Japan monster history essay

When the Moon Strikes the Bell: Desire and Enlightenment in the Noh Play Dojoji

Susan Blakeley Klein

Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2. (Summer, 1991), pp. 291-322.

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SUSAN BLAKELEY KLEIN

When the Moon Strikes the Bell: Desire and Enlightenment in the Noh Play DOjGji

D6j6ji, one of the most popular plays in the Noh repertoire, presents us with a dramatically compelling vision of stark conflict: the masculine forces of noble and pure spirituality (the priests of D6.jCiji temple) battling the feminine forces of profane and bestial sexuality (a woman transformed by passion into a fire-breathing serpent who seeks revenge on the temple bell). It also involves two of the most exciting and difficult performance elements in Noh: the ranby6shi "disordered rhythm" dance and the kane- iri "bell entering" scene. In the eerie ranby6shi, the serpent-woman, dis- guised as a beautiful shiraby6shi dancer, entrances the low-ranking temple workers who guard the temple bell that is the object of her passionate re- sentment. As the shirabyoshi, the shite (main actor) circles slowly and continuously, stamping out a rhythm accented by a single shoulder drum (kotsuzumi) and embellished by occasional flute melody. Long drawn-out silences, abruptly pierced by the drummer's high-pitched cries, add to the atmosphere of unbearable tension which builds inexorably to the climax of the play, the show-stopping kaneiri. The woman, having lulled everyone to sleep with her hypnotic dance, seizes her chance to attack the huge bell which hangs suspended over the stage. Moving directly beneath it, she sud- denly leaps up into the bell as it comes crashing to the ground. If done correctly, this dangerous leap gives the impression that the dancer has van- ished right before our very eyes.' Because of the physical and mental de-

I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who carefully read and offered comments on this article, most especially Prof. Karen Braze11 and Prof. John McRae at Cor- nell University, and Tom Looser at the University of Chicago.

1. This flamboyant maneuver is so unusual in Noh that audiences have been known to burst into applause when it is done particularly successfully-a unique response for the Noh audience where more sedate, albeit rapt, attention is the norm.

Journal of Japanese Studies, 17:2 01991 Society for Japanese Studies

292 Journal of Japanese Studies

mands made on the actor by these two scenes, performing Dojoji is consid- ered a kind of "test" which actors in their early thirties must successfully pass in order to take their place as fully qualified master actors.

However, despite its great appeal as a theatrical set piece, and its im- portance within the Noh repertoire as a test of the shite actor's skill, L ) ~ J ~ J z ' is not generally considered to be especially interesting as literature. One of the attractions of Noh for a literary critic lies in the way a relatively simple poetic image introduced at the start of a play takes on new associations as it reappears in later textual contexts, developing a polysemous texture of in- terrelated imagery. This imagery tends to cohere around a few essential themes, creating a sense of "mysterious depth" that entices the critic to unravel its complexly interwoven strands. DGjOji's poetic images however, are peculiarly resistant to our efforts to relate them meaningfully to a the- matic context, or even to find satisfying links with images that come before and after. The poetic allusions in particular seem disconnected, arbitrary, a clichCd varnish applied to the action merely to give it a poetic sheen. The imagery of DOjGji seems to be as superficial as its plot line is simple, and its theatrics streamlined.

Some critics claim that such imagistic discontinuity mirrors the tem- poral rift created by the shite's leap into the bell, a radically disruptive mo- ment (everything changes, nothing is as it seemed before) that tears the ideal of mugen to shreds.' This may well be so, but still the strange in- coherencies remain, a nagging (albeit niggling) thorn in the side of the lit- erary critic. A much larger thorn, at least for any feminist critic, is D6j6ji2s extremely negative view of women. Granted, the play is based on a Bud- dhist setsuwa (didactic tale) whose moral cautions monks to avoid women because of "the strength of evil in the female heart."' Still, at the end of the setsuwa the evil serpent-woman does achieve enlightenment; even as the setsuwa stresses that it is the inescapable fate of women to be the em- bodiment of desire, it also holds out the possibility for an individual

2. Matsuoka Shinbei and Yamanaka Reiko, "DOjOji," Kokubungaku, Vol. 31, No. 10 (September 1986), p. 92. In mugen (dream vision) Noh, dream and reality are so fluidly inter- twined that they can hardly be distinguished. DdjOji is ostensibly a genzai (present time) Noh, with no dream elements, and yet its plot and thematic structure pivot on certain "uncanny" moments (such as the shite's leap into the bell) when the past suddenly comes alive in the present. These moments (which cannot be written off simply as dreams or deja vu) radically disrupt the linear flow of time and in so doing put into question the whole idea of "past" and "present." I will return to this point later in the article.

3. "Shikareba, nyonin no ashikikokoro no takcki koto, sude ni kaku no gotoshi." Ma- rubuchi Kazuo, Kunisaki Fumimaro, and Konno Toru, eds., Konjaku monogatarishu (I), Vol. 21 of Nihon koren bungaku zenshll (Tokyo: ShBgakkan, 1971), p. 487; translation taken from Marian Ury, trans., Tales of'Times Now Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 96.

293 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in DCij6ji

WOlllad to find redemption through the Lotus S ~ t r a . ~ In DOjOji as we know it today, when the serpent-woman is exorcised and driven back to the Hidaka river from whence she came, there is no hint that she has achieved enlightenment. In Doj6ji the triumphant exorcism of the woman from the temple is thus simultaneously an exclusion of the woman from Buddhist salvation.

This failure to achieve enlightenment is actually quite unusual in Noh; although there are a number of plays that center on demonic women, driven mad by jealousy and a passion for revenge, there are only a very few that deny her the solace of enlightenment in the end. Kanawa (The Iron Crown) is one such play: a woman who has turned herself into a demon in order to revenge herself on a faithless husband is defeated by esoteric Bud- dhist deities, but unrepentant, she vows to return again. In Kanawn, how- ever, there is never any suggestion that the woman is searching for escape from her passion; from first to last she is driven by an unambivalent thirst for revenge. In Aoi no Ue, on the other hand, the vengeful ghost of Lady Rokuj6 has very mixed feelings toward Prince Genji, and the process of exorcising her is inextricably bound up with the process of bringing about her release from blind anger and passion.

In DojcTji there are clear indications that the spiteful and destructive serpent-woman disguised as a shirabyoshi dancer is, like Lady Rokuj6, si- multaneously searching for release from the karmic bonds of her "original sin." For example, when the shirabyoshi first appears on stage she enters to a shidai couplet, "My sin, my guilt, will melt away, I will go to the

4. Mark Oshima makes this point in an unpublished conference paper, "Snake in the Grass: Femininity on the Kabuki Stage" (paper presented at the Harvard University Fukiyose Conference, Cambridge, Mass., 1986), p. 12.

5. These three plays, Kanawa, Aoi no U e , and Dijdji, form a group called the "three demoness plays." In an unpublished conference paper, Erika Bainbridge has pointed out how the masks appropriate to each of these plays reflect the traditional perceptions of the quality and degree of each woman's anger. The mask worn by the woman in Kanawa is called namanari (incomplete transformation) because she requires aid to change into a demon; the mask is the face of an angry woman with mere "buds" of horns. The mask worn by Lady Rokuj6 in Aai no U e is called hannva (half-serpent); only half transformed (chiinari),the mask reflects Rokuj6's deeply ambivalent feelings of love and anger. The woman in Dijjdji, however, is often played wearing the ja (serpent) mask; it represents her full transformation (honnari) into a snake. The fact that the ja mask is generally used in Dijjijji today corrobo- rates a point that I make later in this article that the strong ambivalence voiced by the serpent- woman in an earlier version of the Noh play has mostly been lost from Dijdji. See Erika Bainbridge, "Deranged Women's Role in Japanese Drama" (paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, 1990), pp. 5-6; see also Koyama Hiroshi, Sat6 Kikuo, and Sat6 Ken'ichirB, eds., Yijkyokushu (2), Vol. 34 of Nihon koten hun- gaku zenshii (Tokyo: ShBgakkan, 1975), p. 5; and Baba Akiko, Oni no kenkyii (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1988), p. 252.

294 Journal of Japanese Studies

service for the bell." "his line signals her belief that if she dances for the dedication service for the D6jooji temple bell, her sins will vanish, a belief given additional emphasis in the Komparu school version of the play, where she explicitly tells us that by attending the service, she hopes to get a "karmic link" (kechien) to salvation.' Later, at the height of the exorcism scene, the priests quote the compassionate vow of Fudo (one of the five My6-6, or Wisdom Kings8), "He who hearkens to My Law shall gain en- lightenment, he who knows My Heart will be a Buddha in this flesh," and tell us, "Now that we have prayed for the serpent's salvation, what rancor could it bear us'?" These lines strongly hint that the woman will ultimately gain release from her passion; and yet, the serpent-woman's rancor is un- abated as she hurls herself back into the depths of the Hidaka river at the end of the play.

The fact that the woman fails to benefit from the compassionate vow of Fudo is even more puzzling when one considers that the play was probably originally written under the auspices of the Do.joji temple. One would think that if the woman evinced any signs of desiring enlightenment, didactic motives alone would necessitate her ultimate salvation, since a Buddhism that has the power to transform evil into good, saving even the most mis-

6 . "Tsukuri tsumi mo kienubeki kane no kuyo ni mairan." Yokomichi Mario and Omote Akira, eds., Yakyokushli ( g e ) , Vol. 4I of Nihan koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1963), p. 131. For the most part, quotations from the Japanese text are taken from Yokomichi and Omote's Ycikyokushli, which is based on a Kanze school text. However, be- cause there are significant textual variations, particularly between the Kanze and Komparu versions, other editions will be cited as well. The English renderings follow Donald Keene's elegant translation in Donald Keene, ed., Twentv Plays of the Noh Theater (New York: Co- lumbia University Press, 1970), pp. 238-63. I have modified the translation where it seemed necessary for my argument.

7. "Sate mo atari chikaki Hidakadera ni kane no okuy6 no yoshi m6shi sorofu hod0 ni kechien no tame mairaba ya to omohi soro" (I understand that in nearby Hidakadera [another name for D o J ~ J ~ ] there is to be a dedication service for the bell, and so I am minded to go there to get a "link" to my salvation). Koyama, Ycikyokushli (2), p. 238. This ycikyokushli is based on a Kompam text. The corresponding line in the Kanze text is "sate mo D6jdji to mdsu ontera ni kane no kuyd no oniri sorofu yoshi mdshi sorofu hod0 ni tada ima mairaba ya to omohi soro" (I understand there is to be a dedication service for the bell at D6j6ji3 so I am minded to go there now). Yokomichi and Omote, Yrikyokushli ( g e ) , p. 132. Donald Keene explains in his introduction that his translation makes use of both the Kanze and Komparu texts in order to provide the most effective version of the story. Here he combines the two texts as, "I have heard that a bell is to be dedicated at the Dqoji, and so I am hurrying there now, in the hopes of improving my chances of salvation." Keene, Twenty Play.r, p. 243.

8. The five Myci-6 (Vidya-rsja) are mcssengers of Dainichi-nyorai; as manifestations of the Dharma Body they assume terrifying forms to quell those of stubbornly evil nature.

