Seiobo There Below

34. THE LIFE AND WORK OF MASTER INOUE KAZUYUKI

I put down my crown, and in earthly form but not concealing my face, I descended among them, to seek out the Prince of Chu, the King of Mu, I had to leave the boundless plains of the Sky, the Radiant Empire of Light, I had to come from that world where form itself is resplendent; streaming forth it swells, and thus everything is filled by nothingness, I had to descend once more, and again, for I had to break away from the purity of the Heavens, and step into a moment; for nothing ever lasts longer, or even lasts as long as that, and thus so is my submerging below, not lasting longer than a single moment, if, yet, so much of everything can fit into one single moment; but the path did fit, as they put it, the path, as it is called in this coarse tongue, the sudden flash of light of that direction whence I have come thus far, the descent below, and the magnificence with which I made my descent as well, it all fit into that moment, because everything fit into it: the first steps in human form upon this earth, where my guide, my one mute escort led me, promptly and imperceptibly, so that I could take the path, and setting off upon it with human steps, I could then proceed among the troubling chaos of villages and cities, lands and oceans, valleys and peaks, the path fit into one single instant, the path, which led precisely over there to the theater corridor, for this time the meeting had been arranged in the Kanze Kaikan; the curtains — the agemaku — drifted apart before me, so that, in the form of a mae-shite, the hasigakari could open up for me there; I heard them from afar, I heard the drums of the hayashi musicians summoning me and that voice, comprehensible only in pain, of the noh kan, and then only this, the unscathed voices of the hayashi wolves, struck my ears; then I proceeded in my earthly form, in the noble radiance of the karaori kimono, through the familiar space of the Kanze, my feet hardly touching the smooth surface of the hinoki floorboards; as I moved toward the stage there was silence, there was unfathomable silence all around me, silence on the stage, for within me was merely the silence of the voices of the hayashi, and this directed me toward the palace, and I stepped in, and I interrupted the chant that rang out there, there too it became silent, already as I stepped in — although they could not know who had arrived — all became silent, unfathomably silent, maybe they were really looking at what could been seen by the eye, a noble lady, a being unknown, who suddenly is just there; the court of Chu, at my appearance, suddenly took a step backward, and with that, so to speak, the world too stepped back one pace from my path, so that it was not at all difficult for me to see where the throne was, the throne upon which the Prince of Chu, the King of Mu, was sitting, this upstanding ruler, creator of worldly peace in this scented and weighty earthly land, who, now in possession of a mirror — tawdry and broken but still a mirror of all that which is above him — truly has been worthy of the praise of the Heavens, a sign which I now must extend to him; but first there is the scent, at first only the indication of a scent, may the immortal fragrance of vegetation be the promise that I shall now disappear, but immediately be present in a true form, and already they can see the flowering apricot branches on my shoulders, they feel them, they have seen them until now, and they see my dance, while in reality I have disappeared, so that within that moment, I return as a nochi-shite, in my true form, for this is exactly what I promised, although they, immersed in the dance, see nothing but the illusion of the dance itself; however, I am there again, they see the phoenix crown upon my head, and the glittering lilac and scarlet silk of my attire: the simultaneous illumination of the ogushi kimono, the choken cloak at my side, and the sword attached at my waist, so that with every step I take, the whole becomes ever more and more visible, but all is woven through ethereally with gold, I see their startled amazement, only the Prince of Chu, the King of Mu remains immovable and disciplined, on his face is respect, distance, the precise consciousness of proportions; he watches me, he watches only me, he is the only one who truly sees me, who doesn’t merely become giddy with the enchantment of the dance; I now extend to him, through my escort, the seeds of the plant of immortality, may this be an offering for the peace he has created, so there may be, in his hands, a sign to remind him of this peace, so it may remain; he looks at me, moved, he looks at my dance, but he sees me as well, as I relate to him with earthly movements that there is a Heaven, that high above the clouds there is a Light that then scatters into a thousand colors, that there is, if he casts his gaze up high and becomes deeply immersed in his soul, a boundless space in which there is nothing, but nothing at all, not even a tiny little movement like this one here, which now must slowly come to an end; slowly I must turn away from this staring, happy gaze, and I must set off on the hashigakari hinoki-wood stage boards, with my escort behind me, toward the agemaku, and by now I only hear the kakegoe-silence of the hayashi musicians, a body takes me, a body that is not my own, the colored curtains of the agemaku open up respectfully, and finally I can step away from the space of this stage and in front of an enormous mirror, remove myself from this body that has carried me, I may return, for return I must, I must put down my phoenix crown, I must free myself from this lilac and scarlet silken grace shot through with gold, and I must at once set off, go back to that place from whence I came, only my escort now appears before me, to show me the path, as they call it in this coarse tongue, yet again, and I slowly take my leave of the familiar world of the Kanze, the odors and the weight slowly vanish from around me, the sound of the drums and the cries of the hayashi musicians growing ever distant, yet still striking my heart now and then, but already I am ascending, I still see the troubling chaos of the villages and the cities, the lands and the seas, the valleys and the peaks, and the moment that enclosed so much into itself comes to an end, and as I ascend, everything ascends with me, a magnificence rises there, a magnificence — back to the purity of the Heavens, to the sphere inconceivable — which in its own form, resplendent, streaming forth, swelling, is nothing else than a return back to that place where nothing is, to the Radiant Empire of Light, the boundless plains of the Sky, for that is the place where I exist, although I am not, for this is where I may place my crown upon my head, and I can think to myself that Seiobo was there below.

