能のあらすじ・見どころ Summary and Highlights of Noh Rō-taiko (The Prison Drum) English
Summary
Lord Matsura has imprisoned Seki no Seiji, a retainer under his rule, for killing a man from another province after a quarrel. However, Seiji secretly escapes from his cell. When Matsura is informed of the escape by a servant, he orders that Seiji’s wife be brought before him. Matsura informs her of her husband’s escape and questions her about his whereabouts. Although the wife insists that she knows nothing, Matsura decides to have her seized in order to force her to reveal Seiji’s location. The servant, who has been ordered to take turns guarding the prison and to strike the time drum at each watch, places the wife in the cell. After beating the time drum, he falls asleep. Before long, he is awakened by a loud racket. Realizing that the wife has gone mad, the servant hastily reports the matter to Matsura. Separated from her husband and already filled with anxiety, it is her imprisonment that triggers the onset of her madness.
Moved by compassion for the wife’s devotion to her husband, Matsuura urges her to leave the cell. However, the wife insists that the prison is her husband’s keepsake and refuses to come out, saying that she wishes to console her heart by beating the time drum. As she strikes the drum, she traces the image of her husband in her mind.
Witnessing this scene, Matsura vows to spare the lives of both husband and wife. Once released from the cell, the wife honestly reveals that her husband has fled to Dazaifu in Kyushu, seeking refuge with an acquaintance there. In accordance with a vow made on the occasion of his parent’s thirteenth memorial anniversary (an important event in Buddhist practice), Matsuura grants them both a pardon.
Giving thanks to Matsura and to the Buddha, the wife goes in search of her husband, and the couple are ultimately reunited and live together once more as before.
Highlights
Rō-taiko, which opens with the escape of a murderer from prison, is a work rich in dramatic incident, featuring the wife’s imprisonment as a substitute, her descent into madness, and ultimately a pardon, and may be described as a kind of medieval sewamono (domestic drama).
The setting of the play, Matsura, Kyushu, corresponds to a broad area extending roughly from present-day Saga Prefecture to Nagasaki Prefecture. The Matsura region is widely known for the legend of Matsura Sayohime, who is said to have continued waving her scarf to her husband as he departed for foreign lands. At the same time, during the medieval period, the area was also a stronghold of the warrior group known as the Matsura clan.
Elements such as the wife’s imprisonment as a substitute and the portrayal of Matsura as the waki are therefore thought to reflect actual medieval practices.
The main highlight of the play is the scene in which Seiji’s wife, imprisoned as a substitute for her husband, descends into madness, driven by longing for him and by her growing sense of isolation. Her mental turmoil is expressed through the kakeri, in which she circles the stage to musical accompaniment that alternates between tension and release, and through the tsuzumi-no-dan, where she seeks comfort by striking the time drum suspended within the prison cage as an expression of her devotion to her husband.
In Rō-taiko, the word rō (“cage”) is deliberately layered with another meaning through its homophony with rō in rōko (“time drum,” used to mark the hours), creating a double resonance. As the text of the tsuzumi-no-dan weaves in references to specific times (six, five, and four beats at sunset, and nine beats at midnight) the audience is invited to listen closely to the passage of time itself while watching the performance unfold on stage.