Sotoba Komachi is a Noh play written by Kan'ami, and is one of the most compelling and best-known of the type.H Shirane, Traditional Japanese Literature (2007) p. 127 and 938
Plot and themes Much of the strength of the play derives from the variety provided by the three main and distinct sections: lament for lost beauty; witty religious debate; and ghostly possession.H Shirane, Traditional Japanese Literature (2007) p. 938
The play begins with an encounter between two priests and an old beggar-woman, lamenting how she was “lovelier than the petals of the wild-rose open-stretched / In the hour before its fall. / But now I am grown loathsome even to sluts”.A Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan (Tuttle 1976) p. 88 She later admits that she is the famed waka poet Ono no Komachi.
Because she is seated on a Buddhist stupa, a holy marker, she is challenged by the priests for creating bad karma, but in a witty debate uses Zen-like sophistries to defeat them:H Shirane, Traditional Japanese Literature (2007) p. 938 “Nothing is real. Between Buddha and Man is no distinction”.A Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan (Tuttle 1976) p. 92
The priests then lament in turn her loss of beauty; before in the final sequence she is possessed by the angry ghost of a former suitor, Shōshō of Fukakusa. He had been tasked with visiting Komachi for 100 nights in order to earn her love, but had died on the penultimate one; and his acting out of his cruelly thwarted struggles to win her love brings the play to a dramatic close, with Komachi then seeking for enlightenment and release.G Kopf, The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy (2019) p. 144
Later influence Bashō in his late renga ‘The Summer Moon’ wrote: “In this fleeting world no one can escape/ The destiny of that famed poetess Komachi”.Makoto Ueda, Matsuo Bashō (1982) p. 105
Arthur Waley moved his future wife to tears by reading from his translation of the play: “Like a root-cut reed,/ Should the tide entice,/ I would come, I think; but now/ No wave asks; no stream stirs”.A Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan (Tuttle 1976) p. xiii-iv
See also Kayoi Komachi Sekidera Komachi Sotoba Komachi (Mishima)
References
External links Sotoba Komachi Synopsis