|
Many books and articles giving a brief overview of bonsai history have
made passing mention to the Japanese play Hachi-no-ki (The
Potted Trees). Perhaps a handful have even given a one or two
line synopsis of the piece. This current article seeks to provide
some indepth background and understanding of this work.
|
|
The play is apparently based on a 1383 folktale, and that story tells of
a supposed incident during the life of the historical Tokiyori Hojo
(1226-1263). Tokiyori, at age twenty, succeeded his brother as regent
or governor to the Minamoto-clan shogun, the supreme military general.
While the shoguns ruled, they and not the hereditary emperors guided the
island nation. Tokiyori held his post for ten years, consolidating
the regent’s power until his health began failing. Although he continued
in fact to rule, Tokiyori shaved his head and retired to a monastery.
He then travelled incognito through the countryside in order to see for
himself the needs of the people and abuses of the administration.
His time in government was marked by a wise economy and a close interest
in agriculture.
|
|
The play itself is in two parts. In the first, a travelling monk,
lost in the snow in the dead of winter, happens to come upon the meager
residence of Tsuneyo Genzayemon. Formerly in Tokiyori’s employ, Tsuneyo
once owned this land in the Sano area, but lost it through a relative’s
deception. (If Tsuneyo was also a real person, his life’s story has
been lost to history.) Tsuneyo and his wife, hesitant at first, offer
what miserable accommodation they have to the traveller and share a poor
peasants’ meal of a little boiled millet. To provide heat for this
special occasion, but lacking any other fuel, the old man, with Buddhist
resignation, decides to burn his only three dwarf potted trees. To
the silently listening monk, Tsuneyo tells his story of suffering and poverty,
and his long-held loyalty to the shogunate.
|
|
In the second part of the play, which is set six months later, we find
that the monk actually had been Tokiyori himself, travelling in disguise.
Impressed with Tsuneyo’s kindness, and wanting to test his claims of loyalty,
Tokiyori spreads a rumor from the capital city of Kamakura that war is
imminent. An army of the finest and bravest soldiers assembles there
to protect the shogun, in all their polished glory, on fattened steeds,
with grooms beside them. Tsuneyo is there also, by himself, in worn-out
armor, with rusty sword, and leading a slow, emaciated horse. Moved
by the old man’s proven loyalty, Tokiyori rewards the impoverished
samurai
by restoring to him his former lands. In addition, three other pieces
of land are deeded to him. The names of these include the words "Ume"
(plum), "Sakura" (cherry), and "Matsu" (pine), in gratitude
for Tsuneyo’s sacrificed trees.
|
|
Hachi-no-ki
has no definite authorship, but traditionally has been attributed to the
playwright Zeami because of stylistic similarities to some of his other
works. In fact, Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1444) was Japan’s Shakespeare.
With the help of his father, Kan’ami Motosugu, he fused a mixture of secular
entertainment, country songs and dances, and Shinto and Buddhist plays
with classical literature. Both Zeami and Kan’ami were playwrights,
actors, and composers. They also had the critically discerning patronage
of Yoshimitsu,
the young but politically astute Ashikaga-clan shogun.
The classical tradition was revitalized and broadened in its appeal by
Zeami’s plays and three major treatises on theater and aesthetics.
According to various authorities, his plays numbered anywhere between twenty
and ninety. These pieces were based on older plays, legend, or contemporary
events, and initially were enjoyed by all levels of society.
|
|
This new entertainment was eventually called simply "Noh" ("talent" as in "the display of
talent in a performance"). It was adopted
and nurtured by the Zen-dominated
atmosphere of the court, and exemplifies
the Zen combination of splendor used with restraint. Beautiful and
heavily brocaded costumes surround male-only actors who perform minimal
symbolic gestures and refined, extremely slow dance steps to deliberately
sung or spoken text. The text is usually arcanely worded with many
ancient poetic allusions and wordplays. A seated chorus is at stage-left,
and at times either acts as narrator, or speaks for one or more of the
characters. The stage itself is a curtainless, polished raised platform
eighteen feet square, having the audience in front and at stage-right.