9. "Ch6 ga sessha tokudai chie, chi ga shinsha sokkushin jdbutsu to, ima no jashin o inoru ue wa nani no urami ka." Yokomichi and Omote, Yrikyokushli ( g e l , p. 141; Keene, Twenty Plays, p. 245.

295 Klein: Desire a n d Enlightenment in D6j6ji

erable of sinners, is much more impressive than a Buddhism that only has the negative power to temporarily hold evil at bay.

Given the hints in the text, as well as didactic motives, it should not be surprising then, to find that an earlier version of DOjdji does conclude with the enlightenment of the serpent-woman. DOjOji began as a much longer play called Kanemaki (Enwrapped in a Bell) tentatively attributed to Kanze Kojir6 Nobumitsu (1435-1516).'O All it took to deprive the woman of salva- tion was the deletion of a single line at the end of Kanemaki; but as it turns out this simple cut had a disproportionate effect, disrupting and unravelling the polysemic texture, both thematic and imagistic, of the play as a whole. DOjdji's interest for the literary critic thus lies not in what you see on the page, but what you do not see: those enigmatic gaps, elusive fragments, striking absences-most importantly the absence of the woman's en- lightenment at the end-that mockingly resist our attempts at interpretive analysis. I do not expect to be able to completely resolve those imagistic and thematic aporias here, but I believe that by supplementing a close tex- tual reading with feminist psychoanalytic interpretation, at least some of the blanks can be filled in.

Given my interest in what has been left out (or cut out) of Ddjdji, a good part of my analysis will be devoted to looking at other texts, texts that were used to create the D i j d j i we know today. I will begin by giving a brief synopsis of the Buddhist setsuwa that narrates the original events that set the plot of the Noh play in motion, followed by a synopsis of the play itself. Next I will explore some possible historical as well as psychoanalytic ex- planations for the negative view of women that is presented in the setsuwa, a strain of misogyny that is actually intensified in the later Noh versions of the story. I will then use these insights to examine the Noh DOjdji's textual development, focusing particularly on the transformations of two impor- tant symbolic loci in the D6joji story: the woman as snake and the temple bell. Finally, I will try to draw all these strands together as I do a close comparative reading of Kanemaki and D6jOji. Since, as 1 mentioned above, DdjOji is a drastically cut-Donald Keene has gone so far as to say "mangled" ''-version of Kanemaki, if we compare the two plays there is a good chance we will rediscover some of DOjOji's missing poetic links. And since much of what was eliminated from Kanemaki either exhibited

10. KanemakiiDcijiji generally adheres to Nobumitsu's style; like other plays by No- bumitsu such as Momijigari and Funa Benkei, Dcijqji is set in the dramatic present with a corresponding emphasis on the literal level of the dramatic working out of the plot, rather than on the metaphorical level of literary allusions and complex imagery. In line with this greater emphasis on dramatic plot we also see a greater emphasis o n the roles played by thc bvaki and kycigen actors (Nobumitsu was himself a waki actor).

11. Keene, Twenty Plays, p. 238.

296 Journal of Japanese Studies

ambivalence toward women or actually posited a positive alternative to women viewed as embodied animal lust, a look at those excluded portions should yield some light on the narrative and thematic exclusion of women from Buddhism which lies at the heart of D6jdji.

Variations of the D6j6ji Story in the Setsuwa and Noh

The Dojoji story appears initially in two setsuwa collections: Dai Ni- honkoku hokeky6kenki12 (commonly known as the Hokkegenki), attributed to the priest Chingen and dated 1040-43, and Konjaku rnonogatarish~,~' traditionally attributed to Minamoto Takakuni (1004-77) but now tenta- tively dated around 1120. These two versions tell basically the same story. Two monks are on a pilgrimage to the Kumano Shugendo complex. One is rather elderly, the other is young and quite good-looking. The two stop for the night at the home of a young widow, whose lustful desires are deeply aroused by the handsome young monk. In the middle of the night she sneaks into his room and tries to get him to sleep with her by embracing, teasing, and fondling him. The monk, at his wits' end as to how to placate her, tells her although he cannot sleep with her now because he must re- main pure for his pilgrimage, he will come back for her on his return from Kumano. Of course the monk is lying, and on his return trip he goes by a different route to avoid her house.

The woman, deeply chagrined when she discovers his duplicity, goes into her bedchamber and dies. As the maidservants are weeping and wail- ing, a 40-foot long snake suddenly emerges from her chamber. It slithers out of the house and down the road in pursuit of the man who has betrayed her. The young monk, realizing that he is being pursued, races to Dojoji temple where the priests hide him under the large temple bell. When the snake reaches the temple she quickly realizes where the monk is. Wrapping herself tightly around the bell, she sheds tears of blood as she beats her tail upon its dragon-headed boss.14 When she at last slithers away, five or six hours later, the bell is blazing hot to the touch. Raising the bell the priests find that only a few blackened bones remain of the young monk.

12. See Inoue Mitsusada and 0sone Shosuke, eds., Ojciden hokkegenki, Vol. 7 of Nihon shisd taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1974), pp. 2 1 7 1 9 . There is a translation of the Hok- kegenki version of the Dojoji story in Yoshiko Dykstra, trans., Miraculous Tales uf the 1,otus Sutra,from Ancient Japan: The Dainihonkoku hokekycikenki ofpriest Chingen (Hirakata: Kan- sai University of Foreign Studies, 1983), pp. 145-46.

13. Marubuchi, Konjaku monogatarishli (I), pp. 481-87; Ury, Tales of'Tirnes Now Past, pp. 93-96.

14. The boss is a loop at the top of the bell, which is used to suspend it. It often takes the form of a serpent or dragon's head and suggests the traditional association of fire-breathing dragons with the fiery furnace used to cast the bell.

297 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6joji

Some time later, a senior priest of the temple has a dream in which the monk appears as a serpent, explaining that he has been reborn into this vile, filthy body as the husband of the evil widow-serpent. He begs the priest to copy out the 1,otus Sutra chapter on "The Limitless Life of the TathBgata" to release both of them from their suffering. After the priest does so, the man and woman appear and thank him, explaining that due to his intercession they have been reborn in separate heavens. The Konjaku monogatari version of the setsuwa ends with the moral, "you see, there- fore, the strength of evil in the female heart. It is for this reason that the Buddha strictly forbids approaching women. Know this and avoid them." l5

A Muromachi version of the Doj6ji story, DOjQji engi emaki (Picture Scroll of the Founding of Dijjoji),'" which strongly influenced the Noh ver- sion, replaces the "lustful widow" with an innocent young daughter of a local innkeeper. More importantly for the Noh, in the emaki (picture scroll) version of the story the woman is no longer transformed into a snake in the privacy of her own bedchamber; instead she completes her meta- morphosis when she dives into the Hidaka river in her relentless pursuit of the monk. The transformation is graphically illustrated in the emaki: as the young woman runs along the road her clothing and hair become increas- ingly disheveled, she begins to breath fire, her neck, stretching forward in her anxiety to catch the man, becomes elongated and snake-like. The final definitive transformation comes when she reaches the Hidaka river, which has suddenly swollen to flood stage. When the local boatman refuses to take her across, she strips off her clothing and dives in, becoming a full- fledged serpent in the process. The rest of the story basically follows the Konjaku monogatari version.

The setting of the Noh D6jOji is at the Dojoji temple; the time is many years after the events narrated in the setsuwa-in DOj6ji the exact date is left unspecified, but it seems clear that the original events are no longer within anyone's living memory, since only the head priest knows the story. The plan is to reinstate the bell with a reading of the Lotus Sutra, and the head priest, for "reasons best known to himself," has forbidden women entrance to the service. Along comes a shirabyoshi who requests admit- tance so that she can perform a purification dance for the bell. Shirabydshi were popular entertainers (and occasional religious specialists) of the late

15. "Shikareba, nyonin no ashikikokoro no takeki koto, sude ni kakugotoshi. Kore ni yorite, onna ni chikazuke koto o hotoke anagachi ni imashimetamau. Kore o shirite todo- mubekinari to namu kataritsutahetaru toya." Marubuchi, Konjaku monogatarishci ( I ) , p. 487; Ury, E l e s of Times Now Past, p. 96.

16. It is traditionally attributed to the Emperor Go-Komatsu (reign: 1382-92 [Southern Court] and 1393-1412). A fold-out reproduction can he found inserted at the beginning of SBga Tetsuo, ed., DQjQji (Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1982).

298 Journal of Japanese Studies

Heian and early Kamakura periods. They were known for dancing in male attire: they took their name, "white rhythmic stamping," from the fact that they wore the white silk robe of a court aristocrat, along with his black lacquered court cap and short sword. Although it might not be apparent to the audience watching the Noh today, at the time this cross-dressing was considered quite erotic; shirabydshi were often mistresses of the highest ranking samurai. " And although shirabyiishi heroines are common enough in Noh (Shizuka Cozen in Funa Benkei and Futari Shizuka, IIyakuman Yamamba in Yarna~nbaspring to mind), it is particularly significant here that the shite appears dressed as a man, for she uses it to support her claim that as a shirabydshi she is not an "ordinary" woman, and so should be allowed to enter the temple grounds.Ix

The low-ranking temple worker, charmed by the shirabydshi's beauty, disarmed by her argument, and most of all desirous of seeing her dance, takes it upon himself to let her enter and offers her a dancing cap. She per- forms the famous ranbyoshi, which entrances everyone onstage into deep sleep, followed by a frenzied I@ no mai dance. At the height of the dance the shirabydshi seizes her opportunity. Hinting at her true nature as the ghost of the serpent ("This loathson~e bell, now I remember it!" 19), she moves to strike the bell, but then leaps upward into the bell instead, figur- atively wrapping it around her as it falls. The temple servants, awakened by the sound of the bell crashing down, reluctantly inform the head priest, who immediately realizes what has happened. He gathers everyone to- gether and recounts the D6joji setsuwa, basically following the DdJiiJi engi emaki version."' When the head priest has finished narrating the story, he calls upon his fellow priests to unite in chanting prayers to raise the bell. Their prayers are successful and the serpent soon emerges to do battle with them. A violent exorcism follows, and in the end the serpent, burnt by the flames of her own passion, is driven back to the depths of the Hidaka river.

The earlier version of the Noh Ddjdji, Kanemaki, differs from Dbjiiji in

17. See, for example, the Heike monogatari chapter about the slzirah~6,rhidancers Gi6 and Hotoke who were the mistresses of Taira no Kiyomori. Helen McCullough, trans., The Tale qf the Heike (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 30-37.

18. 1 am indebted to Mark Oshima for this observation. 19. "Omoheba kono kane, urarneshiya tote." Yokomichi and Omote, YdyokushIi ( g e ) ,

p. 137; Keene, Tvvenry P l ( ~ y s ,p. 245. 20. He adds some additional details not found in the other versions: here the innocent

young girl has been misled by her father's teasing into bclieving that the monk who stays with her family every year, and always remembers to bring her a pretty toy, will onc day be her husband. One year, whcn she has reached marriageable age, she sneaks into the monk's room and reproaches him, asking when he is going to make her his wife. He is horriiied. but pla- cates her by promising to return for her on the way back from his pilgrimage to Kumano. The rest of the story continues as in the Dfjj6~i engi enzaki.

