Anthology of Japanese Literature/Sotoba Komachi
Sotoba Komachi
[by Kan’ami Kiyotsugu]
“Sotoba Komachi” concerns Ono no Komachi, a beautiful and heartless poetess of ancient Japan. One infatuated nobleman was refused a rendezvous until he should have come to her house in his chariot a hundred nights. He died just before completing his ordeal, but his unresolved love and passionate jealousy returned to possess Komachi when she was a wretched, withered old woman.
- •
Persons
- First Priest
- Second Priest
- Komachi, as herself and as her former lover
- Chorus
Both Priests: The mountains are not high on which we hide
The mountains are not high on which we hide
The lonely deepness of our hearts.
First Priest: I am a priest from the Koya Hills
Coming down now to make my way to the city.
Second Priest: The Buddha that was is gone away.
The Buddha to be has not yet come to the world.
Both Priest: At birth we woke to dream in this world between.
What then shall we say is real?
By chance we took the forms of men
From a thousand possibilities.
We stumbled on the treasure of the holy law
The seed of all salvation
And then with thoughtful hearts we put our bodies
In these thin and ink-black robes.
We knew of lives before this birth
We knew of lives before this birth
And knew we owed no love to those who to this life
Engendered us.
We recognized no parents.
No children cared for us.
We walked a thousand miles and the way seemed short.
In the fields we lay down
And slept the night in the hills
Which now became our proper dwelling place
Our proper home.
Komachi: “Like a root-cut reed
Should the tide entice
I would come
I would come I know but no wave asks
No stream invites this grief.”
How sad that once I was proud
Long ago
Proud and graceful
Golden birds in my raven hair
When I walked like willows nodding, charming
As the breeze in spring.
The voice of the nightingale
The petals of the wood rose, wide stretched,
Holding dew
At the hour before their breathless fall:
I was lovelier than these.
Now
I am foul in the eyes of the humblest creatures
To whom my shame is shown.
Unwelcome months and days pile over me
The wreck of a hundred years
In the city to avoid the eyes of men
Lest they should say “Can it be she?”
In the evening
West with the moon I steal past the palace,
Past the towers
Where no guard will question in the mountains
In the shadows of the trees
None challenge so wretched a pilgrim as this
To Love’s Tomb
The autumn hills
The River Katsura
Boats in the moonlight rowed by whom?
I cannot see….
But rowed by whom!
Oh, too, too painful….
Here on this withered stump of tree
Let me sit and collect my senses.
First Priest: Come on. The sun is down. We must hurry on our way. But look! that old beggar woman sitting there on a sacred stupa. We should warn her to come away.
Second Priest: Yes, of course.
First Priest: Excuse me, old lady, but don’t you know that’s a stupa there you’re sitting on? the holy image of the Buddha’s incarnation. You’d better come away and rest some other place.
Komachi: The holy image of the Buddha you say? But I saw no words or carvings on it. I took it for a tree stump only.
First Priest: “Withered stumps
Are known as pine or cherry still
On the loneliest mountain.”
Komachi: I, too, am a fallen tree.
But still the flowers of my heart
Might make some offering to the Buddha.
But this you call the Buddha’s body. Why?
First Priest: The stupa represents the body of Kongosatta Buddha, the Diamond Lord, when he assumed the temporary form of each of his manifestations.
Komachi: In what forms then is he manifested?
First Priest: In Earth and Water and Wind and Fire and Space.
Komachi: The same five elements as man. What was the difference then?
First Priest: The form was the same but not the power.
Komachi: And what is a stupa’s power?
First Priest: “He that has once looked upon a stupa shall for all eternity avoid the three worst catastrophes.”
Komachi: “One sudden thought can strike illumination.” Is that not just as good?
Second Priest: If you’ve had such an illumination, why are you lingering here in this world of illusion?
Komachi: Though my body lingers, my heart has left it long ago.
First Priest: Unless you had no heart at all you wouldn’t have failed to feel the presence of a stupa.
Komachi: It was because I felt it that I came perhaps.
Second Priest: In that case you shouldn’t have spread yourself out on it without so much as a word of prayer.
Komachi: It was on the ground already….
First Priest: Just the same it was an act of discord.
Komachi: “Even from discord salvation springs.”
Second Priest: From the evil of Daiba
Second Priest: From the evil of DaibaKomachi: Or the love of Kannon.
