Sumidagawa

隅田川 The River Sumidagawa

1 Source and/or Related Material

Unknown

2 Author

Kanze Motomasa

3 Repertoire

Kanze, Hōshō, Komparu, Kongō, Kita

4 Synopsis

At the river Sumidagawa, which at this time forms the border between Musashi Province (Tokyo) and Shimōsa Province (Chiba), a ferryman (waki) is waiting for passengers, when a traveler (wakitsure) comes by on his way out to the Northeast, as well as a woman (shite) who has traveled from Kitashirakawa in the capital in search of her lost son. Gazing at the birds on the Sumida River, which the locals call miyakodori (“city birds”), the woman thinks of her son, and recounts her long journey to the East, which has left her mentally ill. On the boat, the ferryman tells a tragic story. Last spring, a slave trader abandoned a twelve-year-old boy named Umewakamaru who had become ill, and the boy died out here on the banks of the Sumidagawa. At this, the woman realizes that the boy was her son. The ferryman takes her to the place where the locals buried him, and just then a Nembutsu festival begins, and the woman expresses her grief by joining the crowd in ecstatic chanting. Suddenly, the boy’s spirit (kokata) appears. His mother reaches out to touch him, but he disappears. As the night turns to dawn, the figure of her child turns out to be grass growing on his grave mound, and the woman is left standing there all alone.