Jōuri (1985)

Autumn
Scene i
The ending of a historical drama: Tamenaga calls upon demon fire to destroy his brother’s forces, and pays for it with his own soul. This is the end of the season’s plays, and Yosuke, the young puppet master, is strangely withdrawn. He and Otane, the wife of the leader of the company, love each other, but they have never confessed their love; Otane has hardly acknowledged her love to herself. Yosuke wonders how much longer he can keep up the facade; meanwhile he sublimates his love by carving Otane’s features into the head of a new puppet. The Three Assistants note all this and wonder how long it will be before their blind master, Shoji becomes aware of the situation.

Scene ii:
Otane, at a window, mourns the falling leaves of her life. Shojo asks her to play the koto to soothe their exhaustion and to accompany Yosuke as he works. Otane weeps, and Yosuke secretly takes her tears from the wood of the koto to imbue the Otane-head. Shojo hopes Otane’s tears are not for him. In spite of her pleas, he determines to tell Yosuke for the first time how he came to lose his eyes: when he was a young man, and Otane a child, he was caught trying to save her from the lecherous clutches of a sadistic magistrate (as he tells the story, he begins to re-live it and is visited by the spirit of the magistrate) which resulted in the sacrifice of his eyes and Otane’s eternal devotion to him.

Winter

Scene i:
Snow falls now, and with it, Otane’s spirits.

She interrupts the rehearsal of a new play in the theatre – the story of “The Tears of Lady Tanoe” (Tanoe Otane) has too many echoes of their real-life situation, and indeed, this is why Yosuke has chosen it. She believes Yosuke intends to imprison her soul in the doll, and she tries to destroy it. The anger of their confrontation causes them to declare their love for each other.

In an interlude (kyogen), the Three Assistants ape the protagonists of the story as SPEAK (Yosuke), HEAR (Otane) and SEE (Shojo) NO EVIL, the three wise monkeys of the shrine at Nikko. When their satire develops into a drunken dance, Shojo routs them.

Scene ii:

Shojo hears Otane weeping in her room. When the Third Assistant places the Tanoe-Otane head in his hands, he (who has only known her features by touch for twenty years) recognizes not only her likeness but also the love and agony with which it has been carved. He does not know whether to pitv the lovers or to suspect them of infidelity. The spirit of Otane’s mother, Iwafuji, appears to taunt him with the infidelity of his wife and to berate him for having lost her the profit of the sale of her daughter to the magistrate.
A simple test tricks them into betraying their love for each other: Shojo is able to sense it in spite of his blindness.

 Spring

Months have passed. Otane has avoided Shojo

Ever since the revelation of the winter. He is torn by feelings of revenge, sorrow, pity, and guilt for his selfishness in marrying a wife so much younger than himself. With the third spirit (his other se.f) he discusses the possibilities of revenge and suicide. Yosuke offers to leave the household or to kill himself.

In the garden, Yosuke and Otane compare their hopeless situation with the beauty of the spring. They begin to contemplate a more drastic solution when the Assistants bring them 3. lacquer box- a gift of love and death from Shojo- containing the text of an unperformed play, the first of the classic love-suicide dramas. Otane refuses to consider what she sees as Shojo’s sacrifice: she and Yosuke would benefit by being together in eternal Paradise, while Shojo would be left to mourn in his old age. He persuades her that this is the only possible solution, for if one died, then two would bear the responsibility for the death. His way is the only just way; he releases her from her dutiful loyalty (giri) to him.

Otane and Yosuke set out on their love pilgrimage (michiyuki) to a sacred waterfall near a shrine where they intend to leave this life with the blessing of Buddha. Their story is the last play, “The Journey to Kumano,” the play in the lacquered box, narrated in the traditional manner by Shojo himself. The lovers are saved from the sordid necessity of killing each other; after taking leave of this earth and asking forgiveness of each other and of Shojo, they disappear into the sacred waterfall, never to be seen again. Shojo is left to tell their tale and to mourn “while the long rains fall.”