Wasting away in Margaritaville

Kani Yamabushi and Kamabara, although both very traditional Kyogen plays, have totally different feelings to them. Kani has very broad humor, while I felt Kamabara had moments of pathos.

Kani Yamabushi is in the Okura school’s fifth group, the oni yamabushi kyogen, which revolves around a priest who supposedly has extraordinary power, but isn’t very good at using them. (Benito Ortolani, “The Japanese Theatre, 154)

The play has the jo, ha, kyu rhythm, starting slowly (jo) with the characters entering from the bridge, walking crab-like (which reminded me of Monty Python's Silly Walks) and singing and speaking slowly. The mountain priest’s song and monologue introduce the story to the audience. The walk, talk and action build to a faster pace (ha). The priest rapidly rubs his beads, and the crab pinches his servant, who punctuates each pinch with a yelp. The beads, crab "dance" and shouts create its own rhythm, a sort of percussive dance. The play ends quickly with the priest and servant chasing the crab (kyu).

The humor comes as the priest is revealed to be cowardly and self-important, a not quite so bumbling Barney Fife. Like Barney, he is ineffectual when a situation calls on him to use his “powers.” The audience laughs at the mountain priest (and Barney), who remains blissfully unaware of his own shortcomings.

Kamabara, on the other hand, reverses the jo, ha, kyu order, and by turning this upside down, it seemed to add a sense of sadness. The play is in the Okura school’s fourth group, nurko onna kyogen, in which the shite, or main character, is an onna, an aggressive woman married to a weak husband. (154) However, this classification was a little confusing to me, since the husband, not the wife, was the main character.

Kamabara begins quickly with the husband running over the bridge and falling onto the stage, complaining about his shrewish wife. The wife, waving a sickle, berates her lazy husband. She chases him across the stage in choreographed movements, while repeating, “I’ll beat you to death, you hateful wretch,” as he repeats, “Stop her! Stop her, please!” The repetition and stylized activity is typically Kyogen.

When Mr. Hemingway arrives on stage and slows the action, the drama slows as well. The husband’s repeated attempts at suicide are humorous, since the audience knows he has no intention of killing himself. His different techniques – and excuses why they don’t work – vary the action just enough to keep the audience interested.

However, for me, the husband’s comments between attempts – an acknowledgment that he’s gotten himself into a predicament, begging Mr. Hemingway – anybody – to come and persuade him to stop – had more pathos than humor. He kept telling himself that although his failed attempts were embarrassing, they were not his fault: He had tried everything. Mr. Hemingway failed him. His stomach was immovable. His arm was frozen. The fact that his wife had said sarcastically that his suicide attempt was gallant, indicated to me that she never thought he would carry it out. And after about the third repetition, “This is my final moment” became a plaintive cry, to my ears.

Finally, the play ends as Kani Yamabushi began, with the husband talking slowly and singing to tell the audience what will happen. To save face, he says he’ll give up his attempt “for today” and go work in the hills.

What made me begin to feel sorry for him was his comment that even if a man were made of straw, a woman had no right to talk to him the way his wife did. And it was comments, such as the one about doing things half-way not being of use to anyone, that are scattered throughout and indicated to me his realization at the end that he doesn’t have much more substance than a straw man.

The husband even was manipulated by Mr. Hemingway, who had promised the man's wife that he would make him go work in the hills. When Mr. Hemingway left, he knew that the husband never would commit suicide without an audience and would go to the hills as his only alternative.

Both plays use repetition, mimicry (monomane), stylized movement and voice, and slapstick. They also make use of the full stage in choreographing movement. Finally, both plays reflect Okura Toraaki’s theory that the heart of a Kyogen play is the “search for truth under the veil of the joke” and that insight reveals human limitations (153). In Kani Yamabushi, the audience clearly sees that limitation, whereas the mountain priest doesn’t. However, since he is an elevated figure, the audience can laugh at him. By contrast, the husband in Kamabara does recognize his failings. Like the singer in "Margaritaville," he realized deep down that maybe it was his own fault. And although the audience laughs, I think they also pause in sympathy, because he is an “everyman,” not as easy to ridicule. But then, maybe I'm reading too much into this.

The only one liner that struck me was in Kani Yamabushi. When the servant talks about an attractive woman, the priest says, “That’s no woman. That’s my aunt.” Today’s version is, “That was no lady. That was my wife.” Some jokes really are classics.