299 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in Dojoji

a number of ways, small and large; here 1 will just list the points that are important for my argument." To begin with, in the opening of the play, Kanemaki contains two important explanatory sections missing from Dii- j6ji. The first is a sashilageuta in which the head priest explains more fully the reasons for the dedicatory service. He mentions that it has been 700 years since the temple was established and compares the sound of the temple bell to the Lotus Sutra: because the bell like the L,otus Sutra is only rarely heard, as the moon sets to the west, a multitude of people have gathered for the evening service. The second section in Kanemaki which provides us with information deleted from Ddjiiji occurs when the shite enters. In a variant nanori (name announcing scene) and a deleted sashil sageuta, the shite announces that she is a shirabyoshi living along the coast at Komatsubara, and explains her ambivalence about going to hear the bell, whose sound may bring back unwanted memories of the distant past.

When she reaches Dojoji, she asks to be admitted. The process by which she accomplishes this is quite different from the process in DGjdji, since it involves a long rnond6 (debate) with the head priest himself, rather than with the low-ranking temple servant. At the end of their discussion the head priest (not the servant) decides to let her in. In D6j6ji the shirabyiishi immediately begins the ranbydshi dance, but in Kanemaki there is first a kusemai danced to the story of the founding of Dojoji by an impoverished woman diver ( a m a ) . Another important deletion occurs in the final exor- cism scene, after the bell is raised: in Kanemaki the priests directly address the serpent-woman, telling her to return from whence she came; she replies that she won't leave until she has exhausted her resentment by striking the bell. Finally, as mentioned previously, the endings are completely differ- ent; whereas in Diij6ji the serpent-woman is driven off, to plunge headlong into the Hidaka river, in Kanemaki the woman achieves enlightenment and vanishes.

The Demonic Feminine in the Ddjiiji Story

The view of women that pervades the setsuwa versions of the D6joji story, particularly the Konjaku monogatari, is profoundly negative. Women are psychologically and biologically determined to a weakness of will that keeps them from being able to control their passions; women by their very existence are an inevitable obstacle to men's spiritual progress.

21. For the text of Kanenzaki I have referred to the version contained within the Dijdji text in Yokotnichi and Omote, Y6kyokushlj ( g e ) , pp. 128-42. For purposes of comparison I have also referred to the versions in It6 Masayoshi, ed., Y6kyokushlj (chti), Vol. 78 of Shincho Nihon koten shlisei (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1988), pp. 491-93; and the Kurokawa Noh version reprinted in Sdga, Dojaji, pp. 265-72. All translations are my own.

300 Journal of Japanese Studies

They must therefore be avoided in daily life and excluded from participa- tion with men in the soteriological path to enlightenment. Given that the popular Buddhist sects of the KamakuraIMuromachi period held relatively "enlightened" views on women's spirituality, the explicitly misogynist tone of this setsuwa is rather puzzling. And since this misogynist attitude is, if anything, intensified in the Noh DLSjOji, it seems to me that before I turn to an analysis of the texts themselves, an important preliminary ques- tion has to be dealt with: where does the view of woman as powerful de- monic force that must be excluded come from'?

One possible explanation lies in the purpose for which the story was intended. Setsuwa collections were often used as source books for Bud- dhist sermons, and so the didactic moral was likely to depend on the in- tended audience. It seems probable that the Konjaku rnonogatari version of the Dbjoji story was used as a cautionary tale trieant to keep young monks and yamabushi mountain priests in line by warning them of the horrible dangers awaiting them if they gave in to the ever-present temptations inher- ent in daily contact with women." The setting of the story at Dbjbji, a gateway temple to the Kumano Shugendb complex, and the fact that the young monk offers the excuse that he must remain ritually pure for his pil- grimage, both fit neatly into this interpretation. (Shugendb, which mixed elements of Shinto and Taoism with esoteric Buddhism, was particularly antagonistic toward women, considering them ritually impure and there- fore excluding them from their sacred mountains.) It seems likely that the setsuwa was developed at Dojoji or Kumano to combat a pervasive prob- lem of moral laxity, and so it is perhaps not surprising that the story goes overboard in stressing the evil consequences of too close an association with women.

22. Diana Paul in her book Women in Buddhism enumerates a number of reasons for misogynist attitudes in Buddhism which are relevant to my discussion here. To begin with, Paul argues that within Buddhism women often represented the world of suffering, or sam- sara. As wives and lovers, they tempted the monks to return to the world of suffering, and thus had to be excluded from male monastic enclaves as potential obstacles to male spiritual growth. But exclusion was not enough: monastic authority had to instill fear of the woman's appeal as a way to control their members and insure their chastity. Control over the chastity of traveling monks was cspccially difficult since they had to interact with laywomen when they begged for aims or asked for shelter for the night. According to Paul, it was the monks' re- sentment at being dependent on (and tempted by) laywomen, together with the monastic order's need to instill fear of women as a means of control, that led to a strongly negative view of the feminine within some areas of Buddhism. The D6j6ji setsuwu's misogyny certainly seems to tit this pattern. Diana Paul, Women in Buddhism: Itnages of the Feminine in Ma- hdyiydnu Trudition (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 6-9. See also William LaFleur's discussion "Women and the Dharma" in Buddhism: A Cultural Perspective (En- glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988), pp. 49-56.

Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in Dojoji 301

It might be useful in this context to compare the Konjaku monogatari version of the Dojoji story with a setsuwa found in the Kegonshu soshi eden (commonly referred to as the Kegon engi2') which tells the story of a Korean monk Gisho's relationship with a beautiful Chinese maiden named Zenmyo. The narrative structure is very similar to that of the Dojoji se- tsuwa: Zenmyo (a young 'T'ang woman) falls in love with Gisho (a hand- some priest from Silla on his way to study at the T'ang capital) when he stops at her father's house to beg for alms. She approaches him seductively, but he refuses her advances. Whereas in the Dojoji setsuwa the priest's re- fusal causes the woman to change into a serpent out of rage and jealousy, in the Kegon engi his steadfast refusal causes Zenmyo to have a sudden reli- gious awakening. Confessing her shame at her blind attachment to passion, Zenmyo vows to entrust her fate to her teacher: she will follow him like a shadow throughout all their future lives and provide for his daily needs as he benefits sentient beings in the Dharma realm. Later when Gisho returns from the T'ang capital on his way home to Silla, he takes another route in order to avoid coming by Zenmyo's house to bid her a final farewell (per- haps because he still does not trust the sincerity of her intentions). Real- izing that she may never see him again, Zenmyo hurries to the harbor; however, his ship is already far out to sea. Calling on the Buddhas, Bodhi- sattvas, and Naga (Dragon) Kings, she vows that she will protect her teacher on his trip home with her very body. Throwing herself into the ocean, she is transformed into a huge dragon that carries Gishii's ship safely back to Silla.

It seems likely that the fact that the Dojoji and Kegon engi setsuwa have such similar narrative structures, and yet were given nearly antitheti- cal endings (and morals), has much to do with their prospective audiences. Karen Brock, in her analysis of the production and reception of the Kegon eizgi, suggests that the Gisho story was directed at a primarily female audi- ence of wealthy laywomen (Brock in fact names a specific patroness that

23. Lives of the Founders of the Kegon Sect or Founding Legends of the Kegon Sect (dated somewhere between 1219 and 1225). The six scrolls are reproduced and discussed in Tanaka Ichimatsu, ed., Kegon engi, Vol. 7 of Nihon emakimono zrnshli (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1959); the text is reprinted on pp. 46-59. The sections of the text that directly refer to the Dijdji story are also quoted in Matsuoka and Yamanaka, "Ddjdjji," pp. 91-92. The fol- .lowing description of the plot structure of Kegon engi and its intended audience is based on the synopsis and translation of the Kegon engi in Karen L. Brock's essay "Chinese Maiden, Silla Monk: Zenmyo and Her Thirteenth-century Japancse Audience," in Marsha Weidner, ed., Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Jupunese Puinting (Ho- nolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990). 1 am grateful to Prof. Brock for letting me read her manuscript before it was published. See also her abbreviated version of this essay, "Gisho-e ni okeru Zenmyci no byosha: sono igi to juyo" (The Portrayal of Zenmyo in the Gishd-e: Its Meaning and Reception), Bukkyd geijutsu, No. 176 (1988), pp. 11-36.

302 Journal of Japanese Studies

she believes may have supported the projectz4). It seems to me that Brock's analysis is borne out by the moral of Kegon engi, which encourages the idea that feminine desire can be a power for good in Buddhism, and which also (not incidentally) encourages wealthy laywomen's monetary support for Buddhism via its description of how Zenmy6 uses up all her wealth to support Gish6. That the compiler of the Kegon engi was fully aware of the negative view of women presented in the D6j6ji setsuwa is evident from an explicit comparison made toward the end of the tale:

W e have heard of another instance where [ a woman] caught in the raging flames of angry jealousy, along the road of attachment between m e n and w o m e n , b e c a m e a s n a k e and chased after a m a n . T h e [two] cases a r e not t h e s a m e . T h a t [DGj6ji w o m a n ] was caught i n the power of passionate de- sire and actually b e c a m e a snake. H e r sin of attachment was d e e p . I n this case, [ Z e n m y 6 ] received t h e blessings of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas be- c a u s e of her earnest vow, and instead became a dragon. This was because o f her belief i n t h e Buddhist teachings and respect for the virtue of a pro- f o u n d teacher."

Given the self-conscious reference to the D6j6ji setsuwa, it seems clear that the compiler of the Kegon engi was purposefully trying to counter the D6j6ji setsuwa's negative image of women by showing how women can play an important positive role supporting the Buddhist clergy. The moral of the Kegon engi setsuwa demonstrates that the power of feminine desire, even in the monstrous form of a dragon, can be transformed by the teach- ing of Buddhism into a power for good.

Set in opposition to the Kegon engi, the D6j6ji setsuwa can thus be seen as a cautionary tale addressed specifically to monks and priests, em- phasizing that they must avoid women and exclude them from the realm of the spiritual because of women's inherent weakness of will with regard to passion. The Noh DGjGji strongly reinforces the setsuwa's view that the female body is desire incarnate; in the Noh the sexual power that inheres in the woman's body is so monstrous that only the united power of all the priests, supplemented with the might of the five My6-6 and Naga Kings, is

24. See Brock, "Chinese Maiden, Silla Monk," pp. 205- 10. She identifies the patron as "Lady Sanmi" or Tokiko, the daughter of an adopted son of Taira no Kiyomori.

25. Tanaka, Kegon engi, p. 52; Matsuoka and Yamanaka, " D 8 ~ i j i , " p. 91 (translation mine). The Kegon engi is interesting not only because it shows how the representation of the role of women in Buddhism changed when the audience changed, but also because its nar- rative element of the woman throwing herself into the sea and becoming a dragon seems, in turn, to have influenced the development of the D6joji story. Matsuoka and Yamanaka suggest that the Dfijfijiengi ernaki's narrative variation of the woman throwing herself into the Hidaka river was influenced by the Kegon c'ngi, infiltrating into the popular dissemination of the Do- joji legend in the Kamakura period, and from there eventually into the Noh.

