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NUE MYTH
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NUE MYTH
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| PROVENANCE: Robert E. Haynes Elliott D. Long |
$1000.00 |
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"A very fine shakudo nanako base metal decorated with a scene from a Noh drama. The figures are in takabori and gold zogan. Dates to ca. 1600." (Haynes & Long) The Nue in Noh is a monster, which has a monkey’s head, tiger’s legs, and a snake’s tail (and racoon’s body in the Tale of the Heike). A legend says that it was called Nue because its crying voice sounds similar to that of the White’s Thrush. It might be thought that general audiences would prefer a monster-extermination story in which a hero slays the monster and lives happily ever after. However, Noh dramas often set a defeated or destroyed character as the protagonist in, for example, plays based on records of battles or confrontations with monsters; they describe the view of the ones being destroyed, and, through the description of their sorrow, confront us with the shadow of the human world and the dark side of our lives. In the Noh piece “Nue” the ghost of the monster Nue plays the main character and narrates his hopeless, destructive fate in detail. The last scene of this drama is impressive as Monster Nue, exterminated by the hero, Minamoto no Yorimasa, set off to sink into the darkness of the Yodo River, implores the moon at the edge of the mountains to illuminate the darkness in which it stays. We wonder whether the Nue, which sank into the water together with the moon, was saved. |
   
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 Sato Kanzan Hakogaki (1964) with two seals. (Very Rare) |
How to Purchase this Kozuka: |
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A Collaboration of Robert E. Haynes and Elliott D. Long |
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