Miidera (play)

Miidera was a Noh play centred around a mad woman, and her search for her son at the temple complex of Mii-dera near Kyoto.

Plot

Driven mad by the loss of her young son, possibly abducted as a boy prostitute,[1] the heroine is urged in a dream to seek him at Miidera temple.[2] There the woman is much impressed by the temple bell, and recounts a long list of episodes involving temple bells.[3]

When she finally draws attention to herself by striking the bell, she is recognised by and reunited with her son[4] - the aesthete Oswald Valentine Sickert considering that "The sounding of the bell is the hinge of everything, a thing of great sentiment".[5]

An early haiku quotes the play: "Hey there, wait a moment / before you strike the bell /at the cherry blossoms".[6]

See also

References
  1. G Leupp, Male Colors (1997) p. 68
  2. Miidera
  3. K Brazell ed., Traditional Japanese Theater (1998) p. 159
  4. J-P Potel, Yeats and Noh (2015) p. 193
  5. Quoted in A Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan (1976) p. 250
  6. Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (1999) p. 464
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