303 Klein: Desire a n d Enlightenment in D6jGji

able to control and exorcise it. This view of women as a powerful demonic force that must be controlled makes sense in a setsuwa used for didactic purposes; it is far less understandable, however, in a Noh play whose audi- ence presumably included a broad range of people: men as well as women, Buddhist clergy as well as laypeople. Therefore, in order to supplement this historical explanation for D6j6jisji's misogyny, I want to briefly touch on some deeper psychoanalytic explanations, explanations that will also lay the theoretical groundwork for my textual analysis in the following sec- tions of this article.

According to theorists such as Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, and Nancy Chodorow, the fantasy image of the all-powerful demonic woman goes back to the young boy's earliest relationship with an all-powerful mother and the frightful difficulty of establishing his autonomous identity from her both as subject and as engendered male. Lurking in the uncon- scious of every grown man's mind is a vision of a mother who holds out the promise of a pleasurable, mindless union in which all needs are satisfied, but simultaneously, by that very promise of union, threatens to overwhelm the young boy's precarious subject and gender identity. By a process of metonymic contagion, the simultaneous fear and attraction that the young boy feels for his mother infects his attitudes toward all women.26

FreudianiLacanian analysts locate the genesis of the demonic feminine in the child's discovery of his mother's "castration": since in patriarchal culture (in the realm of the symbolic) to have power is to possess the phal- lus, the all-powerful mother is retroactively believed by the child to be phallic. Even though on some level the boy comes to realize the "reality" of his mother's "castration"-i.e., that she is virtually powerless within a patriarchal society that suppresses and marginalizes women-the primor- dial vision of an uncontrollably powerful, phallic woman, a veritable force of nature, periodically erupts in popular narrative forms as the demonic woman." As Laura Mulvey has explained it, "The problems, contradic-

26. In The Reproduction of Mothering, ~ a n c ~Chodorow uses Karen Horney's 1932 paper, "The Dread Of Women," to support her point that the dread of women, unlike the fear of the father, is "uncanny" in quality, because its formation occurs at a time when the child has no reflective capacities for understanding. This "uncanny" quality certainly seems to in- here in the shirabydshi's ranbvoshi dance-a return of the repressed in a new guise, simulta- neously fascinating and dangerous, seductive and repelling. Nancy Chodorow, The Repro- duction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p . 183.

27. 1 am indebted here to Mark Oshima's "Snake in thc Grass: Femininity on the Kabuki Stage," where he sets out some of thc initial FreudianILacanian implications of both the se- tsuwa and the Noh. Oshima bases his analysis on Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Nar- rative Cinema" in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). See also Freud's brief essays "Fetishism" (1927) and "Medusa's Head" (1922) in Philip Rieff, ed., Se,~uality and the Psychology of Love (New York: Collier Books, 1963).

304 Journal of Japanese Studies

tions and irreconcilable demands made by the acquisition of sexual iden- tity, family structures and historical conditions surface in collectively held desires, obsessions and anxieties. This is the shared, social dimension of the unconscious, of the kind that Freud referred to in Jokes and the Uncon- scious, which erupts symptomatically in popular culture, whether folk- tales, carnival or movies. These are temporal forms, narrative forms." 28

Julia Kristeva, in The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, com- bines elements of both theories. She posits the pre-oedipal ("archaic") ma- ternal body as the "abject": the impure, defiled "Other" which threatens the unity of the subject within language and which must therefore be radi- cally excluded. Kristeva argues that religious rituals of purification and ex- orcism are based on a feeling of abjection (defilement) that centers on the maternal body; these rituals "attempt to symbolize the other threat to the subject: that of being swamped by the dual [i.e., pre-oedipal mother-child] relationship, thereby risking the loss not of a part (castration) but of the totality of his living being. The function of these religious rituals is to ward off the subject's fear of his own identity sinking irretrievably into the mother." ' T h e priests' successful exorcism of the serpent-woman in Db- jbji would seem to bear out Kristeva's characterization that "the masculine, apparently victorious, confesses through its very relentlessness against the other, the feminine, that it is threatened by an asymmetrical, irrational, wiley, uncontrollable power. . . . That other sex, the feminine, becomes synonymous with a radical evil that is to be suppressed." 'O The angry women ghosts and demons who are exorcised in plays like D(?jOji, Aoi n o U e , and Mornijigari might thus be said to represent a return of the re- pressed (with vengeance in her heart).

We can see, then, how a pragmatic hostility toward women (who as sexual temptation were considered obstacles to spiritual progress) might be supplemented by unconscious fears of women as uncontrollably powerful, to create the phallic serpent-woman of the D6j6ji setsuwa. The Buddhist world as represented in the setsuwa is implicitly dualistic: the feminine is associated with uncontrollable nature, sexuality, the profane world, and pollution; the masculine is associated with culture, asexuality, the spiritual realm, and purity. What is particularly interesting about the Noh Dbjbji is that it takes this dualistic vision to a new level of psychosexual intensity. The next section will analyze how this intensification came about by trac- ing the textual development of the Noh DGjGji.

28. Laura Mulvcy, "Myth, Narrativc and Historical Expcricnce," in Visual and Other Pleasures, p. 175.

29. Julia Kristeva, The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. by Leon S . Roudiez (Ncw York: Columbia Univcrsity Prcss, 1982), p. 64.

30. Kristeva, The Powers uf Horror, p. 70.

Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6j6ji

The Textual Development of the Noh D6j6ji

The plot of the Noh D6jOji was generated in two stages: the first stage was the creation of the play Kanemaki by a process of condensation and displacement; that is, symbolically charged narrative elements of the origi- nal setsuwu were condensed and displaced in the Noh version, yielding im- agery that was much more psychosexually potent. (I am using the terms "condensation" and "displacement," familiar from Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, in the Lacanian sense that symbolically charged narrative ele- ments which function autonomously in the setsuwa are displaced met- onymically and condensed metaphorically with other images to form new highly resonant symbolic loci of a f f e ~ t . ~ ' )

The second stage was the creation of the Noh play D6j6ji out of Kane- maki, through a series of selective cuts. These cuts were necessary for a number of reasons; for one thing, the deletion of the serpent-woman's en- lightenment at the end made it necessary to retroactively delete lines that pointed too directly at this alternative ending. Another more pragmatic rea- son was the need to make room for the ranbyiishi dance and kaneiri bell- entering scene which were not included in early versions of the play. It seems that in Kanemaki the shite, rather than leap up into the bell, simply raised his sleeve, wrapping it around his body as he sank to the The kaneiri is thought to have been added sometime in the 1 5 8 0 ~ ~ ~ ; the ran- by6shi is thought to have been added about 6 0 years earlier by a Komparu School actor.34 Both the kaneiri and ranbybshi take up a considerable

31. See Sigmund Freud's "Dream Work" chapter in The Interpretation ofDrearns (New York: Avon Books, 1965), pp. 312-44; and Jaques Lacan, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud" in ~ c r i t s :A Selection, trans. by Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977) pp. 146-78. See also Kaja Silverman's lucid discussion of these processes and their importance for literary theory in T h e Subject of' Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

32. For proof, Itd Masayoshi points to the phrase in Kanemaki, "hikikazukite zo, fushitarikeru" (wrapping [the bell] around her, she prostrates herself). In Ddjdji the line has been altered to, "hikikazukite zo, usenikeru" (wrapping [the bell] around herself, she disap- pears). Itd, Ydkyokushzi (chll), note 8 , p. 379. Matsuoka and Yamanaka add the evidence of an actor's handbook ( D d b u s h d ) dated 1596: "In the past the actor wrapped his sleeve around himself. In recent years [this practice] has disappeared." Matsuoka and Yamanaka, " D d - jdji," p. 92.

33. It6 dates the practice to the end of the Muromachi period on the basis of an entry dated 1591 in a personal diary (Haretoyoki) of a high-ranking nobleman, Kajtiji Haretoyo (1544- 1602): "There was a Noh performance at the temple. . . . Ddjdji was the fourth piece performed. The rope of the hanging bell broke. Often before there have been injuries per- forming Ddj6ji." Itd, Ydkyokushzi (chzi), note 8 , p. 379.

34. Matsuoka and Yamanaka, "Ddjdji," p. 92. It6 Masayoshi suggests that Komparu Zenpd (Zenchiku's grandson) might have inserted it into the play sometime between 1504 and

- - - -

306 Journal of Japanese Studies

amount of stage time, and given the fact that performing them makes tre- mendous physical demands on the shite, practical considerations alone necessitated cuts in the Kanemaki libretto."

Although these performative changes partially explain some of the dis- continuities and incoherencies of the current Noh, they do not go very far toward explaining why it was necessary to eliminate nearly every line in Kanemaki that supports a female desire for enlightenment. In Kanemaki the poetic imagery and important thematic symbols such as the temple bell, and even the woman as snake, are to a certain extent ambivalent, capable of being read positively as well as negatively. And in the kusemai scene, which tells the story of how DGj6ji was founded through the faith of a woman diver, Kanemaki actually posits a positive alternative to women viewed as embodied animal lust. However, as we shall see, in the process of selective cutting by which Kanemaki became D6joji, the Noh loses nearly all of that ambivalence. Only in brief snatches of poetry, irrelevant to the main thrust of the story, d o we get contradictory hints of a different view. These contradictions are all too easily ignored as we are swept up in the spectacular battle of good versus evil, like a movie whose non-stop ac- tion distracts us from its more implausible plot elements.

In the following analysis I will be concentrating on how the two most important symbolic loci, the image of the woman as snake and the temple bell, were transformed in the development of the Noh. I will begin by look- ing at how the original version of D6j6ji, Kanemaki, incorporated and transformed these symbolic elements of the setsuwa through a process of condensation and displacement.

In examining the role of the woman in both the Noh play and the se- tsuwa the first thing we confront is the obvious fact (obvious to post- Freudians at least) that the woman's body, the embodiment of lust, is trans- formed into a living phallus. I have already touched on a psychoanalytical explanation for the unconscious fear of a phallic woman and on a historical explanation for the Dojoji setsuwa as a cautionary tale that strategically reinforces that unconscious fear as a measure to insure the chastity of monks. Now I want to discuss how the Noh symbolically resolves the prob-

1520 It seems that for a whlle at least both verslons of the play were performed. thcrc IS a record of a perforinancc of DijOji in 1536, but there are also records of Kanemaki perfor- mances in 1554 and 1586. It6, Y6kyokushli ( c k u ) , p. 490.

35. One might also note that the inclusion of both the kaneiri scene and the ranbyoshi are a movc toward a more "literal" representation of the dramatic cvcnts (I would not want to go so far as to say "realistic"), which is in line with D6jdji's overall preference for the simple and dramatic ovcr the subtle and psychologically complex, and which probably rcflects thc changes of theatrical emphasis in the late sixteenth century that would lead to the development of Kabuki.

307 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6j6ji

lem of male desire through its fetishization of the young woman's body. In the setsuwa, we can see male desire being projected onto women, a projec- tion that enabled men to deny those negative aspects of their own sexual nature that had to be eliminated for enlightenment to occur: the woman as female snake (that is, simultaneously phallic and female) embodies the ani- mal nature of both male and female sexuality. The "pure" monk is a pas- sive victim of feminine passion: the danger of a sexuality associated exclu- sively with the feminine is reinforced by the moral of Konjaku monogatari which implies that it is the woman's blind passion alone that causes the tragedy.

