Yōkihi

楊貴妃 Yang Guifei

1 Source and/or Related Material

Bo Juyi’s Song of Everlasting Sorrow

2 Author

Komparu Zenchiku

3 Repertoire

Kanze, Hōshō, Komparu, Kongō, Kita

4 Synopsis

In ancient China, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang orders a Daoist wizard (waki) to seek out the spirit of Yang Guifei, his favorite consort who has died. The wizard journeys into the eternal realms to the Palace on Penglai, the Island of the Immortals, and learns from a local (ai) that Yang Guifei resides in the hall known as Taizhendian. There, the wizard finds Yang Guifei (shite) reminiscing about the past. He calls out to her, and she appears behind jeweled blinds. He tells her of Xuanzong’s sorrow over her death, and she gives him a jeweled hairpiece to give to the Emperor as a keepsake. Then, so that the wizard may have proof that he met with her, Yang Guifei tells him about one time on the seventh day of the Seventh Month, at the Star Festival (J. Tanabata), when she and Xuanzong exchanged a vow of eternal love, saying, “We are two wings of a single bird, two trees joined at the branches.” She puts on the hairpiece and dances, tells how she was a Daoist immortal in a previous life, and so she knows that even for heavenly beings, death and separation from loved ones is inevitable, and then she dances the dance of “Rainbow Skirts and Feathered Robes,” which Xuanzong used to love to see. The wizard receives her hairpiece and returns to the mortal world, while Yang Guifei stays behind alone in the palace.