Text and Performance Traditions

Text and Performance Traditions

The Tale of the Heike developed as part of a performance tradition emerging in the medieval period in which itinerant blind male performers, known as biwa hōshi, recounted episodes from the tale before a broad range of audiences at both central and peripheral locations around the realm, accompanying themselves on the biwa lute. Their art is referred to as Heike biwa. In her seminal article on the creation of what she calls a “national literature,” Barbara Ruch characterizes these performers – and others like them – as essential disseminators of a vital historical story, which is undeniably one significant dimension of performance of the Heike in medieval Japan. In this respect, they functioned like a medieval version of Ken Burns, telling an important historical event in a way that is both memorable and part of a performance tradition.

The biwa hōshi were also memorializers. Performance of the Heike served the placatory function of soothing the spirits of those killed in the war, as those who died violent deaths posed the threat of returning as angry ghosts to wreak havoc in society, where they might cause earthquakes and epidemics. Memories of the violence of their deaths, of course, also haunted later generations in ways familiar to us, whose present has also been shaped by violent events. An interesting interpretation of this function of the biwa hōshi can be found in the “Mimi-nashi Hōichi (Hōichi the Earless)” segment of the film Kwaidan (1965), directed by Masaki Kobayashi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwaidan_(film).

Over the course of the medieval period, the biwa hōshi were organized into schools (ryūha), and recitation of Heike was most closely associated with two of them: the Ichikata-ryū and the Yasaka-ryū. Although our interest today will be in pieces from the recitational tradition of these performers, it’s important to remember that the biwa hōshi’s Heike was but one strain of the narrative. Among extant texts today, scholars identify approximately eighty different variant lines – some very short, others voluminous – that are fairly readily categorized into two general lineages: the kataribonkei, or texts connected with the recited tradition of the biwa hōshi, and the yomihonkei, or texts originally intended to be read rather than heard.

The texts of the read lineage, although less familiar, are equally culturally important and have, in recent years, received significant scholarly attention. The oldest dated Heike variant is the Engyōbon, a read lineage text whose colophon dates it to 1309. Another well-known read lineage text is the very long Genpei jōsuiki, which most likely reached its current form in the 15^th century and seems to have been a very important source for noh playwrights during that same period.

The best known of the recited lineage texts – the Kakuichibon – is the one most familiar in English translation. It is also the basis for most other foreign language translations, and it’s the text taught to Japanese children when they study classical language and literature in junior and senior high school.

Although we read the Kakuichibon today, it’s important to bear in mind that in performance, it has a strong musical dimension, the biwa’s haunting sound mingling with the performer’s voice to add color and nuance to the story. Musically, Heike biwa is indebted to Buddhist chanting, known as shōmyō. Heike biwa developed alongside kōshiki, a form of shōmyō, a practice associated with the reciting and expounding of Buddhist sutras musically, and the two still bear musical and structural resemblances. Additionally, we know that among the custodians of the Heike in its earliest years were members of the Agui school of Tendai Buddhist preaching.[1] The Agui school was founded by direct descendants of a high-ranking aristocrat who had been allied with the tale's villain, Kiyomori, so the connection is probably not surprising. Additionally, we know that the early generation of the Agui school were also proponents of the political belief that harmonization of musical forms could help harmonize rulership.

Performance tradition text are comprised of about 200 episodes, which are referred to as “ku.” Records reveal that, occasionally, the 200 ku of Heike were performed over the course of many days (called Heike ichibu "The entire Heike") with either a solo performer or a pair of performers alternating ku (this was called tsure Heike, or "Heike with a companion"), but it was more common that one or several individual ku were performed as one event. Thus, Heike existed as both a coherent narrative about the war and discrete shorter narratives that stood on their own. In some cases, the independent nature of the individual ku (some of which originally entered the Heike repertoire as independent stories in the first place, like “Giō,” Book 1, episode 6) led to elaboration within that tradition.

Although there aren’t many records from the medieval period suggesting a widely agreed-upon hierarchy for ku, evidence from diaries reveals that even in the fifteenth century, some ku were more special than others. They were called 伝授物 denjūmono, or pieces for the initiated. In some of these early references, pieces are further identified as shōhiji (lesser secret pieces) and saihiji (most secret pieces), but not with consistency.

All the performance lineages that continued into the Edo period (1600-1868) are based on the Kakuichibon. By the Edo period, blind professionals (including reciters of the tale) had been organized into a guild, referred to as the Tōdōza, which held exclusive permission to perform and transmit the Heike, among other tasks. The blind tradition of Heike recitation has been carried into the present by Imai Tsutomu, of the Nagoya lineage, although his repertoire contains only eight episodes. His performance of part of the “Autumn Leaves” episode from Book Six can be found here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHCP8RkbfdA).

By the Edo period (1600-1868), amateurs from the samurai and merchant classes also began learning to chant Heike. These people were not among the stigmatized “blind,” and they wanted to learn the Heike simply for pleasure. In 1776, a text called Heike mabushi (The correct performance of Heike) was created for teaching these amateurs and for regularizing musical notation. Unlike the Tale of the Heike, Heike mabushi is organized following the order in which pieces were learned. The first book of Heike mabushi contains one ku from each Tale of the Heike chapter, the second, another ku from each, and so on through the general repertoire; these are followed by groups of ku centered on lists, files, and documents, all of which exist somewhere between the general repertoire and the secret pieces. Alison Tokita notes that most of the melodically and musically interesting ku in the general repertoire are taught first, suggesting that the learning process doesn’t go from easiest to hardest piece. This system gave performers an interesting “repertoire” to haul out on special occasions even if they didn’t make it very far in their studies: a few felicitous numbers, for example, could be performed at a wedding.[2]

If they made it through the general repertoire, these amateurs would learn pieces limited to the initiated (these are on your handout): two “lesser secret pieces” (Gion shōja and Engi seidai, the Divine Reign of the Engi Sovereign); three “greater secret pieces” (Shūron, The Doctrinal Dispute; Tsurugi no maki, the Chapter of the Swords; and Kagami no maki, the Chapter of the Mirrors) and The Initiates’ Scroll.