For background on the Noh theater see the article on this site "Noh - A Brief Summary by Beata Kubiak Ho-Chi".

The Play - Kazuraki 

Sources: Hirotakansyokai website http://hirota-kansyokai.la.coocan.jp/eibun/images/5kaiKazuraki.pdf and A Guide to No, P.G. O'Neill, Hinoki Shoten, 1929, p. 76-77.

Characters

Act 1 Act 2

Waki Waki-tsure Shite Kyōgen Nochi-shite

a yamabushi priest  two attendant priests a village woman a local person the goddess of Mt. Kazuraki

A traveling monk leaves Mt. Haguro (in Yamagata-Prefecture) on his pilgrimage to Kazuraki-Shrine.  Having arrived at Mt. Kazuraki in Yamato (in present-day Nara Prefecture), and after crossing over the peaks of mountains, he is suddenly caught in a heavy snowfall and loses his way.  A local woman with a bundle of sticks on her back finds him in trouble, and feels pity for him.  She offers him to stay overnight at her humble cottage down in a shadowy valley, and entertains him by building a fire with shimoto - a bundle of sticks collected in deep snow, much famed in Mt. Kazuraki.  Not knowing what it is, he asks her about it. She explains, citing an old waka-poem, that the sticks bound together by a creeper reed became so famous as to be commonly associated in their minds with the mountain, and narrates tenderly of poetry and Yamato dances.  At last she tells that she, the Kazuraki Goddess, was ordered by En no Gyoja¹ to build a rock bridge from Mt. Kazuraki to Mt. Ohmine, but failed in doing so because she did not want to work during the day, hating to expose her ugly looks to the world.  Thus she incurred his anger and was bound to eternal agony and suffering. She, therefore, begs him to free her from bondage. 

In the stillness of night, as his clothes dry out, the monk starts his religious service.  Drawn by the healing power of the religious chanting, the woman appears in the shape of the goddess, and, freed from her bonds, performs before him the Yamato dance in the snow and in the moonlight, so gracefully as if surveying the whole expanse of the Yamato field from a mountain top.  As the early light of dawn approaches, however, she hides herself in a rock cave, fearing to expose her looks. (summary by Takao Saijo)

¹ En no Gyoja: a semi-legendary sorcerer endowed with supernatural powers, would order spirits and demons to do his bidding, and when they refused, he would bind them to a spell.