They help him, but there are too many, too many assistants; to tell the truth even one would be too many, and still there’s this crowd of people here; he would like to be alone here for a while, alone in the mirrored room, he would like to remove the zõ-onna mask from his face by himself, he could certainly do so if he were alone, but no, this he cannot do, the theater assistants obligingly jump all around him, they have already untied the mask’s cord at the back of his head, and they’re even leading him out already, out of the mirrored room, the sound of clapping can still be heard from the audience in the Kanze, then it dies away; but even if it weren’t dying away he wouldn’t be able to hear it, because they have taken him into the dressing room and already they are pulling, unhooking, unbuttoning, unwinding off from him all that must come off, as if it were urgent, when it is not urgent, they are taking off the costume from him already, one of them is folding up the expensive kimono, the other is already folding up the hakama, it all goes completely smoothly like a well-oiled machine, everyone in a great rush as if it were important that he should not be the nochi-shite he was just now, but just as soon as possible Inoue sensei once again; yet he would like to be alone just for a little while, alone, but no, this is not possible, someone is running up to him and softly whispers in his ear that the sensei — that is to say he himself, has a total of fifteen minutes — then someone, Kaneko-san, is coming for him, who will take him to the car via the performers’ entrance, then within minutes, he will be in the select presence of the venerable spectators, of the wealthy sponsors, at the reception organized by the Kanze, no, he knows that it has to be like this; he has done so on many hundreds of occasions already; still, every single time, just like now, one single feeling works within him: how unpleasant it is that he cannot be alone, it is especially difficult here in the Kanze Kaikan — although it is difficult in every Noh theater, for it is always like this, after the performance one has to rush so as not to be late in receiving the congratulatory bows in the eloquent banquet-rooms in the hotels or the restaurants; the nearby hotel, this time sensei Umewaka Rokura himself might be present, the theater assistant whispers, although it is not at all certain, as sensei Rokura as a matter of fact may well be heading to Tokyo on the Shinkansen, but maybe — the assistant tilts his head to the side with an endearing smile — and already they are giving him the shite’s, that is to say his own, robe, so he can go into the shower; certainly, without the slightest doubt, he has to do this, the assistant is leaping in front of him with ultimate courtesy, but it’s as if he were running behind him and pushing him forward so that he would go into the bathroom already, for on his arm already there hangs the pants and the shirt of the venerable shite, indeed, even his necktie, which then the attendant ties for him, but I could do up my own necktie, thinks the sensei tiredly, he doesn’t even really admit it to himself, but now, at times like this, after the agemaku tumbles down behind him, and the performance has come to an end, the desire is always there within him simply to preserve this infinite joy and tranquility, to conceal the infinite fatigue that is within him as well, he would like to conceal it completely but his costume is already being removed, the cord of the mask is being untied from the back, the kimono and hakama are already off, there is only his sweating body, he feels that very much; another assistant however obligingly offers him a towel, and he is already wiping himself off, to free himself from much of the sweat, there is no time to think, there is no time to be immersed in thought, everyone unceasingly rushes around, as always the excitement is great, as if something had happened out there that he himself doesn’t know about, he hopes that it is the performance itself that gives rise to such excitement behind the stage, in the rear spaces of the building, but no, he knows that isn’t the cause, there are too many performances for that, too much superfluous repetition of meaningless insignificant things, as for example these successively repeating, superfluous, and meaningless receptions, where of course he has to be present to acknowledge the words of recognition and the bows, and maybe sensei Rokuro himself will really be there, in that school belonging to a branch of the Kanze Umewaka, the Kyõto-branch leadership of which has devolved onto himself in recent months — this hope always comes up — because that would make it worthwhile if the fifty-sixth sensei, Umewaka Rokura, the director of the school, would be there, the reception itself would at once be meaningful — of course as usual sensei Rokuro isn’t there at these receptions, only his wife, in the best cases, is, although that too is rare — sensei Rokuro usually isn’t there; it is to sensei Rokuro and none other, however, that the shite of today’s performance, that is to say he, sensei Inoue, can give thanks, sensei Rokuro is unquestionably the leading authority of the Umewaka school, and for him, sensei Inoue — who never was and perhaps never will be a true professional Noh actor, as he started off with too many disadvantages, on the one hand he did not come from a Noh family, and on the other he began the Noh practice late in life, that is to say when he was already an adult — for him, it was only the sensitivity of sensei Rokuro, his recognition of sensei Inoue’s particular abilities, in a word, that sharp eye that had discovered him, that is the reason why he is treated like a professional Noh actor and is given two or three shite-roles every year, just like the others, like anyone else among the membership of the Umewaka or the Kanze schools, in addition to which the distinction of the directorship of the Umewaka Kyõto branch has been entrusted to him, unambiguously indicating that sensei Rokuro favors him, and understands that for him the art of Noh is his entire life: where he, Inoue Kazuyuki, is just a medium who, so to speak, merely allows onto himself that which the Heavens shower down upon him — just let there be no reception, he shakes his head underneath the shower tap, although he doesn’t have much time either for showering or head-shaking, for the assistant is standing there with the towels and with his clothes; in barely ten minutes from now, he will be there standing at the edge of the reception organized for the wealthy patrons, not daring to push deeper into the crowd, although he is forced inward, and he hears words of recognition coming from every direction, and with deep bows, everyone expresses how miraculous they consider what they just saw on the stage of the Kanze Kaikan; a glass is in his hand but still he doesn’t drink from it, for a while now he has only drunk a special kind of water, which a Korean healer, whom he visits regularly, prescribes for him, for he only trusts in him and not in doctors; he has high blood pressure, ever since his life-threatening Dojoji performance last year it at times goes up to two hundred, and this could give rise to serious concerns, the doctors shake their heads, but the little Korean doesn’t shake his head at all, he just nods once and prescribes the special water for two hundred thousand yen; he believes in it, and that is perhaps the most important thing, he feels the beneficial effect, he tells his experiences to the Korean who doesn’t say anything in reply, he just bows and nods, and once again he prescribes the special water, gold is more expensive, Ribu-san, sensei Inoue’s wife, jokingly notes to Amoru-san, his second wife, but of course it remains only between them; now, however, of course, there is a champagne glass in the sensei’s hand, he steals a glance at the clock on the wall, he will stay for a bit longer, then after a long farewell during which he must take leave of every person there individually, he leaves the room, the taxi has already been there in front of the hotel for a while, and it has been waiting for him, we’re going to the Mahorowa, the sensei says softly, which circumstance indicates that everything continues exactly the same as always, namely that we’re going to the Mahorowa, and the sensei will continue his rehearsal, for him there is no difference between the rehearsal and the performance, there is only a difference between the practice of Noh and the non-practice of Noh — the latter, however is something that he hardly recognizes — his entire day from morning until late at night is filled with rehearsal, whether he is in Kyõto or Tokyo, as he divides his life between these two cities, for he has disciples in Kyõto and the surrounding areas as well, and he has disciples in Toyko and its surrounding areas, so accordingly two weeks in Kyõto, two weeks in Tokyo, that is how the sensei’s life proceeds, in which of course are his own rehearsals are the most important, and these take place either in the Mahorowa or in the Shin-E Building, depending on what the sensei deems advisable, if he has to go to the Korean or wishes to return for a short while to his parents’ home, then he goes to the Shin-E Building not far from Kyõto Station; if he wants to stay at home — and generally he does at the end of the day — then the Mahorowa; the Shin-E Building or the Mahorowa, the Mahorowa or the Shin-E Building, if he is in Kyõto, things proceed between these two places, but often enough, he creates the impression among the family members, and also his disciples, especially his most fervent admirers — Chiwako-san and Norumu-san, or Himuko-san or Raun — that he is simply improvising in the selection of his schedule; in