Dojoji

   by Kanze Kojirô Nobumitsu

(ca. 1500)

   The Japanese dramatist NOBUMITSU was one of the last important producers of Nō plays. His most famous play is Dojoji, so called beause it is set in the Dojoji temple in the Wakayama prefecture in western Japan. Based on an 11th-century Buddhist tale of a priest pursued by a lustful widow, the Nō play substitutes an innocent young girl for the widow and thereby alters the effect of the story. In Nobumitsu’s version a huge bell becomes central to the action (this integral use of such a prop is very unusual in Nō drama). The play begins with a ceremony held at the Dojoji temple to celebrate the installation of the bell. The priest performing the ceremony gives orders that no women are to be allowed to enter the temple grounds during the service. But a female dancer approaches the temple, convinces a servant to allow her to enter, and dances around the bell. Her dancing lulls the servants to sleep, at which she rushes to the bell, leaps into it, and pulls it down so that it crashes to the ground around her, awakening the servants. They rush to the bell, but it is hot to the touch. After some trepidation, they reveal to the priest what has happened, and he relates to them the story of the bell. According to the priest, once long ago a young ascetic mountain recluse made an annual pilgrimage to Kumano. Each year he stayed with the same steward and his daughter on the pilgrimage route.When the girl was a child, the ascetic would bring her a gift every time he stayed with her father. In jest, the father told the girl that perhaps the holy man would marry her some day, and she grew up believing in this fantasy.When she was grown, she approached the pilgrim and asserted that he should marry her and take her away with him.But the pilgrim refused, and fled from the girl. He fled to the temple where he hid from the girl in a great bell.The girl, pursuing the young man, turned into a serpent in her wrath. Spying the bell, she wrapped herself around it and stung it with her venomous tail. The bell became so hot that it killed the pilgrim hiding inside. Now the priest, recognizing that the dancer hiding within the bell is the same woman as before, performs a kind of exorcism on the bell:Without being struck, it begins to peal, and a serpent, rather than a girl, emerges from the bell. The serpent engages in a spiritual battle with the priest. Flames engulf the serpent and she rushes off to fling herself into the river.