The Sumida, flows down through Azuma.
  When one reflects on this, how vastly far
  In my lone journey do I seem to come.
  That being so---- Lo! Ferryman, I pray
  The boat is full, but still is room for me,
  So let me enter, Ferryman, I say,
  So let me enter, and then push away.

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  Such a tender-hearted, mad thing as this woman never has been!
  Come aboard at once, but notice that the ferry is a swift one.
  Take good care to step in gently.
    [_To the TRAVELLER_] You, sir, too, I pray come on.

TRAVELLER [_Words_]

  May I ask, what is that yonder where the people by the willow
  Are assembled in great numbers? Why should they be waiting there?

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  Well, that is a public meeting for a universal prayer.
  I would tell you, while we’re crossing, if you’ll listen to the tale,
  The sad story in connection with this festival of ours.
  It was last year, in the third month, on the fifteenth day, I reckon,
  Yes! That is so, and to-day we have the very selfsame day,
  That a kidnapper did journey from the capital, and with him
  Was a lad whom he had purchased, twelve or thirteen years of age,
  He was going to the north-east, but the child was not yet hardened
  And the long fatiguing journey made him very sadly ill.
  It was just here by the river that he could go no step farther,
  But fell down, and there remained. Oh! a heartless man was with him!
  And the child in that condition by the roadside simply lying
  Was abandoned by the merchant who went off to the north-east.
  Then the people of the district nursed and tenderly did treat him
  (Though I fancy it was really just the Karma of his past),[64]
  Something in his childish features and his little ways they noted,
  As if he were of importance, so they watched him carefully.
  Worse and worse, however, fared he, till the end seemed just
        approaching,
  Then they asked him--“Who now art thou? and from whence hast thou
        just come?”
  And his father’s surname asked I, and the province of his birthplace:
  “In the capital my home is, and at Kitajirikawa.”
  So he answered; “And my father, who is dead, was Yoshida.
  I, his one child, had been living with my loving mother only,
  But was kidnapped, and was taken far away, and hence my illness.
  Truly, often am I thinking of the people in the city,
  Of their hands and feet and shadows,[65] even, often fondly thinking.
  As beside the road I’m dying, deign just here to bury me.
  And to mark the spot I pray thee, be so kind, and plant a willow.”
  Feebly spoke he, and repeated four or five times a calm prayer,
  Then it ended. A sad story, is it not, that I have told you?
  As I see now, in this boat, there are some people from the city,
  Unintentioned though it may be, you will honourably join us
  And your lamentation offer with our prayers on this occasion?
  What! The shore! With this long story we have quickly come to land.
  For _you_ it is unimportant. Now, I pray you, disembark.

TRAVELLER [_Words_]

  Truly, here to-day I’ll linger, and a prayer with you will say.

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  How now! Why does that mad woman not come here from out the boat?
  Come, at once! Come up, I beg you! Yet how tender-hearted is she!
  Having simply heard the story she is truly shedding tears.
  Yet at once, I really beg you, you must come out of the boat.

THE MOTHER [_Words_]

  Pray, O Boatman, of that story, what, I beg you, is the date?

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  ’Twas last year, and in the third month; and, moreover, this same day.

THE MOTHER [_Words_]

  And that child, what age?

FERRYMAN

  Twelve years.

THE MOTHER

  Ah!--his name?

FERRYMAN

  Umewakamaru was he.

THE MOTHER

  And his father’s surname know you?

FERRYMAN

  ’Twas a certain Yoshida.

THE MOTHER

  And since then, the parents, have they never sent to make inquiries?

FERRYMAN

  No, no relatives inquiring ever came.

THE MOTHER

  But sure the mother!

FERRYMAN

  It is strange beyond believing, but ’tis true--I answer No!

THE MOTHER [_Song_]

  Alas! Nor kith nor kin. It is too true!
  His parents even did not come to you.
  It must be. Yet, O Heavens, how sad! _That_ child
  Is him I seek. I, whom you now called wild.
  O Heavens. O mercy. It must be a dream!

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  Oh, unutterable sorrow. Until now it lay outside me;
  It was other people’s business. Now you say it was _thy_ child?
  Pitiful! But wherefore grievest? He is now beyond recall.
  Come this way and I will show thee where his grave lies. Now
        ’tis near.
  _This_ the tomb of him who left us. Offer now thy deep-felt prayers.

THE MOTHER [_Song_]

  E’en though I feared it might be so, till now
  Hope led me on to make this journey long
  To distant, unfamiliar Azuma;
  But at the end of the sad way I find
  Naught in this world but mark of where he lies.
  Ah! Cruel is it!--If his fate was death--
  That he should leave his birthplace and have come
  To a road corner in strange Azuma,
  And mingled with the roadside earth to lie
  Beneath a tangled mass of spring-time’s weeds,
  Beneath this very ground so it doth seem.

CHORUS

  Then shown unto the mother in earth’s form,
  May there appear the dear one of her world.

