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Five Modern No Plays (Vintage International)
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About Five Modern No Plays
Product Description Japanese No drama is one of the great art forms that has fascinated people throughout the world. The late Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's outstanding post-war writers, infused new life into the form by using it for plays that preserve the style and inner spirit of No and are at the same time so modern, so direct, and intelligible that they could, as he suggested, be played on a bench in Central Park. Here are five of his No plays, stunning in their contemporary nature and relevance—and finally made available again for readers to enjoy. About the Author Yukio Mishima was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944. He established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. THE SET is in extremely vulgar and commonplace taste, rather in the manner of sets used in operettas. A corner of a park. Five benches grouped in a semicircle facing the audience. Lampposts, trees etc. suitably disposed. Black backdrop. It is night. Five couples on the five benches are rapturously embracing. A repulsive-looking OLD WOMAN enters, picking up cigarette butts. She goes on collecting them in the area around the five couples, quite oblivious to their discomfort, finally making her way to the bench in the center, where she sits. A shabbily dressed young POET comes under the lamppost and, drunkenly propping his body against it, observes the OLD WOMAN. The couple on the center bench presently stand up in anger, with expressions of annoyance on their faces, and leave arm-in-arm. The OLD WOMAN, taking sole possession of the bench, spreads out a sheet of newspaper and starts counting the butts she has gathered. OLD WOMAN One and one make two, two and two make four…. (She holds a stub up against the light and, determining that it is a fairly long one, goes to the couple at the left to ask for a light. She smokes for a while. W hen the cigarette burns down to a stub she grinds it out, throws it on the paper with the others, and begins to count again.) One and one make two, two and two make four…. POET (Comes up behind the OLD WOMAN and watches what she is doing.) OLD WOMAN (her eyes still looking down at the paper) Want a smoke? I'll give you one if you want it. (She chooses a rather long stub and hands it to him.) POET Thanks. (Takes out a match, lights the cigarette, and smokes.) OLD WOMAN Is there something else? Have you got something to say to me? POET No, not especially. OLD WOMAN I know what you are. You're a poet. That's your business, isn't it? POET How well you know. Yes, I write poems once in a while. There's no doubt but I'm a poet. But that doesn't make it a business. OLD WOMAN Oh? You mean it's not a business unless your poems sell? (She looks up at the young man's face for the first time.) You're still young, aren't yOU? But you haven't much longer to live. The mark of death is on your face. POET (not surprised) What were you in former life-a physiognomist? OLD WOMAN Maybe. I've seen so many human faces I've become sick of them…. Sit down. You seem a little shaky on your feet. POET (Sits; coughs.) I'm drunk, that's why. OLD WOMAN Stupid. You should keep both feet planted firmly on the ground, at least as long as you're alive. (Silenc
