusts, this mountain she-devil. Oh, how she wanders round the mountain, nay, Life— |
| Yamauba | now running up the rocks— |
| Chorus | then dashing down the valley. |
| Yamauba | By mountain on mountain— |
| Chorus | over water on water— |
| Yamauba | —behold, Yamauba wanders, and now away disappears— |
| Chorus | now away disappears. Oh! Where has she gone, this wandering restless ghost! |