Atsumori, an anti-war play, by Zeami

Atsumori is a Noh play that demonstrates the silliness and sadness of war. Life is short already, why make it even shorter? A seasoned warrior who in battle has killed a young flute player, feels he has become a murderer, and disgusted with military life, has taken Buddhist vows to expiate his sin. In the Noh play, one of the most iconic from the canon, he returns to the site of the battle to pray for the soul of his victim and there meets the ghost of the young man he has slain. The ghost asks him to pray for the redemption of his soul which still clings to the earth. The priest promises to do so, and in their shared grief and mourning, they are no longer enemies.

[Atsumori]

Atsumori is a play of the second category of Noh plays, a so-called shura-mono or "warrior play." The protagonists of warrior plays are ghosts of those who have fallen in battle, and so part of the "dream" or "mugen" genre of Noh, where usually the line between reality and fantasy is blurred. Like many other warrior plays, Atsumori is based on a famous episode in The Tales of the Heike (Heike Monogatari). In the eleventh century two powerful clans, the Taira (Heike) and the Minamoto (Genji), contended for mastery. In 1181 Kiyomori, the chief of the Tairas, died, and from that time their fortunes declined. In 1183 they were forced to flee from Kyoto, carrying with them the infant Emperor. After many hardships and wanderings they camped on the shores of Suma, where they were protected by their fleet. But early in 1184 the Minamotos attacked and utterly routed them at the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani, near the woods of Ikuta (present-day Kobe). At this battle fell Atsumori, the nephew of Kiyomori. When Kumagai, who had slain Atsumori, bent over him to examine the body, he found lying beside him a bamboo flute wrapped in brocade. 

Taira no Atsumori was a sixteen-year-old of almost feminine beauty and he was also an expert on the Japanese flute. He possessed a great flute called “Saeda," which originally belonged to the Cloistered Emperor Toba. In other words, Atsumori was rather an elegant aristocrat than a true warrior, but circumstances forced him to don armor. His opponent Kumagai no Naozane is an uncouth warrior from the countryside in Eastern Japan. When Kumagai during the battle at the seaside sees a high-ranking warrior of the Heike alone at the seashore, he attacks and wrestles his enemy to the ground and removes his helmet. Kumagai then realizes that the soldier is a boy of only fifteen or sixteen years old - the same age as his own son. His first impulse is to spare the boy's life, but then he sees other warriors from his unit approaching and - not wanting to appear weak in front of his colleagues - strikes off the boy's head. He then notices a flute, a symbol of courtly elegance, hidden under the boy's armor. Carrying a flute into battle is evidence of the boy's peaceful, courtly nature as well as his youth and naïveté. Royall Tyler, who has translated "Atsumori" in Japanese No Dramas, focuses in his introduction to the play on the contrast between Atsumori, the young, peaceful courtier and flute player, and Kumagai, the older seasoned warrior with no real culture.

[Atsumori]

After killing the exceptionally young warrior, Kumagai is so horrified by the experience, that he renounces the world and takes the priestly name Rensho. He feels overwhelmed by the tragedy and realizes the uncertainty of life. The Noh play Atsumori is not about the battle, but addresses the Buddhist theme of the salvation of both the killer and his victim.

It takes place some years after the end of the Genpei War. The ghost of Atsumori, disguised as a grass cutter, is the shite role, and Kumagai, having become a monk and changed his name to Rensho (or Rensei), is played by the waki. Kumagai visits the old battlefield in order to pray for the soul of his victim, and ask forgiveness. The play begins with Rensho's arrival at Ichi-no-Tani, also known as Suma, a location which features prominently in a number of classic texts, and thus has many layers of significance. There Kumagai meets a flute-playing youth, a grass cutter, and his companions; he speaks with them briefly about fluting and about Atsumori before the youth reveals that he has a connection to Atsumori, and asks Rensho to repeat the sutra of the Buddha Amida ten times for the sake of Atsumori ("If I attain to Buddhahood, In the whole world and its ten spheres Of all that dwell here none shall call on my name And be rejected or cast aside.”). When Rensho recites the sutra in question, the man implies that he is the ghost of Atsumori and disappears.

Between the two acts, there is the usual interlude, in which a kyogen performer relates the background of the drama, in this case the story of Atsumori, Kumagai and the battle of Ichi-no-tani.

In the second act Rensho is reciting prayers for Atsumori, whose ghost (looking as he was on the day of his death, in his splendid uniform, and carrying a sword) now makes his appearance, played by the nochi-shite. Tied to the mortal realm by the emotional power of his death, Atsumori's ghost has been unable to move on. Atsumori (along with the chorus chanting for him) relates the tragic story of his final battle and death from his perspective, re-enacting it in dance form.

CHORUS
Buddha bids the flowers of Spring
Mount the tree-top that men may raise their eyes
And walk on upward paths;
He bids the moon in autumn waves be drowned
In token that he visits laggard men
And leads them out from valleys of despair.

ATSUMORI
Now the clan of Taira, building wall to wall,
Spread over the earth like the leafy branches of a great tree:

CHORUS
Yet their prosperity lasted but for a day;
It was like the flower of the Morning Glory.
There was none to tell them
That glory flashes like sparks from flint-stone,
And after,—darkness. Oh wretched, the life of men!

ATSUMORI
When they were on high they afflicted the humble;
When they were rich they were reckless in pride.
And so for twenty years and more they ruled this land.
But truly a generation passes like the space of a dream.

(from the translation by Arthur Waley)

After relating his death at the hands of Kumagai, the thought flashes through Atsumori's mind that he has come back to the world and that now he could take revenge on Kumagai/Rensho. But when he sees Rensho meekly praying for him, he realizes that the only salvation for both of them is to let go and stop being enemies. He asks that the monk pray for his release, and so the play closes on a Buddhist note: Atsumori finds peace and Enlightenment with Rensho, and they will be reborn in the same lotus paradise.

In this way, the play warns in a Buddhist sense against the danger of attachment: Atsumori has not moved on to Enlightenment because of his attachment to his killer, and for Rensho it is difficult to find Enlightenment without Atsumori’s forgiveness. Only when Atsumori starts seeing Rensho as a repentant priest and forgives him, and when Rensho in turn accepts this forgiveness, can both of them move on to Enlightenment.

[Juroku mask of Atsumori in the final part of the play]

Like many Noh plays, Atsumori privileges mood over plot, and yugen (mysterious beauty) is created through the poetic songs. The actors play in slow and choreographed movements to the music of Noh flute and drums. The shite is the central figure, the protagonist (Atsumori); when he returns in the final part as a ghost, he is called nochi-shite; the waki (Kumagai) is a supporting character, who helps the shite pursue Enlightenment.
 
The bay of Suma is associated in the mind of a Japanese reader not only with the Heike Monogatari, but also with the stories of Prince Genji and Prince Yukihira. For Genji, see my discussion of the Suma Chapter from The Tale of Genji; and for Yukihira, see my translation of Poem 16 in the Hyakunin Isshu, as well as more information about Suma.

Atsumori in The Noh Database.

Waley translation.

I recommend the modern translation by Royall Tyler in Japanese No Plays (Penguin Classics).

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