Kyogen ("mad words") are short, humorous plays programmed as an intermission between the different Noh plays that are usually part of a performance. Although it developed alongside Noh and retains strong ties with it, Kyogen is a comic form, very different from the solemn, symbolic Noh - its primary goal is to make the audience laugh.
Kyogen plays are invariably brief – often about 10 minutes, and they contain only two or three roles, which are usually stock characters, for example Taro kaja, the main servant, Jiro kaja, the second servant, and the Master, shujin. Movements and dialogue in kyogen are very exaggerated. All kyogen actors, including those in female roles, are men. Kyogen is generally performed on a Noh stage. The traditions of kyogen are maintained primarily by family groups, especially the Izumi school and Okura school.
[Kyogen performance (not of Busu)]
Delicious Poison (Busu) is one of the most popular kyogen plays. It is a humorous description of how the servants
Tarokaja and Jirokaja catch their master in a lie and silence him
using his own logic.
The Busu of the title is a generic name for "poison" in Chinese herbal medicine - the specific name used in the play is "torikabuto," wolf's bane. The master has to go away on business and he is worried that his servants, Taro and Jiro, will eat his precious store of sugar while he is away - prior to the Edo period, when finally industrial sugar production was undertaken, all sugar In Japan was imported and therefore rare and valuable (as sweetener an from sweet beans, azuki, was used as still in traditional Japanese sweets). So he lies to the servants that the large, lidded lacquer barrel containing the sugar, actually contains a very strong poison, torikabuto. He tells them to carefully guard it but on no account go near it, as one whiff of the stuff is already deadly.
After the master has left, both servants at first are afraid of the deadly pot, but they are also fascinated by it. They are frightened when a small breeze blows over the pot in their direction. But how is the master able to handle this stuff when it is so poisonous? Their curiosity gets stronger and stronger and they decide to remove the lid and peak inside - to be on the safe side, one of them has to make a breeze with his fan in the opposite direction. Now that the lid is off, what is inside the barrel actually looks quite delicious. The next step is to dip a pair of chopsticks in it and taste a small bit (they use their stage fans to mimic this). They soon realize that their master has fooled them: the barrel contains delicious sugar (presumably in the form of syrup) and they end up eating the whole lot, competing with each other. "It's so delicious, I'm dying!"
Now they have to find an excuse for when the master returns. They tear up a valuable hanging scroll hanging on the wall, and also break a precious Chinese vase. When the master returns, they sit next to the broken scroll and vase and start crying. The master asks what happened. They explain: "When we did some sumo wresting to keep awake to guard the important barrel, we broke the hanging scroll and pot by mistake, so to atone for our misdeed, we were going to commit suicide by eating the poison you told us was kept in the pot. But so far nothing has happened - unfortunately we couldn't die..." Despite these words, both servants look very satisfied after having consumed this delicious snack.
Unlike most Kyogen, Busu has an identifiable literary source, the collection of Buddhist stories called Shasekishu (Collection of Sand and Pebbles) compiled in the 13th century by the priest Muju Ichien. The characters are a monk and an acolyte; the second servant has been added in the play. There is also a similar story about the Priest Ikkyu from a later period. As a folk story, it is categorized among similar tales under the name of "candy is poison." In those stories, many variations of foods are used as "poison," and various treasured goods are destroyed by way of an apology.
I have read Delicious Poison in the translation of Laurence Kominz, published in Traditional Japanese Literature, An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, edited by Haruo Shirane.
Performance with subtitles on Youtube (starts at 8:21)
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