Ikuta Atsumori

• Author: Konparu Zenpô
• Japanese: 生田敦盛 (Ikuta Atsumori)

Ikuta Atsumori is a Noh play by Konparu Zenpô, generally identified as a second-category play (a "warrior" play). The plot centers around the young son of Taira no Atsumori, who is seeking his father.

Along with [[Hatsuyuki], Kurokawa, and two others, Ikuta Atsumori was identified by Zenpô or his followers as his five muchû ("dreaming") plays. Like these other plays, Ikuta Atsumori deviates in a few significant ways from the standard pattern of earlier Noh plays.

Plot

The play begins with the waki character, a priest & follower of Hônen, explaining that he adopted a baby boy ten years earlier. He relates that when he told his congregation about the boy, one of the women listening claimed to be the boy's mother, and said that his father was the young samurai Taira no Atsumori, who was killed in the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani the previous year. (Atsumori's own story is told in Zeami's play Atsumori.) Hearing of this, the boy decides to undertake a week-long prayer session, in search of his father. As the action of the play begins in earnest, it is the seventh day of that week, and the boy has been told by the kami of the shrine that he can find his father in the province of Tsu.

In the second act, the priest and the boy travel to Tsu, and in a forest known as Ikuta, the ghost/spirit of the slain warrior Atsumori appears. He and his son reunite briefly, before Atsumori must return to hell (presumably, the warring Realm of Shura).

Construction

The first act, unusually, features no shite actor. As in Zenpô's play Hatsuyuki, this allows a greater opportunity for a kokata (child actor) to perform; unlike Hatsuyuki, which unusually lacks a waki, Ikuta Atsumori contains a relatively typical waki role.

References

• Beng Choo Lim, "Performing Furyû Nô: The Theatre of Konparu Zenpô," Asian Theatre Journal 22:1 (2005), 39.