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戦争を＜耐え忍ぶ心＞へのアンチテーゼ-秋元松代の戯曲『常陸坊海尊』（1964）を中心にー

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Tateoka K.

Analecta Nipponica

2017

issue 7

105-119

Akimoto Matsuyo (1911–2001) is one of the few female playwrights of the Shōwa Period. Her master was Miyoshi Jūrō, a renowned figure of the proletarian theater. He taught Akimoto the art of detailed realism. Akimoto’s great fascination with folklore, an obvious influence of Yanagida Kunio, drove her meticulous fieldwork. In places forgotten and irrelevant to the main course of history, she explored the sensitivity of those in deep connection with local traditions and used this research in her plays. Her play Hitachibō Kaison (Kaison, the Priest of Hitachi) is based on a legend that featured Yoshitsune. Kaison first betrays his lord, later changes his life completely – goes about retelling his sins, and in the end refuses to eat and becomes a virtuous living incarnation of Buddha (ikibotoke). The story opens with the scene of Tokyo children being evacuated at the end of the Pacific War. The children unexpectedly become absorbed into the world of Kaison’s legend. The comeback of the folk magic theme, posing a contrast with postwar Japan’s modern rationalization, is a unique phenomenon in the literature of the late 1950’s. It also somehow relates to the interest in Japanese folklore and sensuality present in the works of the playwrights of the 1960’s, like Tarayama Shūji or Kara Jūrō. Akimoto, however, does not see Japanese folklore only in contrast to modernity. In her play Muraoka Iheijiden (The Life of Muraoka Iheiji, 1960) she describes a simple man from the countryside, Muraoka, who initially dedicates himself to helping women sold abroad to China and South-East Asia, but later, due to misguided patriotism, changes his approach and by the end abandons all the “deceived” women. In the play Kasabuta Shikibukō (Meditation on Our Lady of Scabs, 1969) Akimoto deals with the pain and suffering of the common people. Basing her story on folk beliefs glorifying the figure of Izumi Shikibu, Akimoto shows the suffering of a mother and a wife that both long for the recovery of a mentally handicapped man who lost his faculties due to a coal-mining accident. Although not explicitly, the play addresses the topic of the psychological construct of selfish patriotism that throughout the 20th century allowed Japan to slip further and further into military conflict starting with the Russo-Japanese War. After the wars were over it still brought suffering to people, who now became victims of a quasi-war, that is, the rapid economic development. In Muraoka Iheijiden the sincere, whole-hearted modern day love of the common countryside people towards their home areas, the neighborly love, all become abused by the power of the state. In Kasabuta Shikibukō, the anti-modern world of myth and folktale – with all its relations, including male-female relationships, eventually ends up twisted by the greed for power that comes with economic development (the national system). Both on the surface and in the inner depths of society, salvation (meaning to live like a human being) becomes an empty slogan (symbol), repeated by simple people devoid of any escape, whose only rescue is in the faith that salvation will come. The author shows it most vividly in one of the scenes from Hitachibō Kaison. The children who are beingevacuated from Tokyo start evoking the name of “Lord Kaison” (Kaison-sama) unaware of the meaning behind those words. In the article I would like to examine how theater plays portray the similarities between the belief in kishuryūritan tales glorifying the defeated, and the imperial system that supported Japanese wars during the era of militarism.

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1 Analecta Nipponica

1 Tateoka K.

1 2017

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戦争を＜耐え忍ぶ心＞へのアンチテーゼ-秋元松代の戯曲『常陸坊海尊』（1964）を中心にー