Matsukaze: Sorrow in Suma Bay | Blog Post #1

            Matsukaze is clearly a play written about everlasting love. However, I believe the point was about more than that and that Kiyotsugu's main goal was to convey to his audience the sheer power of love and how it is an all-encompassing experience that can affect one so deeply as to potentially be the cause of one's death. Matsukaze and Murasame so quickly and immensely fell in love with Yukihira when he was exiled to Suma Bay and were devastated when he returned to the Capital, even more so when they learned of his death there. Following his death, Matsukaze and Murasame remained on Suma Bay  brooding over their lost love of Yukihira and ultimately met death as well, having become casualties of their own melancholy. At one point in the play, due to a poem that Yukihira had written during his time at Suma Bay in which he stated, "Though we may part for a time, If I hear you pining for me, I'll hurry back", Matsukaze and Murasame's spirits, in a state of grief, hallucinates Yukihira as the pine tree and believes he has come back for them. From this, coupled with their death by grief, one can see just how influential love is and how, often, it can control us even when we do not want it to.

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Lines 270-282 (chorus)

"Our love grows again, And gathers like dew On the tip of a leaf So that there's no forgetting,

Not for an instant. Oh endless misery!

"This keepsake Is my enemy now;

For without it I might forget."

The poem says that And it's true:

My anguish only deepens.

                                                                     

Lines 283-284 (Matsukaze)

"Each night before I go to sleep, I take off the hunting cloak

Lines 285-289 (Chorus)

And hang it up…

I hung all my hopes On living in the same world with him,

But being here makes no sense at all And these keepsakes are nothing.

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             I found this passage to best exemplify the point of the play because it showcases the intense feelings of sorrow that both Matsukaze and Murasame feel and allows us to see just how great their love for Yukihira must have been to make them feel the way that this passage conveys they do. One of the key words in this passage that I feel does this is "anguish" in line 282. The chorus is speaking on behalf of Matsukaze and referring to the pain that the keepsakes left behind by Yukihira bring to her, but also that if she were to lose or forget them, it would only exacerbate that pain. Anguish is a very powerful word and typically only used to describe unbearable feelings of grief and I think that is why the translator chose it over something similar but more simple, such as pain or distress. Another key word that I feel amplifies the point is "hopes" in line 286, which is referring to the everlasting longing that Matsukaze had for spending her life with Yukihira and how, because of the intensity and perceived trueness of their love together, she only ever saw eternal life with Yukihira as a possibility and never fathomed that the opposite could happen. Hopes is a word that specifically refers to an event that someone wants to happen and I believe this is why the translator chose it over a similar word such as expectation, which could refer to a desired event, but also to an undesired event. 

            When looking at the above passage on its own, the point of the play being to convey the power of love becomes one-sided because only Matsukaze's feelings are portrayed in the passage; we do not see whether this love was reciprocated by Yukihira or left unrequited. However, there are other points in the play where it is evident that Yukihira countered the love he received from both girls, such as in lines 238-240, "But he changed our salt makers' clothing To damask robes Burnt with the scent of faint perfume", and also in lines 315-317, "Though we may be apart for a time, If I hear you are pining for me, I'll hurry back." Because of these brief displays of Yukihira's emotions, I still believe the point that Kiyotsugu was trying to make was that love is one of the most powerful emotions and one which we can never control, not in the beginning and most certainly not in the end.