能のあらすじ・見どころ Summary and Highlights of Noh Hakurakuten English
Summary
The Chinese poet Hakurakuten(waki), accompanied by his attendant (waki-tsure), crosses the sea to Japan. He has been ordered by the crown prince of Tang China to test the wisdom of the Japanese. Upon reaching the waters off northern Kyūshū, he notices a small boat approaching and casually calls out to it.
Onboard the boat are an old fisherman (mae-shite) and a man (tsure). Hakurakuten is surprised when the old man recognizes him by name and asks how he knows. The old man explains that Hakurakuten is well known even in Japan and tells him that, just as China has Chinese poetry, Japan has Japanese poetry (waka) and that the people enjoy composing.
Praising the excellence of poetry, the old man offers to show Hakurakuten a performance of court music and dance, and then mysteriously disappears.
Then a shrine deity (ai), who serves the Sumiyoshi Deity (Sumiyoshi Myōjin) appears. He recounts what has happened earlier and performs a dance before departing.
Finally, the Sumiyoshi Deity (nochi-shite) himself appears and performs a dance of court music. He gently rebukes Hakurakuten, telling him that the divine land of Japan cannot be subdued, and urges him to return home. A divine wind begins to blow, and Hakurakuten’s ship is pushed back toward China.
Highlights
The Sumiyoshi Deity is a sea deity who appears in Japanese mythology. According to legend, when Empress Jingū crossed the sea to wage war, the Sumiyoshi Deity came to her aid. From ancient times, he has been revered as a guardian of maritime safety and peace. Over time, especially as stories involving divine revelations through waka poetry became more common, he also came to be worshipped as a deity of poetry.
The play Hakurakuten centers on the idea of repelling foreign threats through the combined power of waka and divine intervention. The character Hakurakuten (Bai Juyi), known in China for his famous poem “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (which recounts the romance between Emperor Xuanzong and the beautiful Yang Guifei), was in fact a real and celebrated Tang poet. Though he never came to Japan, his poetry was widely read and regarded as essential learning among the Japanese aristocracy.
To the Japanese, Hakurakuten was a model of literary excellence. The notion of such a figure coming to test Japanese intelligence would have been a matter of national pride. Perhaps the storyline of Sumiyoshi Deity, protector of both poetry and the nation’s shores, rising to defend Japan’s honor was thus conceived.
Today, the play includes an interlude (ai-kyōgen) in the middle, but there is a possibility that in earlier times, there was no such interlude and that the old fisherman onstage would transform directly into the Sumiyoshi Deity.