First Priest: From the folly of Handoku
First Priest: From the folly of HandokuKomachi: Or the wisdom of Monju.
First Priest: What we call evil
First Priest: What we call evilKomachi: Is also good.
First Priest: Illusion
First Priest: IllusionKomachi: Is Salvation.
Second Priest: “Salvation
Second Priest: “SalvationKomachi: Cannot be watered like trees.”
First Priest: “The brightest mirror
First Priest: “The brightest mirrorKomachi: Is not on the wall.”
Chorus: Nothing is separate.
Nothing persists.
Of Buddha and man there is no distinction,
At most a seeming difference planned
For the humble, ill-instructed men
He has vowed from the first to save.
“Even from discord salvation springs.”
So said Komachi. And the priests:
“Surely this beggar is someone beyond us.”
Then bending their heads to the ground
Three times did they do her homage
The difficult priests
The difficult priests
Who thought to correct her.
First Priest: Who are you then? Give us your name; we will pray for your soul.
Komachi: For all my shame I will tell you. Pray for the wreck of Komachi, the daughter of Yoshizane of Ono, Lord of Dewa.
Both Priests: How sad to think that you were she.
Exquisite Komachi
The brightest flower long ago
Her dark brows arched
Her face bright-powdered always
When cedar-scented halls could scarce contain
Her damask robes.
Komachi: I made verses in our speech
And in the speech of the foreign court.
Chorus: When she passed the banquet cup
Reflected moonlight lay on her sleeve.
How was ever such loveliness lost?
When did she change?
Her hair a tangle of frosted grass
Where the black curls lay on her neck
And the color lost from the twin arched peaks
Of her brow.
Komachi: “Oh shameful in the dawning light
These silted seaweed locks that of a hundred years
Now lack but one.”
Chorus: What do you have in the bag at your waist?
Komachi: Death today or hunger tomorrow.
Only some beans I’ve put in my bag.
Chorus: And in the bundle on your back?
Komachi: A soiled and dusty robe.
Chorus: And in the basket on your arm?
Komachi: Sagittaries black and white.
Chorus: Tattered coat
Chorus: Tattered coatKomachi: Broken hat
Chorus: Can scarcely hide her face.
Komachi: Think of the frost and the snow and the rain.
I’ve not even sleeves enough to dry my tears.
But I wander begging things from men
That come and go along the road.
When begging fails
An awful madness seizes me
And my voice is no longer the same….
Hey! Give me something, you priests!
First Priest: What do you want?
Komachi: To go to Komachi!
First Priest: What are you saying? You are Komachi!
Komachi: No. Komachi was beautiful.
Many letters came, many messages
Thick as rain from a summer sky
But she made no answer, even once,
Even an empty word.
Age is her retribution now.
Oh, I love her!
I love her!
First Priest: You love her! What spirit has possessed you to make you say such things?
Komachi: Many loved her
But among them all
It was Shosho who loved her deepest
Shii no Shosho, the Captain.
Chorus: The wheel turns back.
I live again a cycle of unhappiness
Riding with the wheels
That came and went again each night.
The sun.
What time is it now?
Dusk.
The moon will be my friend on the road
And though the watchmen stand at the pass
They shall not bar my way.
Komachi (recostumed as her lover): My wide white skirts hitched up
Chorus: My wide white skirts hitched up
My tall black hat pulled down
And my sleeves thrown over my head
Hidden from the eyes of men on the road
In the moonlight
In the darkness coming, coming
When the night rains fell
When the night winds blew the leaves like rain
When the snow lay deep
Komachi: And the melting drops fell
One by one from the rafters
Chorus: I came and went, came and went
One night, two nights, three,
Ten (and this was the Harvest Night)
And did not see her.
Faithful as a cock that marks each dawn
I came and carved my mark upon the pillar.
I was to come a hundred nights,
I lacked but one….
Komachi: Oh, dizziness … pain….
Chorus: He was grieved at the pain in his breast
When the last night came and he died
Shii no Shosho, the Captain.
Komachi: It was his unsatisfied love possessed me so
His anger that turned my wits.
In the face of this I will pray
For life in the worlds to come
The sands of goodness I will pile
Into a towering hill.
Before the golden, gentle Buddha I will lay
Poems as my flowers
Entering in the Way
Entering in the Way.
Translated by Sam Houston Brock