In the move from the setsuwa to the Noh, the symbolic union of femi- nine and masculine in the body of the serpent-woman is strengthened by a further condensation. In the Noh the young monk does not appear as a sep- arate character; the Noh combines the roles of both the monk and the woman into that of the shirabyoshi dancer, who although a woman, ap- pears dressed as a man. That she is "standing in" for the monk becomes clear when, instead of wrapping herself around the bell, she takes the monk's place under it. In this way the role of the monk, who at first might appear to have been left out of the Noh, continues in a new, "disguised" form. In the Noh's symbolic realm desire is no longer the outcome of a "natural" attraction between the sexes because male desire does not exist; desire is instead produced "spontaneously" in a woman who is at the same time symbolically a man.36

However, although Kanemaki intensifies the setsuwa's projection of desire onto the feminine, in the end this fusion of male and female in the shirabyoshi figure symbolically enables the monk as well as the serpent- woman to gain salvation. In this sense, Kanemaki, like the original se- tsuwa, follows the Buddhist logic of gyakuen (that sin itself may paradox- ically form the ladder, or "link," to salvation). In both Kunemaki and the setsuwa, although at first the serpent-woman's passion appears to be purely negative, it can ultimately be interpreted positively because it results in sal- ~ a t i o n . ~ ~In D6j6ji on the other hand, this positive interpretation is blocked

36. To add to the complexity, in performance thc shirabycishi is literally a man as well: on stage we are faced with a male actor playing the role of a female shirabycishi who dances dressed as a male aristocrat.

37. Arthur Thornhill makes a similar point in an unpublished conference paper, "The D6jGji Tale: Codependent Salvation in Konjaku Monogutari. " He calls the relation of suffer- ing and anger between the woman and the monk "codependent" suffering and points out that in the D6j6ji setsuwa although this "codependent" suffering initially causes the woman and monk both to be reborn as snakes, through the power of the Lotus Sutra (and the logic of gyakuen) it ultimately leads to their mutual, or "codependent," salvation. Arthur Thornhill, "The D6JGJi Tale: Codependent Salvation in Konjaku Monogatari" (paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago 1990). pp. 8-9.

308 Journal of Japanese Studies

because the shiraby6shi fails to achieve enlightenment in the end. D6j6ji merely intensifies the setsuwa's misogynistic projection of male desire onto the female, a desire that in D6jOji can have only tragic consequences.

Of course, as we have seen in the Kegon engi setsuwa, female power associated with animal nature in the form of a snake does not necessarily have to be viewed as negatively as it is in Daj6ji. Probably the most famous Buddhist story of a woman associated with a snake is the story of the Naga King's Daughter found in the "Devadatta" chapter of the Lotus Sutra." The word "naga" is translated as "dragon" in Chinese and Japanese, but in India naga were usually portrayed as half-snake, half-human. In the Lotus Sutra, the Naga King's Daughter achieves Buddhahood with amazing speed, despite her five hindrances as a woman (not to mention being eight years old and a ~ n a k e ) . ' ~Of course, she cannot become a Buddha di- rectly-she goes through an intermediate (almost instantaneous) stage as a man f i r ~ t . ~ Nevertheless, she is held up as a positive role model for women in a number of Noh plays that relate to women's spirituality. In Genzai Shichimen an old serpent who lives in Shichimen pond on Mt. Minobu ap- pears as a woman to hear Nichiren Shonin's daily sermons on the Lotus Sutra. When she hears the story of the Nags King's Daughter, she realizes that women too can achieve Buddhahood. Whereas before she resented Buddhism because it seemed to exclude women, now she eagerly embraces this truly marvelous faith which promises enlightenment equally to all. By the power of Nichiren and the Lotus Sutra she is transformed into a dragon and vows to protect Buddhism as a mountain kami (Shinto deity).

The Naga King's Daughter also plays a prominent role in Miidera, a play whose plot structure may sound rather familiar: as in Dijaji, a woman obsessed with ringing the temple bell is told that she cannot enter the temple grounds, but she gets in because a temple worker wants to see her dance. The shite character in Miidera is a mother who has lost her child, and she believes that because the temple bell is said to come from the Naga King's palace, if she rings the bell it will create a karmic link (kechien)

38. See Kat6 BunncS, et a l , , trans., The Threefold Lotus Sutra (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing, 1975), pp. 210-14.

39. ~ i i r i ~ u t r aargues against the possibility of the Niga King's Daughter gaining speedy enlightenment: "the body of a woman is filthy and not a vessel of the Law. How can she attain the supreme Bodhi?. . . . Moreover, a woman by her body still has five hindrances: she can- not become first, king of the Brahma-heaven; second, ~ a k r a ; third, a Mira-king; fourth, a holy wheel-rolling king; and fifth, a buddha. How then could a woman's body so speedily become a buddha?" Katb, The Threefold Lotus Sutra, p. 213.

40. If we keep in mind that in Kanemaki the woman is granted salvation in the end, her symbolic masquerade as a man in the first half of the play, and her transformation inside the womb of the bell into the phallic snake in the second half, might be cornpared to the instanta- neous transformation by the NBga King's Daughter into a man, in other words, as preparation for her final enlightenment.

309 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6joji

with the Naga King's Daughter, who will then cause her five hindrances as a woman to vanish, as well as bring about the return of her child. In Kegon engi, Genzai Shichimen, and Miidera we see the demonic power of the phallic mother transformed into her symbolic opposite: the compassionate and self-sacrificing mother, whose selfless desire is only to protect and serve those she loves.

Another variation on this theme occurs in the Noh play Ama (The Diver), the story of a woman diver who, in exchange for a promise that her son will be made her lord's heir, sacrifices her life to retrieve a Buddhist jewel from the Naga King's palace. In the second half of the play, the ghost of the woman diver appears as the Nags King's Daughter to dance in cele- bration of the Lotus Sutra. Last but not least, in Kanemaki itself we have the story of another arna: the kusemai is danced to a retelling of the engi (founding legend) of Doj6ji temple.

D6j6ji was supposed to have been founded by a young woman diver who lived along the shore at Komatsubara. As the sole support for her aging parents, she spent her days diving in the cold sea water or gathering wood in the mountains to burn as fuel for salt-making. One day when she was diving, she found a small Buddhist icon (perhaps Kannon) glowing beneath the waves. It was this image, a reward for her faith and filial piety, that was enshrined at the establishment of D6joji temple. It is not, I think, accidental that within Kanemaki we find two women diving into the water but with such completely different results; or that we find, ironically enough, that a temple famous for its successful exorcism of the demonic feminine was actually founded through the faith of a poor fisher girl.

In fact, there are subtle hints in Kanemaki that the shirabybshi is a rein- carnationlmanifestation of both the serpent-woman and the diver. For ex- ample, in Kanemaki, in the opening line (sageuta) of the travel poem the shirabybshi recites when she first sets out for D6j6ji, the shirabybshi tells us explicitly that she has been living in Komatsubara (the home of the woman d i ~ e r ) . ~ ' In D6jbji, however, this line is cut, and so the explicit con- nection between the shirabybshi and the arna who founded D6j6ji is lost. A reference to Komatsubara does linger on in the Dbjbji version of the shirabybshi's travel poem ("the moon will shortly set in the swelling tide whose mists rise along [the shore at] K o m a t s ~ b a r a " ) , ~ ~ but because the pre- ceding sageuta from Kanemaki is cut, the allusion to Komatsubara be- comes little more than a meaningless poetic flourish.

I want to turn now to how the temple bell functions as a second impor-

41. "Suminareshi Komatsubara oba tachiidete" (setting out from my familiar dwelling place, Komatsubara). Yokomichi and Omote, Yiikyokusha ( g e ) , p. 132.

42. "Tsuki wa hodonaku iri shio no kemuri michi kuru Komatsubara." Yokomichi and Omote, Y6kyokushli ( g e ) , p. 132; Keene, Twenty Plays, p. 243 (translation mine).

310 Journal of Japanese Studies

tant locus of condensation and displacement. Bells function metaphorically in Japanese esoteric Buddhism as symbolic wombs, particularly associated with the Womb (Taizb)Mandala, and the temple bell certainly retains those associations in Kanemaki and Diijoji. Whereas in the setsuwa, the snake wrapped herself around the bell, in the Noh the woman's aggression be- comes even more overtly masculine, when as a phallic snake she leaps into the womb of the bell. Here we can see another displacement from the se- tsuwa at work: the Noh takes the earlier setsuwa's narrative element of the woman changing into a snake in her private bedchamber and condenses it with the bell whose secret interior space now provides the "womb" for the woman's rebirthttransformation into a ~ n a k e . ~ ' Both Kanemaki and D6j6ji reinforce this symbolic interpretation by suggesting in the last lines of the play an analogical relation of identity between the woman's body and the bell: when the serpent-woman vomits raging flames at the bell, she only manages to burn herself.&

This relation of identity between women's bodies and sacred icons shows up in other Noh plays as well. In Miidera it serves to reinforce the logic of the mother who believes that if she rings the temple bell, her son will be returned to her. And in Sotoba Komachi, when priests from Mt. Koya catch the aged Komachi sitting on a stupa and sharply reprimand her, she argues that a relation of identity holds between her body and the old wooden stupa: "I, too, am a fallen tree, decaying in the earth, yet in my heart flowers burst in poetic bloom which I might offer to my holy Lord." 45 Komachi wins her duel of wits with the priests by skillfully using the Ma- hayana doctrine of emptiness to prove that since there can be no essential difference between her body and mind and the stupa as the Buddha Body and Buddha Mind, she has a perfect right to rest on it.4"

43. The notion that the bell is a displacement of the bedchamber in the early setsuwa is suggested in Matsuoka and Yamanaka's discussion of the relation of the setsuwa to the Noh; however, the notion of the bell as a womb is my own interpretation. Matsuoka and Yamanaka, "D6j6ji," p. 91.

44. "Kane ni mukatte tsuku iki wa my6ka to natte sono mi o yaku." Yokomichi and Omote, Yiikyokushli ( g e ) , p. 142; Keene, Twenty Plays, p. 251.

45. Ito, Yokyokushi ( c h i ) , pp. 155- 56; translation taken from Japanese Noh Drama: Ten Plays, Vol. 3 (Tokyo: Nippon Gakujutsu ShinkGkai, 1960), p. 86. For an in-depth analy- sis of this point, see Etsuko Terasaki, "Images and Symbols in Sotobu Komachi: A Critical Analysis of a No Play," Harvard Journal ofAsiatic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1 (June 1984), especially pp. 171-76.

46. The doctrine of emptiness (Siinyata) and interdependent origination was first rigor- ously laid out by the Mahayiina philosopher Nagarjuna in his treatise Mulamadhyamaktirikri. The T'ien-T'ai patriarch Chih-i incorporated it into his doctrine of the Three-fold Truth ( k i , ke, and c h i ) which leads to the Middle Way: the simultaneous affirmation of both emptiness and conventional existence as aspects of a single integrated reality. This logic, which calls into question the subjective discrimination of reason, necessarily negates discrimination be-

311 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6j6ji

There are at least two ways that the shirabydshi's relation to the bell in Dbjdji could be interpreted. One interpretation hinges on the argument that the shirabydshi is simply the serpent-woman in disguise, and justifies her failure to achieve enlightenment by interpreting her professed desire to ab- solve her sins by performing a purification dance for the bell as a cunning deceit used to gain entrance to the temple. This treacherous masquerade of faith, like her shirabydshi costume, helps disguise her true nature as evil incarnate and conceals her true goal, the destruction of the bell.

