Ukai (play)

Ukai (The Cormorant-Fisher) is a Noh play of around 1400, attributed to Enami no Sayemon.

Because of the lowly occupation of the leading character, Ukai is known as one of the Three Ignoble Plays.[1]

Plot

Two travelling monks meet a cormorant fisher at the Isawa River. Though unable to persuade the fisher to abandon his life-taking trade, one of the monks remembers having received a meal from a cormorant fisher a few years back.[2] The old fisherman explains that that cormorant fisher had since been killed for practicing his trade, before revealing himself as the cormorant fisherman's ghost.[3]

The ghost then re-enacts the sinful pursuit that still ties him to the material world: "In the joy of capture/ Forgotten sin and forfeit/ Of the life hereafter!".[4] After he leaves, the priest enacts a rite for his soul, before Yama, King of Hell appears, to proclaim that the fisherman has been freed from his sins: "because he once gave lodging to a priest...The fisher's boat is changed to the ship of Buddha's vows".[5]

Literary associations
  • The Kyogen play, 'The Bird-Catcher in Hell', parodies much in the plot of Ukai.[6]
  • Basho described the world of Ukai in his haiku: "How exciting for a while, / The cormorant fishing-boat! / Then depressing".[7]

See also

References
  1. Kunio Konparu, The Noh Theater (2005) p. 356
  2. Ukai (Cormorant fishing)
  3. Ukai (Cormorant fishing)
  4. A Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan (1976) p. 106
  5. A Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan (1976) p. 107
  6. A Waley, The Noh Plays of Japan (1976) p. 238
  7. R H Blyth, A History of Haiku Vol I (Tokyo 1963) p. 244
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