The Reed Cutter: Love Reunited
Ashikari Yama is based on a noh theater play by the 14th-15th century genius actor and noh playwright Zeami (pron. “Zay-ah-mi’), Japan’s answer to Shakespeare. It’s known that Zeami attended the Gion Festival, and some say that noh theater used to be performed on the Gion Festival floats before the actors were replaced with sacred statues.|
The float features a scene of a man cutting river reeds, to sell for making mats and blinds. This is how his estranged wife first saw him after three years; they’d separated because they couldn’t make ends meet. She went to Kyoto’s imperial court to seek employment and he found work in present-day Osaka’s riverside, a lowly station. The float depicts this poignant moment of joy combined with sadness: having separated unwillingly and desperately, the wife travels to seek her husband out again, and finds him in reduced circumstances. Nonetheless they’re overjoyed to meet again, reunite, and move back to Kyoto to live together once more.
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