II

  The one is taken who might be of use!
  The one is taken who might be of use!
  The one whose work is over does remain,
  The mother, like a withered broom tree left,[66]
  In whose mind comes and goes his likeness dear,
  As things are wont in this uncertain world.
  To man at any moment may come grief,
  Like heartless storm that shatters blooming boughs
  The voice of such a storm has called up clouds
  That fly unsettled and have hid the moon
  That else had lit the long night of her life.
  Yea, verily how fleeting must the world
  Appear to her before us now. Alas!
  Yea, verily how fleeting must the world
  Appear to her before us now. Alas!

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  Now, however much thou grievest, ’tis of no avail whatever;
  Join then with us in the prayer for his good in future worlds.

[_Song_]

  The moon has risen, and the river breeze
  Blows cool. ’Tis late already, and the gong
  Tolls out, and we should be upon our knees.[67]

THE MOTHER [_Song_]

  But still the mother in her agony
  No prayer can voice, but only weeping lie
  Upon the ground that hides her darling joy.

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  Yea! ’tis sorrowful, though others have assembled in large numbers,
  It is _thy_ prayer that his spirit surely would rejoice to hear.

[_Song_]

  I place the gong[68] now in the mother’s hand.

THE MOTHER [_Song_]

  True, ’tis for my child’s sake, as I am told,
  And in my own hands now the gong I hold.

FERRYMAN [_Song_]

  As grief is checked and voices cleared for prayer.

THE MOTHER

  In unison we pray this moonlit night.

FERRYMAN

  Our thoughts united, to the West[69] we turn.

THE MOTHER AND FERRYMAN

  Thee I adore, Eternal Buddha great,
  Who still the same, for six-and-thirty times
  A million million worlds of Paradise,[70]
  For ever in the west dost permeate.
  Thee I adore, Eternal Buddha great.

THE MOTHER

  Thee I adore, Eternal Buddha great.

CHORUS

  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.
  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.
  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.

THE MOTHER

  And to my prayer the river Sumida
  Adds its loud voice the breeze.

CHORUS

  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.
  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.
  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.

THE MOTHER

  If true thy name, Bird of the City Royal,
  Add too thy voice, for this the city’s child.

CHILD[71] AND CHORUS

  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.
  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.
  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.

THE MOTHER [_Words_]

  Oh, that was my child’s voice praying, he that said the prayer
        just now.
  His voice was it, I am certain, and within this mound it seemed.

FERRYMAN [_Words_]

  As you say, we also heard it. And we now will cease our praying,
  Thou his mother art, and solely, honourably deign to pray.

THE MOTHER [_Song_]

  Even if nothing but his voice return,
  I would that I could hear that voice again.

CHILD

  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.
  I adore thee, O Eternal Buddha.

CHORUS [_Song_]

  The voice is heard, and like a shadow too
  Within, can one a little form discern.

[_The Spirit of the Child appears_]

THE MOTHER [_Song_]

  Is it my child?

CHILD

  Ah! Mother! Is it you?

[_The Spirit disappears_]

CHORUS [_Song_]

  The mutual clasp of hand in hand exchanged,
  Once more he vanished as he first had come,
  But in her thought increasingly the form
  Of his reflection did repeat itself
  As in a polished mirror, to and fro.
  While gazing at the vision came the dawn
  And dimly flushed the sky, till naught was left.
  While what appeared to be the child is now
  A mound grown thickly o’er with tangled weeds,
  It has become naught but a rushy marsh,
  A mark of what was once so very dear.
  Ah, pitiful indeed is this our life
  Ah, pitiful indeed is this our life!

END OF “THE SUMIDA RIVER”

FOOTNOTES:

[50] Page 78--_Azuma_ is a name for the east of Japan, really the
region surrounding Tokio (literally the eastern capital).

[51] The old capital in the west, Kioto.

[52] Page 80--This is a particularly difficult passage. I had
previously rendered the lines more freely than the rest of the
translation, in an endeavour to construct a consecutive verse which
might keep the attention of an English reader. In its present form
the verse is perhaps nearer the original, but no entirely _literal_
translation is possible of a passage so full of the essentially
Japanese “pillow” and “pivot” words. At the outset the Mother quotes a
few words from an old poem.

[53] Page 80--The Japanese word _yuki_ means both “snow” and “going.”

[54] Page 81--Most of these three lines is added for the sake of
rounding off the thought in English.

[55] Page 81--This is not the large commercial town of the same name.

[56] Page 82--The bond of the relationship between a parent and
child. According to the Buddhistic belief, re-incarnation in the same
relations of parent and child holds only for this world. (That between
lovers is generally supposed to be of longer duration.)

[57] Page 82--Reference to an old Chinese fable of a bird who had four
young, and was bitterly distressed when the time came for them to fly
away.

[58] Page 82--_Sumi_ means the corner, or end of everything.

[59] Page 83--Local ferries sometimes hindered strangers from the city,
but she intimates that the Sumida is a river of too great importance to
expect such treatment on it.

[60] Page 83--“That word” is the word for “repute,” which has a root
the same as “if true the name” in the famous poem which she quotes. The
line depends on one of the Japanese “pivot words.”