any event, as soon as the expression “improvising” arises they drive it out of their minds, because — they affirm among themselves — that even if it seems that way, he never improvises, what happens is not improvisation, absolutely not in the everyday sense of the word, of that they are sure, since the sensei knows everything in advance, and knows it with dead certainty, and this is the general conviction, that’s why only to them does it seem like improvisation, because while it is true that he has a prescribed schedule for every given month, the sensei is eternally open, like a book, which means that he is in direct contact with the Heavens, and for that reason he may suddenly be a bit unpredictable, since he follows the dictates of his soul in this direct connection, and thus he is constantly overturning all the things in the monthly-schedule notebooks he himself deems advisable to plan out for himself; the sensei himself does not, of course, sense this unpredictably, for he is entirely free, in this and every possible sense of the word he is free — rehearsal and teaching, teaching and rehearsal — in a word, only and exclusively the Noh; only rarely does he go anywhere different, for example, now and then, to the place before a performance where the play in question is being performed, so that he can worship there, or to the services of the Christian congregation at the corner of Oike Kawaramachi, but not for Jesus, as he puts it, but so he can take part in a shared collective joy, and of course only rarely, only sometimes, because as a rule there is only rehearsal, for hours on end, and there is only teaching, for hours on end, get some sleep, the family members say, he sleeps for only three or four hours a day, for he goes to bed only very late at night, never before two in the morning, and he is already up before the first birdsong, at such times he reads, he prays, then somehow the day begins, with rehearsal, with teaching; then again rehearsal, then teaching again, and finally rehearsal and rehearsal in the Mahorowa, generally, if he is staying in Kyõto, there the day’s activities end, the Mahorowa is very close to his residence, which as a residence is, in contrast to those of the other Noh performers, a modest two-story little building near the Kamigamo temple in the middle of a hardly elegant district, the sensei does not wish for riches — the disciples and the family members note — except when he is traveling, they add, then of course he has to be accommodated in a hotel that is worthy of his status, or a place commensurate with his status must be chosen for him at a dinner, although not anywhere in particular, he looks for simplicity in everything, the simple and the transparent, as opposed to complexity, luxury, and superfluity; the taxi glides along; in the back seat sit the sensei and Amoru-san, and behind the taxi is the minibus with the disciples, and behind that are the family members in their cars, and thus they reach the Mahorowa this evening, and after a late dinner together and some more Seiobo-rehearsing, he withdraws, with only his close family, with Ribu-san and Amoru-san at his side, into the house that serves as his home; he prays for a long time at the house altar, then answers a question now and then put to him by Ribu-san, then they kneel down and they bow to each other, and that is how they take leave of one another, then he, the sensei, takes a bath, and goes up to his room, where at last he can be alone, he loves this best of all, to be alone before going to sleep, closeted in the bedroom, he turns on the electric light, it illuminates faintly, weakly, he takes up his book, sensei Takahashi’s commentary on the Heart Sutra, which he reads regularly — and he begins somewhere, then he goes to the window, looks out onto the dark evening, prays for a long time, and at last lies back down, reads a few more pages yet, then closes the book, puts it in place on the small table next to the bed, and he is alone, enough now to be able to become tranquil, he is now capable of falling asleep, and then slowly he really does fall asleep into deep slumber.

His heart is very rich, explains Ribu-san in the Mahorowa: a rich heart, and a profoundly deep secret, that is the sensei. . but it is difficult, she says, and she doesn’t worry that the sensei himself hears this; it is very difficult to speak about him because he doesn’t resemble me or us in any way at all, since he is entirely different in everything; I, she points at herself, I have been his wife for more than three decades, but often I don’t know what anything means to him, he continually astounds me, because I am blind, whereas he sees, I am blind to what is coming but he already sees what things will be like, I have said many times it’s impossible, or a miracle, and I’ve marveled at him because of that, but then I accepted that the sensei knows already in advance what is going to happen later, and also that this comes not from himself but from the world, from the true structure of the world, which he and only he sees and knows, but I could also express it like this: the sensei just feels things, and he is deaf, deaf, to those things that we are not deaf to, he is deaf to mundane explanations because he only feels, only grasps what his soul tells him, we are deaf to our souls, to him our mediocre imaginings and connections mean nothing at all, he sees them, he sees us, he knows what we believe, what we are thinking, and what we do, he knows the laws that are important to us, the laws that determine and circumscribe all of us here, yet these laws, in regard to the sensei, somehow. . just don’t affect him at all, however absurd this may sound, still it is so: he also eats, showers, gets dressed, and goes and sits down and stands up and drives the car and checks his bank receipts and the money sent here from the Umewaka school, but with him nothing occurs as it does with us, in that moment, when he is eating, showering, getting dressed and so on, somehow at once. . everything is different, how can she even explain it; Ribu-san closes her eyes tight, and it could be a kind of illness with her because this happens every minute, she closes her eyes tightly shut and at such times her face contracts sharply, to make it clearly understood that well, it’s difficult, she tilts her head to one side, because if she says that the sensei finishes everything, that he never leaves anything undone, that he is unpredictable, and that she never knows what he will do or say in the very next moment, then she hasn’t said anything at all, and it is really as if that were so, that she has said nothing at all, because at this point the sensei interrupts her, until now he has been listening to Ribu-san in silence, with mute agreement and patience, with a kind of motionless gaiety in his eyes, but now in the Mahorowa he puts in a word and notes in his own particular way of speaking — that is to say that as he pronounces every single word, indeed, truly, every single word, he pulls his mouth back widely, like someone who smiles with each single word, so that after the word or the sentence has been uttered, the face at once settles back into those serious features that hold this face in that motionless perpetual serenity — every single day, he suddenly speaks, every day I am prepared for death, and then there is silence in the Mahorowa; the first time he met with death — he continues in tones even softer than usual — was when, in his childhood, a tall thin person came into the street where he lived, he came up to where he was playing, and greeted him and the other children; ohayou, he said, and he went on, on along the street, up to the end of the street, then he went out onto the Horikawa, and this happened every single day, the tall thin man, whether in the morning, the afternoon, at dawn, or at dusk, appeared again and again, and greeted him as he played in the middle of the street, and for him, the sensei says, this greeting became important, and he loved this person, and after a while he waited expectantly for him to appear already, and he was happy if he saw him at the end of the street; this person came, greeted him, and went on, and then one day he did not come anymore, and from that point on he never appeared again, and they quickly learned from the neighbors that he had been struck by a car out on the Horikawa, he had been taken to the hospital, where he continually asked for water, but the doctors did not give him water, but he just asked more and more for water, just water and water, he became dreadfully thirsty, but he did not get water from the doctors, they didn’t give him any, and he died, well that is when, says sensei Inoue, I met with death for the first time, yet to understand what it meant, he still had to wait awhile, but then the time came, and he understood everything, and since then he has known that there is no tomorrow; I never think about that — he lowers his voice even more, and with every word that he utters he smiles, as is his custom, then his face closes up again — never, he says, because I only think about today, for me there is no tomorrow, for me there is no future, because every day is the last day, and every day is full and complete, and I could die on any given day, I am ready for it, and then the whole thing will come to an end, and by this he means that — he looks up at a guest sitting across from him on the other side of the room — that one whole will come to an end, and in the distance another shall begin, I am waiting for death, he says with an unvarying smile, I am waiting, he says, and death is always close to me, and I shall lose nothing if I die, because for me only the present means everything, this day, this hour, this moment — this moment in which I am dying.

