Funa+Benkei+Notes

Please use these notes when studying for the midterm exam.

Kanze is one of five schools of Noh. The name is made up of two syllables. __Kan__ is drawn from the first syllable of Noh's founder __Kan__ami and __ze__ is drawn from the first syllable of __Ze__ami, his son and most important actor and playwright who developed Noh during the early stage of its development. Hence, we may deduce that the author of __Funa Benkei__ hails from the Kanze school because his name is Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu.

__Funa Benkei__ is a fifth category play. The five categories are: 1. plays about gods 2. plays about warriors 3. plays about women 4. "plays about miscellaneous or contemporary characters" (Keene) or madwomen 5. plays about demons

Noh plays are generally divided into two parts with an interlude provided by the ai-kyogen. Part I is slow and stately. Shizuka and her dances in this part are representative examples. Part II is faster in pace and tempo. Tomomori's entrance and dramatic actions are representative examples. The interlude between the two parts has a realistic feel, although it is highly structured.

All the generic role categories are listed at the top of play. They are:

shite -- "protagonist" (Keene); "the main actor" (Ortolani)

waki -- "person at the side" who is representative of the audience and who asks questions of the shite thus drawing out the story (Keene); "supporting actor" (Ortolani)

tsuri -- "companion" (Keene) to either the waki or the shite. In __Funa Benkei__ there are three waki-tsure but in the video examples there was only one

kokata -- "a role performed by a child actor" (Ortolani) who is a shite

ai-kyogen (or simply kyogen) -- a comic character, usually a peasant in the Noh plays. Kyogen is a separate genre of performance made up mainly of comic plays. These were meant to be inserted between Noh plays in a performance program. In the old days there were 5 Noh and 4 Kyogen in a typical program. Today there are often no more than three Noh and two Kyogen.

There are separate schools for actors of shite, waki, and kyogen, as well as separate schools for the musicians who play the flute, the shoulder drum, the hip drum, and the taiko drum. The chorus is made up of actors from the shite schools.

It should be noted that Noh plays (and Kyogen plays, for that matter) are short in length and ordinarily each takes little more than an hour to perform.

The language of the Noh plays was, "a medieval language, studded with quotations from even older classics, and would be difficult to follow even if pronounced with the utmost clarity." (Keene)

The handouts reveal that the plays were written in Japanese and read from right to left and top to bottom.

Note that kuse is a kind of dance. Shizuka performs a kuse dance in __Funa Benkei__ shortly after being presented rice wine by Benkei. According to Ortolani, Kusemai is a, "type of dance and music about which little is known, but important because it influenced Kanami in the creation of the no."

"The demon plays were written mainly by playwrights of the century after Zeami. Though effective as theatre and sometimes moving as poetry, they fail to touch the exalted utterance of the greatest No plays. It has been said of Funa Benkei, nevertheless, that "of the two hundred works in the current repertory, it ranks as a masterpiece of the kind one can count on the fingers of one hand." It rates this praise especially because of its brilliant variety of effects. In the first scene Benkei persuades Yoshitsune to dismiss his sweetheart Shizuka, who has accompanied him on the flight from the capital. The actor playing Shizuka must suggest the grief of this ill-starred woman; but in the second scene the same actor, taking an entirely different part, must rage with masculine vigor as Tomomori, a defeated Heike warrior who rises from the sea to menace the fugitives in their boat. Between the two sections of the play an unusually absorbing ai-kyogen is played by the boatman who ferries Yoshitsune, Benkei and the others across the Inland Sea. He battles with tremendous waves stirred up by Tomomori' ghost, giving vent to realistic cries and gestures that contrast with the stylization of the rest of the play." This passage is quoted from Donald Keene, __No and Bunraku: Two Forms of Japanese Theatre__; NY: Columbia University Press, 1990. pp. 53-54.