Paper short abstract:

I analyze michiyuki – travel sequences – in two “mad women” Noh plays arguing that depictions of travel and landscapes create symbolic language which articulates the protagonists’ frantic wandering as a metaphor for Buddhist Path while simultaneously subverting the very expectations of the Path.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on the religio-philosophical framework within which it operates, Japanese Noh theater is known for pieces exploring issues of Buddhist attachment and desire which keep their protagonists in the vicious cycle of suffering. A category of Noh plays known as Onnamonogurui – “mad” or “crazed women plays” – presents this attachment as an obsession that leads the shite – Noh play protagonist – into mental and spiritual disintegration. A typical Onnamonogurui storyline focuses on the parting of the female shite with her lover or her child, a loss that then propels her on a compulsive journey in a desperate hope for reunification. That way, the woman’s gurui – “madness” – her mental and spiritual bondage, is enacted through her torturous sojourn. The narrative of the search, the travel sequences, the depicted landscapes, create an evocative symbolic language which articulates the protagonist’s frantic wandering as a metaphor for a spiritual struggle through the maze of human suffering, with a hope, though not a guarantee, of a release and enlightenment.

The proposed presentation examines how this symbolic language operates in the concrete examples of Noh plays Hanjo and Sumidagawa, the former a narrative of the courtesan Hanago as she wanders the province in search of a lover who had seemingly abandoned her, and the latter a story of a grief-stricken mother searching for a son who was kidnapped by slave traders. My discussion explores the ways in which the contending forces of stasis and movement, mental disintegration and spiritual insight, desire and release, converge in the narratives of travel to subvert the expectations of a proscribed path to enlightenment, by anchoring the protagonist in their desire and suffering rather than countering them. The jilted lover and the bereaved mother, thus, gain deep insight into the nature of their pain, which is communicated to the audience through performance of the travel metaphor.