That he was born, he says, he remembers exactly, he remembers that he was born, they lived on the first floor, and he sees himself, his body, down there far below, but he sees his soul as well — what did his soul look like? — well, it was white, and he couldn’t cry, because the umbilical cord was wound around his neck; and with that everything began, his entire life, and he had to cry but couldn’t, not figuratively, but because of the umbilical cord, he would have cried, but no sound came out of his throat, everyone watched him in fear, his father wasn’t even there, he remembers everything clearly; the room where he came into the world, the windows, the tatamis, the washbasins, all of the room’s objects, and where they were placed, and he remembers very well the feeling that he had been born, of where he had come from, and he understood immediately that he had now stepped into a different form, into a different existence, here somehow everything was harder: principally, breathing, and not only because of the umbilical cord around his neck, for someone immediately unwound it, the hardest thing of all was the breathing, that he had to take breaths or to put it more correctly, things weren’t even more difficult, but generally, everything seemed to have weight, everything became apparent together with its weight, that was the new thing, and inconceivable, and so very heavy, everything slowed down, and this everything was still bloody and slippery, and everything was slipping and was in shadow, as if somewhere the light was shining, the shadow of which only extended to here; but even today, when he conjures this memory up, he doesn’t know what was casting that shadow, he conjures it up with particular frequency, not even intending to, rather it just somehow floats into his consciousness, without any cause or precedent; that’s how it must have been, that was his birth, his father was not there, he wasn’t even there when they took him out of the room, he was not at home, during that time he was often away; the family was engaged in the respirator-mask trade, and the demand was great after the war, so his father didn’t live with his family but no one knew where, or with whom; he appeared only once a month, when he brought home his dirty clothes for his mother to launder, your father is a bad man, his mother said to him, but he never, not for a single instant, felt that, in any event, his father, if he had money, really did not live at home, the business went well, so that a month went by before his father took him into his arms, he brought the dirty laundry, and he looked at his son, and it is there very clearly within him that his father somehow held him at a distance from himself and thus examined him, but he didn’t sense that his father was bad: he was without any emotion at all, in the most objective manner possible, he determined that this is my father, while the father, in all likelihood, without any emotion at all and in the most objective manner, said, this is my son; this was his first meeting with his father, he recalls this as a very particular moment if he thinks about it, that first meeting, and in addition to its particularity, the most important thing was that it was the first, because later, afterward, for a good long time, he saw his father only very rarely, and his father hardly ever picked him up because he just showed up once a month, he took the money and brought the laundry, he waited until his mother gave him what he had brought one month ago — washed out and prepared — he hardly even sat down, or just for a little, and he always left immediately, hence it could be said that he grew up without a father, it could be said that his mother, abandoned, raised him, and the two of them lived together; he had no siblings, there was only him and his mother, altogether the two of them, his father showing up for only a few minutes once a month every month, so that he was alone very much of the time, indeed, in point of fact, he was always alone, all the time, this was his childhood and his youth, he says, and that is why later on he decided that if he reached manhood, he would have a huge family, and it turned out that way too, because here, he shows, is sensei Kimiko, and Sumiko-san, and Yumito-san, they are his daughters, and the littlest one, my son, is there, he says, Tomoaki, none of them are children anymore, and he has two grandchildren too: Maya-chan from Kimoko’s family, and Aya-chan from Sumiko’s family, he has a wife, Ribu-san, and next to her there is Amoru-san, but these are not the only people around him, but countless others as well, disciples in Kyõto, disciples in Tokyo, in Fujiyama and in Arayama, at least eighty people altogether, which of course doesn’t change anything about his solitude, because everyone is a soul, everyone; the family members and students he is addressing nod respectfully, who — now the pause in the Seiobo rehearsal is longer than usual, they see that the sensei is beginning to speak at greater length this time, he is talking to the guest and, well, at that point, as if a sign had been given, they sit all around their father and their grandfather and their master, because sensei Kimoko is there and Sumiko-san and Yumito-san and Tomoaki-san, and Maya-chan and Aya-chan are there, and there too — always a little detached from the others — is the mysterious silent Amoru-san, too, and of course the sensei’s most faithful disciples as well, Chiwako-san, Nozumu-san, and Himuko-san, and Ante-san and Haragu-san, and Gomu-Gomu and Raun, here in the Mahorowa, as the master calls his rehearsal space not far from the Kamigamo shrine, in the northwest corner of Kyõto, everyone is here, and they listen to their father and their grandfather and their master with the greatest of curiosity, although it is completely obvious that they have heard this quite a few times already and they know all of the master’s stories, so they know too the ones in which he speaks of himself, but perhaps it is just that fact that impresses them so much, the master always tells them with the same, precisely the same words, he never mixes up his words, never mixes up the order of events in the stories, and he always begins by saying that I remember that I was born, we lived on the first floor, and I see myself, my body, down there far below, but I see my own soul as well — never a single alteration, and this is passed on: the family members and the students themselves try to follow the master’s words exactly, when they begin to speak of him to someone with enthusiasm, in this way, the master’s story is passed on, just like a fairy-tale, although with the difference that in this story not even one single word may ever be altered, not even a single expression, no one may add anything to it, and no one may take anything away, he was born on December 22, 1947, in Kyõto, he says, the family home is still there, and even today it is his property, the street however has no name, it is a completely narrow, tiny alley, and it was always like that, it lies not far from the Nanna-jo and the Horikawa-dori intersection, across from the enormous Nishi-Hongan-ji temple, you have to picture the alley running parallel with the Nanna-jo, just a few houses on it and among them, there in the middle, was ours, he says, where the lower story was always used for business purposes — for the respirator-mask trade — even today it is like that, we lived on the upper floor, my mother and I, because there were only two of us in the house, my father, while the business was still operating, turned up once a month, for a very brief time, to leave his dirty clothes and take his clean ones, my mama was always working, she hardly had any time to be with me, so that I was alone so much, so very much, so that my solitude was truly profound, as profound as solitude could be, he says, and roughly at that point, as if touched by a magic wand, the family members and the students begin, by mutual consent — as if from this point on the story doesn’t really concern them — to return to their places, the places from where, listening to the beginning of the master’s story just now, they had gathered around him, the children and the grandchildren move at least ten meters to his left; generally this is how the private rehearsals, when the master rehearses by himself, proceed, and completely apart from him, in the background, so that the master will not be disturbed, are the children, chiefly Kimoko, the eldest girl, who herself has already reached the level of master; accordingly then, farther away from the father and grandfather, the disciples seek out an even more suitable distance from him to the right, or sit facing him by the wall of the Mahorowa, for the place of the master is sacred, no one may sit close to him, only Amoru-san, but only so she can supervise, keep accounts of, arrange the master’s affairs; Amoru-san, about whom someone not from here would hardly be able to say what it was she was doing, although she is always doing something during the rehearsals — he remembers a boy on a bicycle, he says; it was still before he himself began attending school, a boy fell down in the street with his bicycle, and he really had a bad fall, but everyone just laughed at him, just then there were a