[61] Page 83--Narihira is one of the well-known early poets of Japan,
he died in 880. Chamberlain, in his _Classical Poetry of the Japanese_,
quotes an opinion of Tsurayuki (who died in 946) on Narihira. He says:
“Narihira’s stanzas are so pregnant with meaning that the words suffice
not to express it. He is like a closed flower that hath lost its
colour, but whose fragrance yet remaineth.” Narihira is noted among the
classical poets for his conciseness and frequent obscurity.

[62] Page 84--She is vexed with him for not entering into the spirit of
the place and realising the quotation she has just given.

[63] Page 84--These lines depend on pivot words, which by playing upon
the root words in the Japanese, connect the ideas prettily.

[64] Page 87--And therefore it appeared to them hopeless to expect him
to recover from the illness.

[65] Page 88--The _shadows_ of people are much more real in Japan
than here. The shadow pictures that are continually thrown on the
white paper screens separating the rooms must fill a large place in
the memory of one who has lived in Japan; and, too, it is often only
the _feet_ of a passing noiseless maiden that one can see through the
openwork base of these screens while one lies on the quilts on the
matted floors.

[66] Page 91--This arises as a play on the words _Hawa_, a mother, and
_hawaki_, a broom tree, and also refers to a legend about a broom tree
which appeared and disappeared.

[67] Page 92--Time, therefore, for midnight prayer.

[68] Page 92--The gong in the Buddhist shrines is struck by the one who
prays.

[69] Page 92--The West is the direction of the Buddhist heavens.

[70] Page 93--The words are from the Buddhist scriptures, according to
which there are thirty-six million million worlds, all presided over by
emanations of the same Buddha.

[71] The voice of the Child’s Spirit is heard accompanied by the
Chorus’s chant.

ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE _NŌ_.

There is no English book entirely on the _Nō_, but the following Works
contain chapters on, and translations of, some of them.

 ASTON, W. G. “A History of Japanese Literature.” Heinemann, London,
 1899. See pp. 199-213.

 BRINKLEY, F. “Japan: its History, Arts and Literature,” vol. iii.
 Jack, London, 1903. See pp. 28-48.

 CHAMBERLAIN, B. H. “The Classical Poetry of the Japanese.” Boston,
 1880. See pp. 137-185. Reprinted with additions and deletions as
 “Japanese Poetry.” London, 1911. See pp. 109-144.

 DICKINS, F. V. “Primitive and Mediæval Japanese Texts translated into
 English.” Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1906. See pp. 391-412. Also volume
 of romanized texts of the same.

 EDWARDS, O. “Japanese Plays and Playfellows.” London, 1901. See pp.
 39-61.

 SANSOM, G. B. “Translations from Lyrical Drama: ‘Nō.’” Trans. Asiatic
 Soc. Japan, 1911, vol. xxxviii, part 3, pp. 125-176.

 STOPES, M. C. “A Japanese Mediæval Drama.” Trans. Royal Soc.
 Literature, London, 1909, vol. xxix, part 3, pp. 153-178.

_By the same Author_

A Journal from Japan

By Dr. Marie C. Stopes

 _The Diary of a year and a half’s travel into the wilds of Japan, as
 well as of sojourn in its capital_

The _Spectator_ says:

 “A most interesting and illuminating work.”

The _Athenæum_ says:

 “Remarkably naïve and fresh.”

The _Literary World_ says:

 “Has a peculiar freshness and vivacity added to a clear style.”

The _Daily Telegraph_ says:

 “Should take its place among the very best works on the Far East.”

The _Nation_ says:

 “The lighter touches are fresh and distinctly amusing.”

Transcriber's Note

Illustrations have been moved next to the text to which they refer.
Their locations may no longer correspond to the List of Illustrations.

The printed text contained both footnotes and endnotes. These have been
combined, and all notes moved to the end of each chapter. A footnote
on p. 39 ("The numbers refer to notes at the end of the volume.")
explaining the printed system has been removed.

The following apparent errors have been corrected:

Advertisement page "~10s~" changed to "~10s.~"

p. 11 (note) "pp. 156-7" changed to "pp. 156-7."

Illustration (plan of stage) "at the ront" changed to "at the front"

p. 15 "_kakama_" changed to "_hakama_"

p. 30 "The world is at peace:/Soft blows" changed to "The world is at
peace./Soft blow"

p. 30 "very firs/In that they meet." changed to "very firs,/In that
they meet"

p. 31 (note) "p. 174" changed to "p. 174."

p. 57 "Tōtomi" changed to "Tōtōmi"

p. 81 "to Asuma" changed to "to Azuma"

p. 103 "Playfellows." changed to "Playfellows.”"

p. 104 "amusing.’" changed to "amusing."

The following possible errors have not been changed:

p. iv right

p. 31 contain the breeze

p. 41 spring-time sprout

pp. 55-56 The line "When in their warships were the Taira clan," was
repeated

p. 65 face to face

p. 67 Mismatched quotation marks following “In our last

p. 68 to look upon

The following are used inconsistently:

daimios and Daimios

ideagraph and ideograph

Kurō and Kuro

lifelike and life-like

lifelong and life-long

ōtsuzumi and otsuzumi

reincarnation and re-incarnation

woodcut and wood-cut