MATSUKAZE

Noh Drama
 Emerged in
the 14th c.
 Frozen in the
17th c.
 Invention
attributed to
Kanami
Kiyotsugu
(1333-1384)
 Perfected by
his son, Zeami
Morokiyo
(1363-1443)
Noh
Characters
 Conventional roles in all
dramas
 Shite: principal
character -- the only true
“person”
 Waki: secondary
character -- introduces
story and asks questions;
often a priest
 Tsure: shadowy
companion to shiite
and/or waki
 Kokata: child
 Kyogen: clown -- usually
lower class
 Very short, plotless, tragic Noh Conventions
in mood
 Highly stylized with very
slow pace: 200-300 lines of
play can take an hour to
perform
 Integrate singing, speech
instruments, and dancing
 No limitation in time or
space
 Highly allusive, poetic,
symbolic language
 Less about characters than
emotions
 Types of Noh Plays
 A Day’s Entertainment
contains:
 A god play
 A warrior play
 A woman play
 A realistic play
 A demon play
 Kyogen Plays: placed between
Noh plays as comic relief
 No music
 Broad humor
 About 20 minutes long
A Kyogen play Boshibari
(fasten to a bar)
Noh Masks
Female Mask

Male Mask

Demon Mask

Old Man Mask

 Noh Costumes
Costumes are heavy silk kimonos
often luxuriously embroidered

The ability of the shite and waki to

express volumes with a gesture is
enhanced by their use of various
hand properties, the most
important of which is the folding
fan (chukei). The fan can be used
to represent an object, such as a
dagger or ladle, or an action, such
as beckoning or moon-viewing.
Matsukaze
BACKGROUND
 The word matsukaze (wind in the pines) evokes for Japanese a feeling
of exquisite solitude and melancholy.

PERSONS
PLACE
SUMA BAY IN SETTSU
AN ITINERANT PRIEST PROVINCE
(waki):
A VILLAGER (kyogen): TIME
MATSUKAZE (shite): AUTUMN, THE NINTH
MURASAME (tsure): MONTH
MATSUKAZE

• Originally this drama was called “Shiokumi (Sea Salt

Laving)”

• composed by a dengaku master, Kiami. Kannami revised it

as “Matsukaze Murasame,” which was further revised at a
later date by Zeami to “Matsukaze.”
MATSUKAZE
One autumn evening, a traveling monk visits Suma Bay (near Suma
Ward in present-day Kobe City). He notices on the shore a pine tree
which seems to have a mysterious story.

When he asks a villager about the story, the villager tells him that it is
a grave marker for two young diver sisters, Matsukaze and
Murasame.

After the monk recites a sutra and prays for the comfort of their souls,
he decides to ask for lodging at a salt-making hut and waits for the
return of the owner. Then, two young beautiful women, who have
finished working under the moon, taking water from the sea, come
back to the hut with a cart.
MATSUKAZE
The monk asks them for accommodation for one night. After they enter
the hut, the monk recites the poems of Ariwara no Yukihira, who had
some tie with the place, and explains that he has just consoled the
souls of Matsukaze and Murasame at the old pine tree.

The women suddenly begin to sob. Asked the reason, the two women
reveal their identity: they are the ghosts of Matsukaze and
Murasame, who were loved by Yukihira. They tell their memories of
Yukihira and their love with Yukihira which was ended by his death.

The older sister, Matsukaze, wears Yukihira’s kariginu-

style kimono and eboshi headdress because she misses him
so much.
MATSUKAZE
Indulging herself in the memory of her love, she eventually becomes
partly mad, takes the pine to be Yukihira, and tries to embrace the
tree.

Although Murasame tries to calm her sister, Matsukaze

burning with love passionately dances and continues as if
expressing the passion of her love in dance.

When day dawns, Matsukaze asks the monk to offer a memorial service
for the one who is suffering from the obsession. The two divers then
disappear in the monk’s dream. Only the wind traveling in the pine trees
is left, singing like the sound of a passing shower (Murasame).
MATSUKAZE

What do you think the reader is ultimately supposed to think about

Masukaze’s longing?
How are we supposed to react to her as a character? How does the
play work similarly or differently from the Greek tragedies we have
examined in class so far, particularly in regards to those plays’ central
moment of catharsis?