A Noh theater is immediately recognizable by its unvarying painted
backdrop of a huge pine tree growing in the ground. Sparse stage
props are also to be noted.
|
|
In
Hachi-no-ki,
a single pine branch held up by a square or circular
form on the bare stage represents the three small trees to be sacrificed
amid the play’s dominant themes of sorrow and purity. This particular
play is fairly unique in Noh theater because of the Western-like
linear treatment of time and space without the use of any supernatural
intervention to develop the characters’ downfall and salvation. The
starkness of the opening winter scene is also highlighted by the absence
in Hachi-no-ki of what would otherwise be obligatory music for Tsuneyo’s
entrance. Unlike many other Noh plays, where masks to represent
specific characters or emotions are used, here, they are not worn.
|
|
In the early 1600’s, the Tokugawa
clan emerged as the shoguns and maintained
peace for two and a half centuries. Their hold on power was, in part,
due to numerous rules and decrees governing many areas of Japanese life.
The Tokugawa ritualized Noh performances and music, and set out
systems of precise rules and regulations for the four distinct Noh
schools. Strict rules were also established for many other activities
including flower arrangement, the tea ceremony, and the forming of hachi-no-ki
(as Japanese dwarf tree culture was commonly called until the mid-1800’s).>
|
|
As official art and ceremony, Noh became so solemn and symbolic,
with an appeal primarily to the educated aristocracy, that a more lively
and spectacular form had replaced it for the general public: kabuki
theater. Each five to ten page Noh text now took an hour or
two to perform.
|
|
Out of perhaps 2,000 Noh plays, some 800 or so works are extant,
most of which were written in the fifteenth century. About 250 survive
in the art's repertoire as consummate masterpieces of Japanese literature
whose ritualistic enactment must be witnessed in performance with flute,
drum and chorus to be truly appreciated. Hachi-no-ki is counted
among these currently active plays.
|
|
Specific excerpts from a very simple English rendering of the text offer
insight into such tree raising at the time:
|
Tsuneyo:
|
"How cold it is!
And as the night passes, each hour the frost grows keener. If I had
but fuel to light a fire with, that you might sit by it and warm yourself!
Ah! I have thought of something. I have some dwarf trees.
I will cut them down and make a fire out of them."
|
|
Monk:
|
"Have you indeed dwarf trees?"
|
Tsuneyo:
|
”Yes, when I was in the
World [of society] I had a fine show of dwarfed trees; but when my trouble
came, I had no more heart for tree fancying, and gave them away.
But three of them I kept -- plum, cherry, and pine. Look, there they
are covered with snow. They are precious to me; yet for this night's
entertainment, I will gladly set light to them."
|
|
Monk:
|
"No, no, that must not
be. I thank you for your kindness, but it is likely that one day
you will go back to the world again and need them for your pleasure.
Indeed it is not to be thought of."
|
|
Tsuneyo:
|
“My life is like a tree
the earth has covered; I shoot no blossoms upward to the world."
|
|
Wife:
|
"And should we burn for
you these shrubs, these profitless toys."
|
Chorus:
|
”’Shall I from one who
has cast life aside, dear life itself, withhold these trivial trees?'
Then he brushed the snow from off them, and when he looked, 'I cannot,
cannot,' he cried. 'O beautiful trees, must I begin?'
'You plum-tree, among bare boughs blossoming hard by the window, still
on northward face snow-sealed, yet first to scent cold air with flowers,
earliest of spring: you first shall fall... Hewn down for firewood.
Little had I thought my hand so pitiless!'
'You cherry, because each spring your blossom comes behind the rest, I
thought a lonely tree and reared you tenderly. But now I, I am lonely
left, and you, cut down, shall flower but with flame.'