lot of us on the street, and everyone laughed at the boy, but not me, I wept, I felt so sorry for him, mainly because I felt how much his knee was hurting from the fall, my mother began saying enough already, stop crying, he’s already gone, he dusted off his trousers, got onto his bicycle, and he’s already cycled off toward the Horikawa, but he still just wept, he really felt sorry for him, so incredibly sorry for him, because the others had laughed at him; but this actually was not his own memory, he says, this was told to him by his mother much later, and so it remained like that, it became his own memory, and now he relates it as if he were recollecting something he remembered, which, however, he did, thanks to his mother, as, for example, when already in school, he says, we went to the swimming pool once, but there was one boy among us who did not dare to go in, he was afraid of water, he was afraid of the swimming pool, I understood what he was afraid of, though I myself was not afraid; yet everyone began to jeer at him, and I of course just burst out crying, I felt so sorry for him, they talked about it when I was older already, that as a small child it was always like that, I was always feeling sorry for somebody, and I was always weeping, and these have become memories that have accompanied me throughout my entire life, and so he continues unchecked, in his own particular way of speaking, repeating and repeating, there are numerous repetitions in the narration, but it’s as if he were doing it just for the rhythm, because his memory — if it is a question of the Noh — is formidable; if he is telling a story, as he is now, he keeps returning to each point, each thread of the story, which he already related earlier, perhaps because he wishes to emphasize them, or because he wishes to preserve a content-rhythm of events untraceable by anyone else, it is impossible to know; in any event his memories from his nursery school years are innumerable, he says, namely that there was a nursery school nearby, facing the corner of the Nishi-Hongan-ji, yet opposite, in the inner corner of the Nishi-Hongan-ji, there inside, an enormous tower rose, and this proved to be a very particular building indeed, because no matter what time of day it was, whether morning or noon or evening, this tower, which in the time of the Meiji Dynasty had been called the shinseigomin, completely covered the nursery school in shadow, so that all of my nursery-school memories are connected with this completely dark nursery, because that enormous tower overshadowed us completely, there inside it was always dark, and I had to spend my entire nursery time there with the others, we played there in the dark, right up until when it was time to start school, and all the while, not one nanny or teacher turned up who even once mentioned or explained why it was always so dark inside, and that is why it stayed with me, that nursery school is some kind of dark place where children play in the dark, and where there is always an enormous tower rising somewhere nearby; but then came school and with that something different, as it happened the worst thing of all and completely suddenly, namely that from one day to the next our business went bankrupt, my father’s business partner, with whom we ran the respirator-mask business, suddenly left, here was the problem now, thanks to him: he disappeared, vanished without a trace, we never saw him again, yet we stayed on there and it was really bad, because earlier we had had everything, we suffered no deprivation whatsoever, indeed, the master says, he believes that many considered his family to be well-off, they had a television set and a piano, and there were few people, few families that could permit themselves that, for after the Second World War nearly everyone lost everything, just their respiratory mask business flourished, until it went bankrupt, and from that point on they were plunged, completely unexpectedly, into the deepest poverty, they had nothing left, neither a television nor a piano, and the saddest thing of all, he says, was that my father who, while the business was successful, was never at home, moved back one day after we had gone bankrupt, and from then on until the day he died he lived at home; he sat in silence, I remember exactly where: downstairs where we used to run our business, facing the window, and even today in my memories he is still there, smoking a cigarette, and for years he didn’t look away from the window, he never really took part in anything, he just sat there and smoked a cigarette, he left everything in the care of my mother; yet if I gave him some advice about anything, he immediately took it up — although at the time I was only nine years old, altogether nine, when he moved back into the house, and we were plunged into destitution — sometimes I gave him this or that piece of advice, and he honored these recommendations, that we had to address this or that problem, my mother also listened to me, but according to custom it was my father who had to say that this, that, or the other should be done, and he always agreed with my advice, my father wasn’t interested in how old I was, he accepted my recommendations as did my mother, in fact, my relationship with my mother was the closest, no one was important to me, just my mother, she raised me, looked after me, took care of me, and I loved my mother very much, I spoke about everything with her, not only as a child, as a youth, but afterward as well, I felt her to be much closer to me than my father, or anyone else; she lived with her husband, that is to say with my father, in the old house until her death, near the Kyõto Station, there in the street that runs parallel with the Nanna-jo, in the parental house that is now close as well to the Shin-E Building, and after a while, when I moved back to Kyõto — because I was away for a while, I moved back here, to the Kamigamo: we were living quite far from each other, but nearly every day I came to visit her, and I talked about everything with her, it was like that up until her death, because she was the person closest to me, not even like a mother but like a friend, there was nothing that I couldn’t discuss with her, I had no secrets before her, to keep a secret would have been totally senseless, I did, however, worry about her greatly, when my family sank into poverty, my father’s business partner left, my father came home, and in general there was no money at all, the business had completely collapsed, but what could we do, we had to work, and then my mother did just what she could, namely there was a possibility of making Christmas-tree decorations, one yen for each piece; after the big collapse there was simply nothing to eat, we were in such a difficult situation, and we only got rice regularly from my mother’s relatives in the countryside, there was that, rice and water, rice and water, every day, it was because of that that my mother had to work, my father was incapable of doing anything, most likely because he had collapsed as well, just like our business, we had to make these baubles for Christians, that was the only possibility, the value of the yen, however, was very low, and my mother had to make a lot of these baubles every single day, so I began to help her, I too was making these baubles for Christians to hang on their Christmas trees, the only problem was that I was still a child, and a child could not be treated as a regular employee, he says; so that he could only get half a yen for the same work, and that wasn’t enough to live on, his mother’s earnings and then what he earned, it wasn’t enough; in addition it turned out to be a bigger problem that these baubles turned out to be very small, they had to be small, and after a while his mother’s eyes couldn’t take it anymore; how small they were — she strained her eyes, she fatally overworked them — she could work for a few hours but then her eyes were tired, she cried, and finally it was painful for his mother, she developed a kind of over-sensitivity of the optic nerve, in the evening she could hardly bear to look at anything; but it was all in vain, she could not stop working, so after a while, when in the evening those eyes were really hurting a lot, he said, a nun began visiting them, she took care of his mother, she cooked the rice, and this lasted until he, the master, was in the eleventh grade, during which time, he says, he was continually worried, he was very worried for his mother, he couldn’t even pay attention in school, he only thought of his mother’s eyes, and how they would hurt in the evenings, and he really wanted his mother to stop working, already he was in middle school but everything went on, and he was worried that his mother wouldn’t stop, and that there would be a huge problem, he was so worried that he couldn’t think of anything else, only about her, and he became more and more worried that she would be very ill, and wouldn’t get up anymore; keep on studying, they told him, but he was incapable of that, he says, he wanted to stay home at any cost, to help his mother, and he did stay home, and he helped her too, he too began to produce these baubles for the Christmas trees, and he didn’t go to university, even though his teacher advised him