"Hajitomi ~ Holding a service for flowers" at Kanze Nohgakudo

I was very lucky to have a chance to enjoy "Hajitomi" at Kanze Nohgakudo in Shibuya. Mr. Kazutada Tusda, a noh player, must have chosen this noh play, being conscious of the limited number of days to be able to use that stage as the nohgakudo is shceduled to close in March, 2015, and to be reopened in Ginza in 2018. Hajitomi" means a type of window that requires supports to keep it open. See picture below. It's one kind of "hajitomi."

Story: When a monk was praying for the flowers he had used during his 90-day training, a woman appeared and said she lived in Gojo by way of introducing herself to him. She offered a white flower of Yugao (bottle gourd) and disappeared. In the Tale of Genji, Gojo is the place where Yugao and Genji made love at her residence for the first time but she unexpectedly passed away next day. Being perplexed, the monk went to Gojo and noticed a house with hajitomi. The spirit of Yugao then appeared from the house. She reminisced about love between Genji and her and danced until dawn. When the monk awoke, he wondered if all the things I thought I had seen was a dream or a real.

Yugao on the stage put on three layers of thick white kimono lobes over a light peach color (or light salmon pink) hakama. It took me a while to become aware of how big Yugao really was, and probably shortly after that, I was drawn to the stage; that is, to me, she came to life on the stage. I had been unable to relate to the masked figure before that. Amazing things were that Yugao walked right in the direction of where I was seated and I felt myself being eye-to-eye with her, three times. Those were incredible moments, leaving me profound impressions.

Mr. Yoshikatsu Tsukuda's kakegoe or cries were rich in expressions and I believe that I owed to him that I was able to enjoy Hajitomi so much. He is an okawa or otsuzumi player. He controlled his cries as he liked and expressed all sorts of feelings and the stage's sentiment by changing his cries' lengths and tones. He sometimes ended his cries slowly or hurriedly up, other times sharply down or in a tapering manner and some other times flatly with sharp cuts or whispers. Due to the effects of those cries, I felt I saw fogs coming in against the backdrop of the silhouetted Mt. Arashiyama, which was mysteriously illuminated by moonlight from the cloud-covered moon. I saw Yugao dance through half-blossomed foliage of plum trees.

Pic above is from here. In this picture, Yugao is wearing red hakama but at the Kanze Nohgakudo, she worn the light pink one. The picture below is Kanze Nohgakudo before the performance began.