Noh (Shimai) Performance　− the kiri section of "Matsukaze”

Performance 6.30pm Friday 8th March
Akira Matsui’s shimai
Moderator  - Dr David Hughes

 

Story 　-   「Matsukaze (Pine Wind) 」
This is one of best-loved plays in the repertoire. The shite, depicting the ghost of a local woman wears a ko-omote mask. The play was apparently created by Zeami, drawing partly on existing variants.

 Ariwara no Yukihira (818-93) a court noble and a poet, like his famed brother Narihira, spent several years in a picturesque fishing village on Suma Bay (near modern Kobe) enjoying the country life. This play supposes that, while there, he became intimate with the peasant salt-maker Matsukaze and her sister. Eventually he returned to the Capital, promising of course to see them again – but it was not to be. Now centuries later, the sisters’ ghosts pine for their former lover. A traveling priest (as in so many Noh plays) encounters the sisters, who relate their tale and reveal that their spirits cannot break free from their painful memories and attachments to earthly desires.

Matsukaze dances her grief, asking the priest to say a prayer for her peace in the other world. But – as in so many plays – was it all just a dream?

 

Admission Free