Kinuta

砧 The Fulling Block

1 Source and/or Related Material

Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing

2 Author

Zeami

3 Repertoire

Kanze, Hōshō, Komparu, Kongō, Kita

4 Synopsis

A lord (waki) from Ashiya in Kyūshū goes to the capital to settle a lawsuit and stays there for three years. He sends his maidservant Yūgiri (tsure) back to his home to tell his wife that he will return before the end of the year. His wife (maeshite) has been spending lonely days thinking about her husband. She tells Yūgiri the old Chinese tale of of the wife of Suwu, who would beat a fulling block to soften her absent husband’s clothes as if to prepare them for him to wear. Then she herself begins beating a fulling block in hopes that the late-autumn wind will carry its sound to her husband, tearfully awaiting his return. However, she then learns that her husband is not yet able to return, and she dies of grief. The lord’s servant (ai) arrives and tells how the husband, returning to his home, laments his wife’s death and arranges her funeral with a few of his attendants (wakitsure). Just then, his wife’s spirit (nochishite) appears and says that she is in hell for her obsessive love. However, through the lord’s chanting of the Lotus Sutra, the woman is released from her punishments.