A second interpretation would be that the shirabyoshi is not actually the onryd (vengeful spirit) of the serpent-woman, but merely her possessed vehicle. Shirabydshi were religious performance specialists of a sort; they were often called upon to perform dances of purification at templetshrine complexes. The ranbybshi is generally considered to be a secularized ver- sion of such a purification dance: a fumi-shizume ("ground quieting") dance ritual through which malevolent spirits dwelling in the earth were

Thus the shirabybshi's offer to dance for the dedication cere- mony would be perfectly ordinary; it may even be sincerely meant. It is possible to think of the shirabybshi as an innocent young girl who is drawn to the temple by a compulsion whose source she herself is not consciously aware of. The interpretation that the shirabybshi is suddenly possessed is supported by the very abrupt shift in tone at the height of the kyu no mai: "The peaceful fishers will show their lights in villages along the banks- and if the watchers sleep when danger threatens, I'll not let this oppor-

tween all dualistic categories, including mindlbody and malelfemale. It thus forms the basis for the Mahayina proposition often cited in Noh that "the passions are none other than en- lightenment" (bonnci soku bodui), since according to the doctrine of emptiness, there is no essential difference between samsira and nirvana. See Paul L. Swanson's discussion in Foun- dutions of Tien-T'ai Philosophy. (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989), pp. 3 - 10.

47. The circling (mai) and stamping (bycishi) patterns present in Noh are said to have two main purposes: to purify the space of evil spirits, and to invoke the kami through shamanic possession. In Okina (the Noh puritication ritual still performed at New Year's), the initial stamping dance by the unmasked Senzai is meant to purify the space, while the dancing by the masked Okina is meant to invoke the kumi. Unlike most other Noh dance, Okina's stamping is synchronized with the calls (kakegoe) and beats of the kotsuzumi drum. The ran- bydshi performed in Ddjdji is the only other dance performed in Noh today that has this kind of synchronization with the kotsuzumi drum; this is one of the strongest reasons that the ran- byoshi is thought to have been originally developed by shirabyoshi dancers as a ritual pu- rification dance. For more on the relationship between shamanistic dance ritual and the devel- opment of Noh, see Monica Bethe, "Okina: An Interview with Takabayashi K6ji" in Mime Journul: NolKyogen Masks and Performances (Claremont, CA: Pomona College Theater De- partment, 1984); Honda Yasuji, "Yamabushi kugura and bungaku: Performance in the Japa- nese Middle Ages and Contemporary Folk Performance," trans. by Frank Hoff, Educutionul Theutre Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1 (May 1974), pp. 192-208; and Jacob Kaz, "Chinkon-From Folk Beliefs to Stage Conventions," Maske und Kothurn, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1981), pp. 5-18.

312 Journal qf Japanese Studies

tunity pass me by!" 4X It might be that the onryd is simply too powerful for the dancer to subdue through her dance; or it might be that this was the goal of the fumi-shizume dance all along: to make the onryd appear so that she could be exorcised.49 This second interpretation creates a kind of binary split that neatly places all the good intentions on the side of the shirabydshi and all of the bad intentions on the side of the serpent-woman; such a neat split fits in well with Ddjiiji's overall tendency toward starkly contrasting dualisms. By making the dancer an innocent victim of a kind of karmic repetition-compulsion, it simultaneously paints the serpent-woman as so univocally evil that her failure to achieve enlightenment at the end can be justified.

In Kanemaki, however, the fact that the woman ultimately achieves re- lease from her passionate resentment makes it seem more likely that the serpent-woman herself is extremely ambivalent in her feelings toward the bell. This interpretation is supported by intimations in the Kanenzaki text that the shirabyoshi wishes to strike the bell because she believes that ring- ing it is the soteriological equivalent of chanting the Lotus Sutra. In other words, striking the bell and chanting the Lotus Sutra both have the power to absolve her sins (that is, rid her of the negative feminine sexuality that caused her past bad karma), a first step toward enlightenment. She is si- multaneously drawn to the bell by her desire for enlightenment and by her desire to take revenge on the displaced object of her resentment toward the monk.

The bell in Kanemaki thus functions in much the same way as the full- ing block in the Noh play Kinuta. In Kinuta, a woman who is angry at her husband's neglect takes out her grief and resentment by beating kimono on a fulling block. Succumbing to her grief, she falls ill and dies. In the sec- ond half of the play, when her husband returns home for her funeral service she appears before him as a ghost and explains that she has been con-

48. Yokomichi and Omote, Y6kyokushu (gej, p. 137; Keene, Twenty Plays. p. 245 (translation altered).

49. Reinier Hcsselink, in an unpublished conference paper "The D6,jGji Tale and An- cient Metallurgical Traditions," has pointed out that there is another pre-Buddhist motive for the exclusion of women from the dedication ceremony: in ancient bell-casting ceremonies the only woman that was allowed near the casting site was the virgin who was to be sacrificed (married) to the tire-breathing dragon of the furnace. Keinier Hesselink, "The Doj6ji Tale and Ancient Metallurgical Traditions" (paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, 1990), pp. 1 2 1 3 . One might therefore hypothesize that lurking beneath the Buddhist surface of the D6j6ji tale is another pre-Buddhist layer, the story of a woman transformed into a dragon when she was thrown into thc fiery crucible during the casting of the bell, and who in the Noh DGjoji seeks revenge on the bell as the cause of her violent death. This would give added impetus to the head priest's anxiety about a vengeful female onry6 attacking the bell and reinforce the logic of having an exorcism rite bc pcr- formed by a shir.aby6shi to quell the angry spirit.

313 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in Diijiiji

demned to hell for her passionate attachment. She then goes on to vividly describe how the fulling block, which in life had been the displaced object of her furious resentment over her husband's neglect, has now in death be- come the instrument of her torture in hell. And yet in the end when the sounds of the fulling block are equated with the sounds of the chanting of the Lotus Sutra, it becomes, paradoxically, the instrument of her salvation. In much the same way, the bell in Kanemaki functions as the object of the woman's displaced anger and resentment over her rejection by the monk, but in the end it also functions as the instrument of her salvation by the equation of its sound with the chanting of the Lotus Sutra. In fact, the sal- vation that comes at the end of Kanemaki could be seen as simply a dis- placed deferral of the ending of the setsuwa. In Konjaku monogatari the monk, himself transformed into a snake, appeared to a senior priest of D6- jiiji and begged him to chant a chapter of the Lotus Sutra; in Kanemaki the shirabyoshilserpent who symbolically fuses in her body both the monk and the passionate woman of the setsuwa, achieves salvation for both of them by ringing the temple bell, which is the soteriological equivalent of chant- ing the Lotus Sutra. As we shall see, however, this soteriological function of the bell is for the most part eliminated in D6j6ji.

An Analysis of the Cuts in Kanemaki that Produced D6j6ji

Having sketched the main symbolic interpretations of the bell and the serpent-woman, in the rest of this article I intend to do a more systematic analysis of the cuts made in the Kanemaki text, in order to show those cuts' imagistic and thematic effects. The first cut in Kanemaki is of an opening sashiiageuta in which the head priest explains that it is because the "mar- velous" sound of the bell is so "rarely heard" that such a multitude of people have gathered for the service of the reinstatement of the bell. The phrases "marvelous" and "rarely heard" are two of the most common de- scriptive predicates for the Lotus Sutra, used especially in arguing its effectiveness for bringing people to enlightenment; this sets up the initial identification between the bell and the Lotus Sutra.

The head priest also indicates that the service is to be performed at an unusual time. Although it is evening, the dawn moon (ariake no tsuki) will soon be setting to the west in the direction of the "Sun-High Temple" (Hidakadera, another name for Diijoji): "ariake no tsuki wa hodonaku irigata no Hidaka no tera." The phrase ariake no tsuki is usually under- stood to refer to a moon that lingers on in the sky even as the day dawns, and so its appearance here in the evening is highly unusual. Although it is possible to normalize this unusual image as a cyclical lunar phenomenon

50. Yokomichi and Omote, Y6kyokushzi ( g e ) , p. 131.

3 14 Journal of Japanese Studies

(at about the twentieth day in the lunar cycle the moon rises in the early morning hours and sets in the late afternoon), it is not possible to nor- malize it in terms of the standard Japanese literary conventions for the use of "dawn moon" as a poetic image.

In the next scene, this same strange image of a dawn moon in the eve- ning reappears in the shirabybshi's self-introduction, or nanori. As men- tioned previously, Kanemaki has a slightly different nanori that includes an explanatory sashilsageuta that is omitted from Dbjbji. In this sashilsage- uta the shirabybshi tells us that she lives along the shore at Komatsubara and comments on her ambivalence toward the bell. She wants to go to hear the service but is afraid of what will happen if she seeslhears the bell being struck by the dawn moon again: "If I go today to hear the service of the DGjGji bell which has been silent for so long, hearing it, my heart will re- turn to the past, that time when the dawn moon struck the bell in the linger- ing twilight, as it must be doing even now; I shall go pay my respects." 5' In other words, the shirabybshi is telling us that those events of the past (which she would prefer to forget) are somehow associated with a singular moment when the dawn moon struck the evening bell. As the same strange astronomical phenomenon is about to take place again, the shirabybshi feels an irresistible compulsion to return to the "scene of origin."

The phrase "mukashi ni kaeru ariake no tsukigane nokoru iriyai no koro" (returning to that past time when the dawn moon struck the bell in the lingering twilight) puns on tsuki (moon) and tsuku (to strike). These puns, cohering around the dawn moon and the evening bell, will recur again and again throughout the rest of the Kanemaki. One result of this nearly obsessive repetition is that although Kanemaki is ostensibly a genzai (present time) Noh, there is no "normal" progression of time correspond- ing to the unfolding of events onstage. Instead, from the head priest's open- ing speech to the climactic exorcism scene, everyone seems caught in the lingering twilight, trapped in those last few moments before the dawn moon strikes and the sunset bell rings out. Within this other (perhaps psy- chological) kind of temporality the past is indistinguishable from the present and so must be compulsively r e e n a ~ t e d . ~ '

51. "Sate mo Dbjbji ni taete hisashiki kane no kuy6 kefu to kiku yori waga kokoro mukashi ni kaheru ariake no tsukigane nokoru iriyai no koro ni mo ima ya narinubeshi mairite ogami mbsubeshi." Yokomichi and Omote, Yokyokushu (gej, p. 132.

52. This might explain why the poetry quoted in I)oj6jilKarlemaki often seems to dis- regard the season (a point which most commentators consider a criticism of the play). For example, during the kyzi no vnai a spring poem is immediately followed by a winter one. It seems to me, however, that these poems were chosen because each contains an image of the evening bell being struck. In D6jojiiKanevnaki the reiteration of this particular image is simply more important than consistency of season (and in fact, the confusion of seasons may contribute to our sense that the play takes place in some other "psychological" time rather than any "real" time).

