Runaway Horses (Vintage International) by Yukio Mishima

Author:Yukio Mishima
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307834300
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-04-09T03:00:00+00:00

19

ABOUT THIS SAME TIME, Honda was attending a performance of Matsukazé at the Osaka Nō Theater in Tennoji-Dogashiba at the invitation of a colleague fond of performing Nō chants himself. It was a production featuring Kanesuké Noguchi from Tokyo as shité with Yazo Tamura assisting him as waki. The theater stood upon the eastern slope of Uemachi Hill between Tennoji and Osaka Castle. This had been a section of fine villas at the beginning of the Taisho period and was still a secluded area containing high-walled mansions. One of these functioned as a Nō theater under the auspices of the Sumitomo family.

Most of the guests were merchant princes, and Honda recognized many of them. As for the famous actor, the harsh-voiced Noguchi, Honda’s colleague had warned him beforehand that, although his intonation might sound like a goose being strangled, Honda was not by any means to laugh. And he predicted that, ignorant of Nō though Honda was, once the play was underway he would suddenly find himself emotionally aroused.

Honda had reached the age at which advice of this sort did not provoke any childish antipathy. Although the reason that had been his foundation had begun to crumble when he met Isao Iinuma at the beginning of the summer, his usual habits of thought had not changed. Once again he found himself believing that, just as he had never contracted venereal disease, neither had he ever experienced emotional arousal.

As soon as the exchange was finished between the waki as a priest and the clown, the shité and his companion made their entrance along the passageway at the left rear. Honda’s colleague explained to him that the serene and tranquil accompaniment now being played was ordinarily limited to that entrance scene in god plays. Matsukazé contained the sole exception to this rule. Such was the high regard, it seemed, in which this music was held as expressing the full force of the occult.

Matsukazé and Murasamé, both clad in white robes revealing scarlet underskirts spilling out beneath, faced each other on the entrance bridgeway, and then began to chant in unison as quietly as the rain falling and sinking into a sandy beach: “Drawing our brine cart along, how briefly we live in this sad world, how fleetingly!”

Though Honda was distracted by the reflection of the pointed pines falling on the highly polished cypress floor of the stage, gleaming too brilliantly beneath the rather harsh lighting of this Nō theater, the final “how fleetingly!” rang clear in his ear, as the lighter and brighter tones of the companion entangled the deeper and more melancholy voice, ever on the verge of breaking, of Kanesuké Noguchi.

Since there was, of course, nothing to interfere with listening, the words were easily recalled.

“Drawing our brine cart along, how briefly we live in this sad world, how fleetingly!”

No matter how lean, how slender of body, the graceful figure of the verse took on significant form in Honda’s mind. At that moment he shuddered without knowing why.

Then the companion began to chant the second verse: “The waves beat close to us, here at the Bay of Suma.

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