Kochō (Nō)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scene from the drama

Kochō ( Japanese 古 蝶 ) is the title of a Nō drama by Kojirō Nobumitsu. The piece is a third game within the Nō category.

Preliminary remark

The play takes place in early spring in the garden of Ichijō Palace in Kyoto, where Prince Genji, the hero of Genji Monogatari, is said to have once lived.

The following people occur:

  • Waki: priest
  • Wakitsure: two monks
  • Shite I: Young woman
  • Shite II: butterfly fairy

action

  1. act
    1. Foreplay. A priest from Yoshino with two companions comes to the flower capital (Kyoto), which he has never seen and which he now wants to visit. He sees a plum tree blooming on the steps of the old Ichijō no Miya palace. Performance with orchestral sound. Name, route and arrival name.
    2. From a house in which nobody seems to live, the butterfly fairy has the unrecognizable figure of a young woman. Question and answer. The priest is surprised that someone is coming out of the house, introduces himself, then asks where she is from. She evasively replies that she longs for flowers. And here the place is especially famous for the plum blossom, for which she longs ... here and there she drives her sight ... Like a clam diver , she has no permanent residence.
      1. Question and answer. The priest urges you to give more precise information about yourself. The young woman: “I come to all the flowers and play, only I have no access to the plum blossom. As a butterfly, I fly from flower to flower. And spring, summer, autumn I weave through happily and am a friend of all blossoms Alone in winter, when the plum is in bloom, I must not approach it, I must not be happy. "Chorus:" Formerly in the Tang period of the Zhuangzi , didn't he become a butterfly? And when I woke up I didn't know whether this life was a dream, whether it was really a butterfly ... The moon rises ... if you stay here at night, I appear to you to the dreaming, true, as I am. - So she speaks and disappears into the evening sky, like a dream goes out. ”- Interlude: Ai no katari.
  2. act
    1. Waiting singing. The priest and entourage, waiting in the shadow of the building, read the Lotus Sutra for the Salvation of the Butterfly. The butterfly appears with an orchestral sound. Choir: “Become Buddha free thanks to the power of the Lotus Sutra. Don't look any more separated from the winter plum blossom, I dance the butterfly dance exultantly. ”Medium dance to the drum. Increase.
    2. "Bodhisattva of dance and song, he floats away in the waking morning."

Remarks

  1. ↑ Woodcut "Kochō ( 胡蝶 )" by Tsukioka Kōgyo ( 月 岡 耕 漁 ; 1869-1924).
  2. ↑ Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu ( 観 世 小 次郎 信 光 , 1435 or 1450 to 1516).

literature

  • Peter Weber-Schäfer: A butterfly . In: Twenty-four Nō games. Insel Verlag, 1961. ISBN 3-458-15298-X . Pp. 93 to 103.
  • Hermann Bohner: Kochō In: Nō. The individual Nō. German Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia, Tōkyō 1956. Commission publisher Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Pp. 138 to 141.