315 Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6j6ji

It may very well be precisely because the image of a dawn moon strik- ing the evening bell is so inexplicable in terms of both the standard poetic conventions and the standard temporal progression for a genzai Noh that the playwright who created Dcijai from Kanemaki attempted to normalize the time sequence as much as possible. He did so by deleting any lines of prose that clearly specified the time as early evening, with both the sun and moon about to set in the west. The mysterious image of the "dawn moon striking the evening bell" was allowed to remain only in the poetry, where it could easily be dismissed as odd, but essentially meaningless. Given those deletions it makes sense that most modern commentators, an- notators, and translators of DGjoji have either ignored (and thereby re- pressed) the strangeness of this image, or have actively attempted to nor- malize it.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the ambiguous punning grammar of "ariake no tsukigane nokoru iriyai no koro," a grammar that disrupts the conventional linear flow of rhetoric, time, and narrative, is not unmoti- vated. The power of this image of the dawn moon striking the evening bell rests on its ability to condense a number of binary oppositions into a single symbolic locus. To begin with, it blends the visual and the aural through the synesthesia of moonlight "striking" the bell. Second, it rhetorically combines two antithetical periods of the day: dawn and sunset. Third, it condenses the past and the present into one "uncanny" moment, a moment when the horrific events of the past erupt suddenly and violently into the present.

The adroit blending of the aural and visual through the word play on "striking" has certain interesting thematic ramifications. Given that the moon is often a symbol of enlightenment, it is significant that at several points in Kanemaki the shirabycishi clearly expresses her desire to "hear" the moon strike the bell. It seems to me that one possible explanation for this desire might be found in the Noh play Miidera (which some scholars believe was used as a model for the writing of D c i ~ o j i ) . ~ ~Miidera quotes a popular song that associates the tolling of the temple bell at set hours with four lines of poetry (grithri) from the Nirvana Sutra. The lines from Miidera read: "The early morning bell tolls 'Nothing that is, remains.' When the late night bell resounds, it echoes, 'All that is born must die.'

53. It6 Masayoshi suggests that at least parts of D6j6ji were based on Miidera. The two plays not only share three poems (which happen to be the most important poems in D6j6ji); their poetic variations are identical too. And as I mentioned previously, there is a striking similarity on the level of narrative structure as well. Ito, Y6kyokushu (chu), note 5, p. 378. It is interesting to note too, that most Kabuki treatments of D6j6ji depend on Miidera's bell imagery rather than on D6j6ji's. For a discussion of the relation between Miidera and Kabuki versions of D6j6ji, see Hirano Kenji, "Yokyoku no D6j6ji to Miidera," in Soga, D6j6ji, pp. 149-51.

316 Journal of Japanese Studies

What echo does the bell at dawn make? 'When what has passed has ceased to be . . .' And what does the sunset bell toll? '. . . Nirvana's bliss is then attained.' "5 T h ~ s ,at the moment when the dawn moon strikes the evening bell, the union of dawn and sunset form a couplet that by association indi- cates the achievement of enlightenment: "when what has passed [that is, the past karma that attaches the woman] has ceased to be, Nirvana's bliss is then attained." This couplet provides a likely motivation for the shira- by6shi's expressed desire to hear and see the dawn moon strike the bell at D6joji. And when she finally gets her wish at the climax of the exorcism scene, the moment is given added punch by the literalization of the syn- esthesia: the bell actually rings out although nothing but the moonlight has touched it.

In Kanemaki, although on one level the recurrence of the dawn moon striking the evening bell can be seen as a physical manifestation of the powerful karmic law that has all participants in its grip, the karmic bond that has led inexorably to a repetition of the awful events of the distant past, on another level it helps make possible the ultimate release of the serpent- woman when she herself strikes the bell. In D6j6ji, on the other hand, be- cause the initial association made in Kanemaki between the dawn moon, evening bell, and past events has been eliminated along with the final salva- tion of the woman, when the image suddenly appears at the climax of the play, it seems little more than an elegant rhetorical flourish, given a puz- zling amount of stress in performance by being sung with heightened lyric intensity by the wakilhead priest alone. One could still, of course, link it with the lines from the Nirvana Sutra quoted in Miidera, but if the woman does not achieve salvation in the end, what would be the point?

The next section that is cut from Kanemaki is the mond6 between the shirabyijshi and the head priest of the temple. In it the shiraby6shi argues that she should be allowed to enter the temple, since by dancing as part of the Buddhist service her past karma will be absolved. When the head priest refuses to admit her she responds with a rather sophisticated philosophical argument. Her position is grounded in the Mahayana doctrine of emptiness and radical non-dualism and argued via an analogy with the honji-suijaku theory of assimilation between Buddhas and k ~ m i . ~ ' Stating that the rela-

54. "Mazu shoya no kane o tsuku toki wa, shogyd mujo to hibikunari; goya no kane o tsuku toki wa, zeshG meppG to hibikunari; jinjo no hibiki wa, shometsumetsu ni; iriyai wa jakumetsu iraku to hibikite." ItG, YOkyokushu (ge), p. 273; Japanese Noh Drama: Ten Plays, p. 69. My translation is based in part on an unpublished translation of Miidera by Eileen Kate.

55. There are a number of other plays where a focal point of the plot is a debate between a womanlshite and a priestlwaki over some point of religious philosophy: Sotoba Komachi, Eguchi, Yamamba, and Miidera, just to name a few. Although the goals of their arguments differ according to the demands of each play's plot, each of the women wins her argument by employing the sophisticated dialectical analysis of emptiness and radical non-dualism. In

Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6j6ji 3 17

tion between the Buddhas and kami is like that of waves and water-al- though the names are different the substance is the same (ittai, literally "one bodyH)-she implies that the distinction between men and women is merely nominal, and thus the priest has no grounds for excluding her from the salvation promised by B ~ d d h a . ' ~

The Kanemaki mondii continues with the shirabyiishi weeping at the head priest's heartlessness. She then describes the surrounding scene in a speech that manages to pun on two of the eight famous views of the area: the bell at Enji and the moon at D6tei. Both the moon and the sun are set- ting to the west, and although the evening bell at distant Enji temple has tolled already, the bell at D6j6ji has still not tolled. The shirabyiishi sug- gests that if she were allowed to ring the bell, it might finally be heard." The head priest, impressed as much by her ability with literary allusions as with her religious understanding, consults with the other priests, who ask him to let her dance for them as a special reward for having gone through so much hardship getting the bell up. He cannot refuse their request, and so although he still has qualms, the woman is allowed to enter.

When this mondii debate was eliminated from DGjiiji, the shira-

other words, for a woman to prove that she is worth salvation, she has to be extraordinarily gifted in religious understanding, defending her position by resorting to subtle philosophical insights that transcend the popular understanding of Buddhism. One should keep in mind, however, that by being exceptional these shite actually reinforce the idea that "ordinary" women deserve to be excluded.

56. Yokomichi and Omote, Ydkyokushu (ge), pp. 133-34. This passage in Kanemaki is rather obscure. It may be that I am reading too much into it when I explicitly link the "waves1 water : kamilBuddha" analogy with "femalelmale," although the context-the shirabydshi arguing that even though she is a woman she should be admitted-seems to suggest it. But the lines in Kanemaki could also be interpreted in a more equivocal way. Shirabydshi were very liminal figures: women dressed as men, prostitutes who performed religious dance rituals, mikolshamans whose place within Buddhism was hard to define. It could be that here she is asserting not so much her identity as female as her identification as a shirabybshi who, like the kami, had a very ambiguous position in Buddhism. The lines which immediately follow her waveslwater analogy seem to bear this out: "urameshi no my6jin ya nadoshimonaku wa tsuge no ogushi urami kakoteba toki utsuri sekiyd nishi ni iriyai." A possible translation might be: "How angrylresentful the mybjin [shrine's main kami] is! This heartlessness [will result in the mydjin's] boxwood combloracle, a resentful curse: as time passes, both moon and sun set in the west." Here the strange conjunction of sun and moon setting together may be taken as an ominous omen that predicts the events that follow. (I am indebted to Tom Looser for directing me toward this alternative interpretation of the link between the katni and shirabydshi.)

57. "Enji no bansh6 wa hibikedomo kono kane wa D6tei no tsnkitaraba koso kikoeme." Yokomichi and Omote, Ybkyokushu (ge), p. 134. This line could also be interpreted as "al- though the evening bell at Enji has rung out, the [D6j6ji] bell [still has not]: if the moon at D6tei strikes the bell [here at D6j6ji1, will I then hear it?" Here the ambiguity of subject with regard to the pun on tsuki (the moon, to strike) implicitly identifies and equates the shirabydshi's desire to hear the moon strike the bell with her desire to strike the bell herself.

318 Journal of Japanese Studies

byoshi's sophisticated argument that the head priest has no right to deny her entrance to the temple was eliminated as well. The Dojoji version of how the woman gains entrance is completely different: as mentioned previ- ously, instead of demonstrating her philosophical and literary understand- ing to the head priest, the shirabybshi employs her seductive arts on a rather simple-minded, low-ranking temple worker. Using the deceptive ar- gument that dressed as a man she is no "ordinary" woman, she tempts him with her beauty and the lure of her dance into letting her enter the temple precincts despite the head priest's strict prohibition. Once again, in Dbjbji the woman is reduced to nothing more than her dangerously seductive feminine sexuality.

Continuing with the story, the shirabybshi expresses her delight at being allowed to enter the temple and prepares for the dance. In both Kane- maki and Dbjbji, the opening lines for the dance are "Apart from the cherry blossoms, there are only the pines; when darkness falls, will the bell ring out?" ("hana no hoka ni wa matsu bakari, kure somete kane ya hi- b i k ~ r a n " ) . ~ V h e r e a sin Dbjbji this line is simply repeated, as is normal for a shidai, in Kanemaki, the second repetition is altered to "as darkness falls I do not hear the bell" ("kure somete kane wa kikoezu"). Once again, in the Kanemaki version, the shirabybshi's desire to hear the bell is given explicit emphasis.

This desire to hear the bell is given further reinforcement just a few lines later in the poem that comes at the climactic point just before the ka- neiri (that is, at the climax of the kyu no mai): "Visiting a mountain temple on a spring evening, when the evening bell tolls, the blossoms fall." " In the Komparu version of D6jbji the last line, "hana zo chirikeru" (the blossoms fall), is changed to "hana ya chiruran." The altered poem now reads, "when the evening bell rings, will the flowers fall?" echoing the shidai couplet of a few lines before ("when darkness falls, will the bell ring out?"). It also poses an implicit question: "do the flowers fall because the evening bell tolls?" 6U This question, which indicates a causal link be-

58. Yokomichi and Omote, Y6kyokushli ( g e ) , p. 134; Kcenc, Twenty Plays, p. 244 (translation altered).

59. "Yamadera no ya ham no yugure kite mircba iriyai no kane ni hana zo chirikeru." Yokomichi and Omote, Y6kyokushG ( g e ) , pp. 136-37; Kcene, Twenly Plays, p. 144-45 (translation mine). This line is a slightly altered version of Shinkokinshu poem 116: "Yama sato no ham yugurc kite mireha iriai no kane ni hana zo chirikcru."

