Paper short abstract:

This presentation will demonstrate that Kanze Motomasa’s play Yoroboshi is based on stories from the preaching context by focusing on the motif of a wandering husband and wife pair found in an earlier variant of the play written by Zeami.

Paper long abstract:

Recent research on Nō drama has revealed that plays about madness (monogurui nō) are based on setsuwa (anecdotal stories) from the world of Buddhist preaching (shōdō.) For example, the play Sakuragawa (桜川) is based on the tale “About a poor woman in Kendara” in the collection Shijuhyaku innenshū （私聚百因縁集, 1257). The plays Tango monogurui （丹後物狂）and Shikijimonogurui （敷地物狂）are likewise based on the preachings of the Tendai priest Enshō and incorporated into texts such as the Sangokudenki (三国伝記, late fourteenth to early fifteenth century) and Jikidaninnenshū (直談因縁集,1585). This presentation argues that the Nō play Yoroboshi (弱法師) by Kanze Motomasa likely also had its origins in popular Buddhist preaching. Though the current performance tradition only has one shite (“doer” or main role), an extant version of the play copied from Zeami’s handwritten libretto has the shite accompanied by his wife as tsure (shite’s companion). The inclusion of the wife is the key to my argument.

　 Previous scholarship has argued that the play Yoroboshi may have been derived from the sermon-ballad Shintokumaru(説経節,しんとく丸). It is unlikely that Yoroboshi was based on Shintokumaru because the works have different endings. Instead, a story found in early Buddhist scriptures, the account of the Indian prince Kunala, is the likely source for Yoroboshi. The original Indian story–about the travails of a blind son who is cast out by his father because of a false accusation, and then later reunited with him–influenced both Yoroboshi and Shintokumaru. But the Zeami- transcribed variant of Yoroboshi follows the original Indian account very closely, featuring the wanderings of the blind man together with his wife.

　Such stories of spousal love between Prince Kunala and his wife are found in Buddhist tale collections such as the Sangokudenki, Hokkekyōjikidanshō（法華経直談抄,1546）, Innenshō (因縁抄,Muromachi Period)and the afore-mentioned Jikidaninnenshū. I contend that Kanze Motomasa likely composed Yoroboshi while alluding to these Buddhist anecdotes of Prince Kunala, stories often cited during Buddhist sermons.