to do so, instead of university the Christmas baubles, really it couldn’t be otherwise, he had to stay at home, because in any event he wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on anything else from all the worry, and he was still in middle school when, at the beginning of the school year, there was the renowned mountain-climbing event, this was the occasion that he, along with every one of his classmates, awaited with great excitement, just that in his case the problem was that the other school children always, the week before the big mountain-climbing event, got a new pair of running shoes, yet so great was the destitution in their home that there was no money for new running shoes, so that his mother came up with the idea of polishing the old running shoes with some half-penny chocolate, first she really cleaned them off and then smeared the chocolate on, and really they looked as if they could have been new, but he was distressed by this, and because he was not ashamed if, due to the family’s poverty, he was the only one not to get new running shoes before the big mountain-climbing event, he took the shoes and scraped off the chocolate, and he never went mountain climbing with the others, this is just one example of how difficult it was, he says, but an example, too, of how difficult it was for him to be with others; it wasn’t as if he didn’t long to be among them, there was nothing he desired more than to play alongside them, it was just that some obstacle or another was always in the way, which meant that he always had to renounce their companionship, so when he was in middle school he became even more solitary than he had been in primary school: just his mother and he, the two of them in the street that ran parallel with the Nanna-jo, while his father sat the entire day in the old business premises, smoking cigarettes and looking out the window, although nothing ever happened out there, he was completely alone, and so the years passed and the compassion within him for those who could not make friends grew ever deeper, or for those who could not be with the people they wanted to be with, because he was always at home, or at school, or at school or at home, and because he was so worried for his mother and the entire family, and what would happen to them if he wasn’t at home, during this time because of the worry he very often would not go out into the street to play, or go and join up with the others during school breaks, because there was only one thought in his mind, how to find an exit from this destitution so that his mother would not have to strain her eyes; he brooded over this incessantly, and of course in the meantime, he says, he did not have too much time to think about playing with the others; he could however have made friends, for example, with the boy who once complained that he felt very bad, and he was really afraid, because he couldn’t go like this to his singing lessons in the mornings; I said to him, he says, that I would go in his place, and I even went, I went, and in the meantime I learned everything that he was supposed to learn, then later at the singing lessons I explained the situation with my classmate; I sang everything that he was supposed to have sung, and I was praised greatly, and the teacher said that they did not reproach my classmate for his absences, that it was alright, and of course the boy in question was very grateful for this, and they could have even been friends, but well he had to go home, at the beginning he just walked normally, then he began to move quickly, but finally he was already running, so afraid was he that while he was gone something had happened with his mother’s eyes, and so it was not possible for him to be anyone’s friend, for even if this boy had invited him on another afternoon to come along and play with him, in this dark period of his life he only thought immediately of what would happen at home if he weren’t there, this was always his profound conviction, that no one would be there to help, as he was utterly certain, under this burden of continual suffering, that a larger catastrophe was looming; in the first place he thought of his mother, filled with concern for her, thinking that the catastrophe would be connected with her eyes, but it didn’t happen like that, something completely different occurred, something completely extraordinary that turned everything upside down and changed their lives; no one thought that it could happen but it did; everyone, and in particular he himself, was convinced that the catastrophe was here, about to occur, and everything seemed so utterly hopeless that one day — such was the sorrow that overwhelmed him from his mother’s and father’s fate — he made a decision and went to them in the upper room, and his advice was that they should commit suicide, together, the entire family, because in my view, I said to them, he says, this is the only solution, this is what I can recommend, because we are so bereft of any future, there is no future whatsoever for us, all of our time is completely taken up solving the problems of everyday life, of what we are going to eat; well, of course I wasn’t thinking of any future, I did not wish for any future, because there was no future at all, I went to the upstairs room, I knelt down before them, I bowed, and I said, let us all commit suicide together, but in the end we didn’t do it, because an extraordinary turn of events came about, something completely unimaginable: one day in school a big white dog suddenly got into the hallway, I was in the seventh grade, when a stray, bedraggled, white dog came in, and it was in such a bad state that everyone just yelled and screamed at it, but no one dared or wanted to try to grab hold of it, it was evident, however, that the dog was getting close to the end already, its entire body was trembling, its fur was scraped off, and it was so skinny that its bones literally stuck out, of course it was chased out of the classroom somehow, and chased out of the entire building onto the street, it’s just that the dog didn’t leave but stayed there near the school and stayed right underneath our classroom window, it didn’t move away from there for a whole week, it just trembled and cried and howled and whined, you could hear it very clearly, and in the end I couldn’t hear anything else, I heard it even at home: so the dog did not budge from next to the tree, they tried to chase it away with a cane, but it was simply impossible to chase it away, so it stayed, no one bothered it anymore, only you could hear it crying, and I — as the week went by — looked at the dog, and I saw how it wanted to die, and then I said to myself, I have to take it home, somehow it will get along with us, and so, the master relates, that’s exactly what he did, he took the dog home, he just said to it come, and at that one single word the dog came; but his mother said we can’t do this, we can’t have a dog here, whatever are we going to give him to eat, and this really did present a huge problem, as they had no meat that they could give to the dog, only rice, and moreover, dogs don’t eat rice; his mother advised him to take it out to the monastery, it can’t stay here, but, he says, he was not able to do that, he pleaded with his family, please let it stay here, he even made a doghouse secretly, he pleaded with his mother, but she said we don’t have enough even for ourselves, to which he replied that he would give the dog his own portion, which of course sounded a bit peculiar, because dogs don’t eat rice, but then he implored his mother so much that that night they gave the dog his nightly portion of rice, and the dog ate the rice, and then already his mother began to see things differently, and she allowed the dog to stay, fine, she said, we’ll keep it, and really it turned out like that, he says, we took in the white dog, and two weeks later, altogether two weeks after the day that we had taken the dog in — people began knocking at the front door saying they wanted to buy an oxygen mask, suddenly they were getting orders, my father’s business started up again, and even his business partner, the one who had caused the business to go bankrupt earlier, turned up again, and suggested that due to the change in demand they should go back into partnership again, and the telephone rang off the hook, and there were hundreds and thousands of orders, everything changed at once, the business flourished; at that time, the massive industrialization campaign was going on and due to the pollution, a huge demand for oxygen masks arose, and in addition, my father’s business partner came up with a new kind of mask, a yellow one that filtered out the pollution more effectively, and it became so successful that even the state television, the NHK, did a program about it and advertised it, everything got better, the master lowers his voice, and everyone knew, my mother knew, I knew, and my father knew as well, that the change in our fate was because of the dog, it brought us luck, my father announced sitting on his chair in front of the window, and from that point on he prayed for it, for the white dog, and ever since he, my father, died, I pray for it, and when I shall die, my first-born child, sensei Kimiko will pray for it too.