60. Scc Koyama, YOkyokushu (2), p. 240. One justification for using this minor varia- tion is that it indicates that someone was interpreting the play the way that I am. In fact, however, it seems that the poem docs not nccd to be changed for this interpretation to be valid: although the grammar of hana zo chirikeru would not normally indicate a causal relation bc- twccn the tolling of the bell and the falling of thc flowcrs, Yokomichi and Omote gloss this line, "As though invitedlseduccd by the evening hell, the flowers quietly fall." Yokomichi

319 Klein: Desire a n d Enlightenment in D6joji

tween the bell's tolling of the fleeting hours and the flowers' evanescence, lends a slightly more ominous cast to the bell, while the image of flowers falling foreshadows the imminent fall of the bell itself.

At this point in our story the shirabybshi has managed to entrance everyone onstage through her ranby6shi dance. Seeing them all asleep, she seizes her chance to strike the bell, but at the very last moment she remem- bers her resentment, and instead of striking it, she flies upward into the bell, wrapping it around her as it crashes to the ground. If we were only discussing D 6 j i j i here, without reference to Kanemaki, at this point we would be under the impression that the shirabybshi's desire to strike the bell is only motivated by malicious spite. The obvious question then would be, why did the shiraby6shi not strike the bell when she had the chance? Taking the eliminated sections of Kanemaki into account however, we can see that her desire to strike the bell is not motivated solely by resentment but also by her desire for enlightenment. As she goes to strike the bell, and really sees it for the first time, suddenly all the old memories come surging back, and her furious anger and resentment reassert themselves. It is the refusal to give up her attachment to her rancor that keeps her from striking the bell and gaining release.

The argument that the shirabybshi would gain release from her attach- ment if she struck the bell is given strong support in the next section of Kanemaki, when a pun on tsukultsukusu (to be exhaustedlto exhaust, as in "the exhaustion of resentment") is added to the cluster of images that co- here around puns on tsuki (moon) and tsuku (to strike). When the priests are praying to raise up the bell, the head priest gives them a little pep talk, telling them that their power will never be exhausted (tsuku) even if the Hidaka river runs dry and all its sands run out (again, t ~ u k u ) . ~ ' The priests begin their exorcism with a dharani spell (the same used in Aoi no l i e and Funa Benkei), a terrifying invocation of the awesome power of the five Wisdom Kings (Myo-6). They seem to get better results, however, when they pray for the salvation of the serpent by invoking Fudo's compassion-

and Omote, Y6kyokushfi ( g e ) , note 14, p. 137. On the other hand the modern commentary attached to the pocm in the Iwanami edition of the Shinkokinshfistates quite specifically that the pocm should not be understood to mean that the bell causes the flowers to fall: "The flowers do not fall because the cvcning bell invites them. It is that the pathos [awaresa] of the cvcning bell resonates with the pathos of the falling flowers." The fact that the editor finds it necessary to make this comment at all indicates that this pocm has a long history of "creative misreading." Hisamatsu Sen'ichi, Yamazaki Toshio, and Got6 Shigeo, eds., Shinkokin- wakashfi, Vol. 28 of Nihon koten hungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shotcn, 1958), p. 59.

61. "Mizu kahctsute Hidakagawara no masago no kazu wa tsukuru tomo, gy6ja no h6riki tsukubeki ka." Yokomichi and Omote, Y6kyokushli ( g e ) , p. 140; Keenc, Twenty Plays, p. 248.

320 Journal of Japanese Studies

ate vow," since it is immediately after they chant, "He who hearkens to My Law shall gain enlightenment, he who knows My Heart will be a Buddha in this flesh," that the dawn moon strikes the bell (ariake no tsukigane), the bell rings out although no one has touched it, and it appears to dance.63

With the bell finally raised, the priests at last confront the serpent. At this point in Kanernnki, when the priests order the serpent to return from whence she came, she tauntingly echoes their use of tsuku: "How angry1 resentful 1 am! How can you tell me to depart when I haven't exhausted (tsukusu) my resentment by striking (tsuku) the bell?"" Here through the pun on tsukusu (to exhaust) and tsuku (to strike), the essential identity be- tween striking the bell and exhausting one's resentment is most clearly ex- pressed. But of course, as could be predicted by now, this line has been cut from D6jOji.

In the dramatic close to D6jOji, the priests call on, appropriately enough, the Niiga Kings to fight off the serpent-woman. She is forced to her knees by their power, but then springs back up and turning on the bell the full force of her fury, vomits raging flames. In so doing, however, she only succeeds in burning herself: "kane ni mukatte tsuku iki wa my6ka to natte mi o yak^."^^ In this penultimate line we find our last pun on tsuku: to vomit, or give vent to. In D5j6ji the serpent-woman attempts to vent (tsuku) her burning anger against the bell, but because she does so with malevolent intent, she is unable to strike the bell; she only ends up harming herself. Completely vanquished by the power of the priests, she leaps into the Hidaka river, and the priests, their prayers granted, go happily home. Kanemaki, however, ends quite differently. Choked in flames, her body burning with passionate despair, the serpent-woman is about to throw her- self into the Hidaka river when she suddenly returns to the main stage. As

62. Fudd, the most important of the five My6-6, is especially venerated in Shugcnd6. He is usually rcprescnted holding a sword of wisdom to cut down the wicked and a rope of mercy to bind them. Fud6, the "Immovable One," is surrounded by a constantly raging fire that consumes all evil passions and is therefore particularly appropriate here as the rightcous mir- ror of the serpent who burns with the flames of passion.

63. "Tsukancdo kono kane hibikiidc, hikanedo kono kane odoru tozo mieshi." Yokomichi and Omote, Y8kyokushli ( g e ) , p. 141; Kccne, Twenty Plavs, p. 250. The use of odoru (dancc) to describe the movcment of thc bcll is another hint that the bell and the shirabydshi have a deeper rclation of identity and provides another reason why the serpent- woman did not strike the bell earlicr whcn she had the chancc. Because she leapt into the bell instead, now when the dawn moon strikes thc bell the serpent-woman is struck by it as wcll, and together they "dance" in response.

64. "Uramcshi ya sashi mo omohishi kane no ne o tsukusade warc ni kahcre to ya." Yokornichi and Omote, Ydkyokushli ( g e ) , p. 141. There is a pun on tsukusu (to exhaust) and tsuku (to strike) in tsukusade (have not exhaustedirung).

65. Yokomichi and Omote, Ydkyokushu ( g e ) , p. 142; Keene, Twenty Plays, p. 251.

Klein: Desire and Enlightenment in D6j6ji 32 1

the chorus describes her action ("mata kono kane o tsukuzuku") and re- peats it for emphasis, she strikes the bell (tsuku) again and again, thereby completely exhausting (tsukuzuku) her resentment. As her attachment to her hatred for the bell vanishes, she herself fades slowly from view." Ka- nemaki thus ends focused on the woman's enlightenment and release from suffering rather than on the priests' successful exorcism.

Conclusion

In conclusion I would like to emphasize that I certainly do not believe that Knnemaki is somehow better theater than Ddjdji simply because it es- pouses a more "enlightened" view of women. It seems clear that the cuts made in Kanemaki allow DOjdji to attain much greater intensity as a the- atrical experience. Both Kanemaki and the setsuwa name names and cite specific dates; more importantly they provide an absolute temporal closure to the story when, in their different ways, they indicate that the monk and the woman have achieved salvation and vanish forever. DdjOji, which eliminates these specific names and dates, is vaguely set at "some time after the original events"; it could be 400 years ago, it could be yesterday. And by eliminating the woman's final salvation, DdjOji leaves open the possibility that the serpent-woman will rise again from the depths of the Hidaka river to attack the bell, an "eternal return" in which the past is compulsively replayed before us each time the play is "re-enacted." Db- jdji's enthralling vision of a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, a vision that plays on our deepest psychological desires and fears, thus attains the level of archetypal myth. Nevertheless, since the removal of the serpent's final salvation has such extended thematic and imagistic ramifica- tions for the play as a whole 1 would like, in conclusion, to suggest a few other possible reasons why it might have been cut from DOjdji.

It would be nice to be able to say that the play's loss of a didactic Bud- dhist thrust is clearly the result of changes in late MuromachiiMomoyama Buddhism. As William LaFleur points out in The Karma of Words, the late sixteenth century saw a gradual lessening of the importance of the Bud- dhist episteme, as a more pragmatic, "secularized" Confucianism began to take hold-and Confucianism's attitude toward women was certainly de- cidedly negative." It seems safer, however, to point to changes in patron- age. Early Noh was dependent on templetshrine complexes for support and was used to propagate religious teachings in an easily understood and ap-

66. "HonZ, ni muscbcba, mi o kogasu kanashisa ni Hidaka no kawa nami shinnen ni kahem to mietsuru ga, mata kono kane o tsukuiiuku to, mata kono kane o tsukuzuku to kahcri mi, shushin wa kiete i o usenikem." Yokomichi and Omote, Y6kyokushli (ge), p. 142.

67. William LaFleur, The Karma of Words (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983),p. 13.

322 Journal of Japanese Studies

pealing form that would attract people. Given that the story of Kunernaki is a popular setsuwa associated with the DoJ6Ji temple, and that the kusemai in Kunemaki is the story of the temple's founding, it seems likely that Ka- nemuki was originally written specifically for the Dojoji temple. As it hap- pens, there is on record a dedication ceremony for a new temple bell at D6joJi which took place in 1359, which would correspond fairly well with the opening sushi in Kunemaki which explicitly dates the play at 700 years after the founding (701).6R SO one might speculate that some form of the play was originally written either for the dedication ceremony itself and was later extensively rewritten by Kanze Nobumitsu, or (more likely) was written for a later memorial celebration of that dedication ceremony. Of course, we have absolutely no proof of any of this.

At any rate, in the late MuromachiiMomoyama period, Noh's base of support shifted from templeishrine complexes to the patronage of high- ranking samurai such as Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose taste ran to warrior tales and powerful conflicts between the shite and ~ a k i . ~ ~In this relatively secularized context, theatrical spectacle was valued above subtle religious argument, or even simple didactic moralizing. We can see this dynamic at work most clearly by comparing the endings of Kunernaki and DcSjdji. One completely pragmatic theatrical motivation for removing the reference to the serpent-woman's salvation, and ending with the serpent- woman hurling herself into the Hidaka river, is that it acts as the pretext for the D6j6ji shite's exciting final running leap through the curtains at the end of the hushigukuri bridge. In theatrical terms this flying exit provides a far more satisfyingly dramatic ending than if the shite left the stage quietly, as the actor certainly would have if he were representing a woman who had just achieved enlightenment. It seems that, by the late Muromachi period, producing dramatically satisfying theater more than justified depriving the woman of release from the pain of her passionate anger. However, if the ghost of the woman were here today, I think that she would tell us that this final cut, made merely for the purpose of a more dramatic exit, but which eliminated her chance for enlightenment, was indeed the unkindest cut of all.

68. Yokomichi and Omote, Yiikvokushii (ge). note 22, p . 130. 69. See Jacob Raz's extended discussion of this point in Audience andActorstA Studv qf

TheirInteraction in the Jupunese Traditional Theater (Leiden: E . J . Brill, 1983), pp. 131-36.