'You now, O pine, whose branches I had thought one day when you were old
to lop and trim, standing you as a post in the field, such use shall never
know. Tree, whom the winds have ever wreathed with quaking mists,
now shimmering in the flame shall burn and burn...'"
|
|
|
|
|
The term "hachi-no-ki" (literally "the bowl's tree") implies a deeper
container than bonsai ("the tray's plant"). In the former, the art
had not been developed enough to maintain a typical tree in what is now
the characteristic shallow pot.
|
|
By the evidence in this play, we cannot determine if such trees at the
time in Japan were only gathered in the wild, or if some were at least
partially formed by human intervention (with some trimming perhaps, or
by way of rooted cuttings). We cannot necessarily say how big or
small they were, how long they may have lived in their containers, or how
much the trees conformed to any aesthetic ideals which we know were later
applied to the art. Technical specifics are lacking, but that is
not surprising considering the medium.
|
|
The existence of this play indicate that some 600 years ago, dwarf potted
tree culture was well-known enough in Japan to be a pivotal element in
some piece of folklore which soon became retold in the theater of the court.
Historical references within the story itself push back such gardening
another century. At least these three types of plants were used,
and possibly exhibited at that time, in the early stages of the art.
It apparently was not unusual for even a minor member of the aristocracy
to care for several trees, or even if reduced to poverty, to still keep
a few for the beauty they offered.
|
|
There will continue to be disagreement over the date of the commencement
of the true practice of bonsai. We can conclude from this oft-mentioned,
but infrequently appreciated play, however, that some form of aesthetically
pleasing dwarf potted tree culture in Japan was indeed being practiced
to a notable degree long before the art included its present array of horticultural
techniques. For while skill does elevate and expand it, the origin
of any form of art lies in the appreciation of a thing of beauty.
|
|
|
PRINCIPAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
|
|
Thomas Blenman Hare,
Zeami’s Style, The Noh Plays of Zeami Motokiyo
; Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press; 1986.
|
|
Donald Keene,
No, The Classical Theater of Japan
; Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd.; 1966.
|
|
E. Papinot,
Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan
; Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.; 1972.
|
Arthur Waley, The No Plays of Japan
; New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 1922.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
The earliest known telling of this story in English is found in the Library of the World's
Best Literature, Ancient and Modern edited by Charles Dudley Warner (New York: The
International Society, 1897), Vol. XX, Japanese Literature, by Clay MacCauley, in the
section Mediæval Literature, pp.
8175-77.
“The True Samurai” is prefaced with: "[This illustration of the spirit of the true samurai
is taken from a mediæval drama entitled “Dwarf Trees,” translated by “Shinehi.” The
drama tells of the award made to a poverty-striken knight by the de facto ruler of Japan,
1190, for great kindness shown to the latter when once abroad in the garb of a mendicant
priest. The samurai had sacrificed even his dwarf trees to warm his mean-looking
guest.]" (What then follows is the second part of Hachi-No-Ki.)
The earliest known usage of the term "Hachinoki" in English is found in the The Book of Tea by
Kakuzo Okakura (New York: Fox Duffield & Company, 1906), Chap. VI, Flowers, pg.
132.
"In Japan, one of the most popular of the No-dances, the Hachinoki, composed during the Ashikaga period,
is based upon the story of an impoverished knight, who, on a freezing night, in lack of fuel for a
fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to entertain a wandering friar. The friar is in reality
no other than Hojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Raschid
of our tales, and the sacrifice is not without its reward. This opera never fails to draw tears
from a Tokio audience even to-day."
|
Known portrayals of the Hachi-No-Ki theme include woodblock prints by
|
|
Suzuki Harunobu (1724-1770)
|
(Japan Portrayals 1600 to
1800, footnote #12)
|
|
Torii Kiyomitsu (1735-1785)
|
(Japan Portrayals 1600 to
1800, footnote #4)
|
|
Katsushika Taito II (fl. mid1810s-1850)
|
(Japan Portrayals 1800
to 1868, footnote #14)
|
|
|
Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1864)
|
Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1864)
|
(Portrayals in
Kunisada's Prints, footnotes #39 and 42, respectively)
Home > Bonsai
History > Hachi No Ki
or
Home > Robert
J. Baran > Hachi No Ki
|