It is difficult to express the joy of the practice in words, he then says, if there is a rehearsal — and for him there is always a rehearsal — then he breaks free from all indirectness and he is absolutely active, immersed, totally identified with what he is doing: with the next step to follow in the sequence, with the holding of the arm, the placement of the fan in front of the body, with the placement of the body in space, and then with the poetry and songs that began to resound in his voice, through his voice, which bursts out of the depths; in a word if he is rehearsing, as he has been just now with Seiobo, or if he is continuing the Seiobo rehearsal, as he shall do in a moment, then he feels in the deepest of depths that there is a soul; if he does the necessary dance-steps according to the prescribed order, then he doesn’t think about whether or not the spirit is operating within him, because this spirit is perfectly ingrained in the order of steps he has just completed, he does not gape into the future thinking: after this, what step do I need to take, after this, what step comes next; it is a question of only one step that exactly fills the present moment, it is always this that he must concentrate on, says the sensei, on what I can do exactly in this moment, indeed, to put it more precisely, on what I am doing in this moment, this is altogether what concentration is for, not for anything else, not for the desire that this step here will be better, but that exactly in this moment, exactly this step in the dance is coming into being; that is all you have to know, and the rest is a matter of the soul; in a word, rehearsal is his life, so that for him there is absolutely no difference between rehearsal and performance, there is no particular mode of performance in the Noh, what happens in a performance is exactly the same as what happens in a rehearsal and vice versa, what happens in a rehearsal is exactly the same as what happens in a performance, there is no divergence, but as for him he is happier to view it all as a rehearsal, because this expresses the fact better that it is not about some kind of finality or completion, it better expresses the fact that the Noh has no goal, and this goal, in particular, is not performance, but that for him his entire life is a rehearsal, a successive awakening — or rather, he would just say, a waking up, since there is nothing to awaken to, namely that what remains is awoken to successively; this is a truly inexpressible catharsis for a Noh performer such as himself, for whom Noh is everything and the source of all things, the Noh only gives and he only receives, and he understands everything, because one then understands that things do not turn out for the better because a person has a certain level of apprehension of what will be correct in the future, but that things turn out for the better if a person has a correct apprehension of the present, namely, this is a kind of apprehension that is good not just for you but for everyone, that is to say it doesn’t harm anyone, so thus it is good in general; no, says the sensei, smiling, he does not believe that those who speak so threateningly of an approaching catastrophe, some kind of a total collapse, a complete apocalypse, are in the right, for such people never take into account — and this is very characteristic — they never take into account the fact that there are higher potentialities; you have to know that your own experience in this is crucial for understanding how senseless it is to separate living beings, to divide up living things from each other and from yourself, for everything occurs in one single time and one single place, and the path to the comprehension of this leads through the correct understanding of the present, one’s own experience is necessary, and then you will understand, and every person will understand that something cannot be separated from something else, there is no god in some faraway dominion, there is no earth far from him here below, and there is no transcendental realm somewhere else apart from where you are now, all that you call transcendental or earthly is one and the same, together with you in one single time and one single space, and the most important of all is that there is no room here for either hope or for miracles, since hope has no basis and there are no miracles, namely that everything happens as it must happen, miracles never changed anything in his life, he says, but he realized that it was a question of the endlessly simple operations of an endlessly complicated construction, so that anything can happen, anything can turn into reality, all told it is just the natural result of potentially billions of single outcomes, namely that — the sensei says this now in an entirely subdued voice, indicating that his words are being uttered only for the guest — namely that before we are born, the Heavens have innumerable plans for us, but after we are born there is just a single one; these recognitions, of course, do not always come easily; he, for example suffered greatly before he could encapsulate his experiences in a correct manner; and when the time was right, the personal teachings and written thoughts of Master Takahashi Shinji directed him, it was he, sensei Shinji, who was able to explain to him, when they met personally when he was a youth of nineteen, his story of losing God did not by any means lead him to suicide, that is to say, on one occasion, he related to him, that when he was praying, still at his home in Kyõto, on the upper floor of his old house, as he knelt with his hands folded in prayer, he suddenly caught a glimpse of himself in his own shaving mirror, and from that, all at once, he lost his faith; well as for that, sensei Takahashi explained to him, that is not the loss of God but on the contrary, it means that you have found God, whatever we call it, we might as well call it God, said sensei Takahashi Shinji, it’s sweet all the same, that was the first thing that sensei Shinji said to him, and it had an enormous effect, similarly as when he sat next to his deathbed, there was a particular encounter when sensei Shinji, as a final admonition told him that at times the existence of the higher dimensions are veiled by those selfsame higher dimensions, that is what he heard from him, and it goes without saying that then, altogether in one single flash of illumination, like a blow, he understood all these things: he perceived, he felt, the other person, he saw what lay behind the other, he saw others’ past lives, so that the day quickly came when he had to take notice that it was not just he who believed in something, but that people believed in him as well — of course through the agency of the art of Noh — and that meant that if people were turning to him, and he was able, exclusively, to lift them up through the Noh, that he should live with this word, with that same word through which the genius of Ze’ami lived, for Noh is the lifting up of the soul, which, if it doesn’t occur through Noh, that means that the Noh is not occurring, but if it does occur, then anyone can comprehend that above us and below us, outside of ourselves and deep within ourselves, there is a universe, the one and only, which is not identical with the sky looming above us overhead, because that universe is not made of stars and planets and suns and galaxies, because that universe is not a picture, it cannot be seen, it doesn’t even have a name, for it is so much more precious than anything that could have a name, and that is why it is such a joy to me that I can practice Seiobo; Seiobo is the emissary who arrives and says I am not the desire for peace, I am peace itself; Seiobo arrives and says do not be afraid, for the universe of peace is not the rainbow of yearning; the universe, the real universe — already exists.

In front of Amoru-san there is a low table, and for several minutes now Amoru-san has been counting out an enormous pile of money while the sensei speaks, first she separates the ten-thousand yen notes from the five-thousand yen notes, then the five-thousand yen notes from the one-thousand yen notes, then she arranges them nicely, stacking the notes up into neat piles, as if she were playing but she isn’t, she counts how much is in each pile three times, then she begins to stuff the money into envelopes, she takes one note from each pile, adds one from the second, then from the third, then slips the total amount into an envelope lined up, and again she removes a ten-thousand yen note, adds a ten-thousand yen note, or two, or three — it varies, and then she adds a five-thousand or one-thousand banknote into the envelope with them, and then comes the next envelope already, she moves her lips as if silently, yet all the time she has to pronounce to herself how much and how much, and the banknotes on one part of the little table are diminishing, while at the same time the columns of envelopes on the other side of the small table keep getting taller, so that soon there isn’t enough room for the envelopes, and Amoru-san places them next to herself, beside her sitting cushion; first she counts the envelopes, then when that is done she brings out a little notebook and begins to count again the amounts that she’s placed in the envelopes, and she writes them down, very slowly, under the appropriate heading in the notebook, and that is how her work proceeds, while the sensei is speaking, and whereas the sensei is essentially grave and stern, Amoru-san essentially just smiles, from her long, thin, pimpled face an eternal serenity radiates, and she leans her head to one side at times, and holds it for a while, tilting her head now toward the left, now toward her right shoulder, but counting all the while, and arranging, and stuffing, and noting down, and at times she interrupts all of this so that she can fix her long, slightly greasy hair, so she can take out from her pink-dyed snakeskin handbag a little mirror with the name Vivienne Westwood on it, and a Dior lipstick, and she paints her mouth bright red, her wide thick mouth from which the smile never fades away, and never will.

He prays in such a way that first he enumerates the Great Cosmos, then comes the Great Spirit, then the Great Buddha, then the Spirit who watches over us in the Days, then the Protector in the Days, then — the Bodhisattvas! then the Self-Originated One, and then the Benevolence of the Higher Powers! — and following all of them he prays for the fortitude of his own heart and all this up until now, says sensei Inoue, are his own personal transformations of the prayers of Takahashi Shinji, so that somehow, according to his own sensibilities, as the prayer and the circumstances wish it to be, at the end he says: Guardian Angel within the Heart! I ask you, shed Light, O Creator, into my Heart! and then Grant Peace to my Body, O Great Spirit! and: Fill my Heart with Light! and Fill the Kanze Kaikan with Light! and Grant this Prayer to All Those who come to the performance of Seiobo! then I Call upon Those who cannot come! then I Call upon Everyone who once was here, in the Kanze Kaikan! and then he says: Raise up their souls here into the Light! and finally he asks the Great Spirit to Grant me the opportunity to be able to perform Seiobo tonight! and he asks, Grant me strength, and Grant that this strength may flow through me and from me to each individual person! and at the very end he says May the Kanze Kaikan be a torch now in Japan, in the World, in the entire Universe! and Reflect this strength in all Directions during the performance into the Universe! O God, cause this strength to permeate everything! and at the very very end he says: O God the Creator! May Your Strength be in the Performance, and when he says all of this, he concludes with the following words: I Give Over My Fate Entirely!

This is my prayer, says sensei Kazuyuki smiling, and then the stern face is once again impenetrable.

Sensei is everything, says Amoru-san, I’m not good at anything, I don’t know anything, I hate everyone, I only know sensei and I only love sensei, because sensei is everything, and my father was a very hard man, he beat me every day, every single day, once I knocked over a porcelain vase, then he shoved my head into the iron stove, and he slammed the stove door against my head until I lost consciousness; in a word every single day was painful for me, every blessed day hurt, and I wanted to die, for a long time it wasn’t possible, and then finally it was, and I was already an adult when I first saw sensei, and I knew immediately that I loved him, but nothing was possible, so that is why I jumped in front of a car, and I lay in a coma for seven weeks, the blow had struck my brain, I was between life and death, the doctors said there was nothing they could do, but sensei knew, he knew that I loved only him, so as soon as he found out, he came to the hospital and he called me back, I only know sensei and I only love sensei, don’t ask me about anything, because I don’t know anything, and I’m not good at anything, so, well, sensei is my goal, before him there was nothing and after him there will be nothing, and I hope that he, too, will love me forever.

They arrive at the stage door nearly two hours before the beginning of the performance, Amoru-san drove the car, she and the others already receive the more illustrious guests in the foyer of the theater, the tickets are distributed, now and then an older member of the audience is assisted to find a seat more easily there inside the theater; still there are nearly two hours, there is hardly anyone in the labyrinth in the back of the Kanza, but unfortunately for the sensei it feels already like a huge crowd, no one can ever truly be alone here, and that is precisely the reason — and everyone knows this, there are no secrets here — that is why sensei Inoue Kazuyuki arrives so early before the performance, because he wants to be alone, which is of course impossible, because it’s as if the dressing room didn’t even have a door, in vain does the shite have his own dressing room, the coming and going is continual, now this one, looking in, now that one, every single time he has to get up from his chair and greet the visitor, someone looking in at the door, asking if the sensei wouldn’t happen to know when he will be paid, but the sensei just shakes his head, and now there could be a little quiet in the dressing room, when someone else slips in through the door, and after the ritualized greeting that person asks the sensei for advice, because the older brother of his female cousin has leukemia, what should he do; send her to me, says the sensei, but when, he is asked, well, if next week would be good, then, next week, I’m afraid, says the other, that next week might be too late already, well then, when can she come, asks the sensei: is tomorrow afternoon all right, asks the visitor, of course, replies the sensei, and he calls Amoru-san who will arrange the meeting, or if not her, then Chiwako-san, who is very accommodating, and she too can arrange perfectly for the older brother of the female cousin to come, and then she will escort the effusively grateful person out, but when he is about to close the door, two boys run into the dressing room with a large box, they have arrived just now directly from Tokyo on the Shinkansen, they have brought, they say, each interrupting the other, the phoenix crown; fine, nods the sensei, place the box on the table, he shall open it immediately and examine it, the boys, bowing, leave him to himself, but by now the sensei already knows that from this point on he will in no way be able to be alone, and that is why he chooses the same path as always, and not just here, in the Kanze Kaikan, but in Osaka or in the Tokyo Kanze Theater as well, it is an open secret, he accordingly leaves the dressing room, brushes away this or that other person trying to approach him, finally slipping out of their hands, and goes into the toilet of the Kanze, because he has even said openly at times to the people close to him, it is there and only there, in the toilet of the Kanze that he can find tranquility, in the toilet, the sole place where he can be alone for a while; still, before a performance, particularly now, before a performance of such special significance, he has an unconditional need for solitude, to just be by himself, alone, like in his childhood, alone, as in his entire life, disturbed by no one else at all, in peace and tranquility, because this is the place where no one else sees him, where no one else hears him, because only here and now can he finally shut the door — the door to the toilet — behind himself in the Kanze Kaikan, and then he kneels down, and he places his two hands before his face, leans forward a bit, closes his eyes, and begins to pray — he always has to recite in the same way — he begins to pray, from the Great Spirit all the way to I Give Over My Fate Entirely, he kneels on the cold stone floor of the toilet in the smell of disinfectant, he is alone, there is peace, tranquility and silence, and he expresses his gratitude to the Heavens for this peace, this tranquility and this silence in the toilet of the Kanze, then he presses the flush button, as if he had finished his business, and he silently sets off to the common dressing room, so that he may be dressed in the first layers of the garb of Seiobo, so that he may put on the wondrous mask of Seiobo, and so that then within him, in the mirrored room, standing before the as yet motionless agemaku, Seiobo may truly appear.