Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 2002

Goodman sees the play as a "Catholic drama couched in Buddhist terms," arguing primarily that the character of Shinobu expresses the Buddhist desire to extinguish the Self and escape the cycle of karma.(16) Certainly there are Buddhist elements in the play, including these expressions. It might be argued, however, that The Head of Mary is much more of a Christian drama, couched in the material culture of Christianity than in Buddhist culture and theology.

In his analysis of the play, J. Thomas Rimer sees the play "constructed in the form of a prayer," a rather Christian prayer (although Rimer never offers any evidence of this assertion).(17) More accurately, perhaps, the play contains prayers, mostly in the fourth and final act, which begins with a prayer to the Virgin Mary by Shika:

She then stops praying, feeling that it has no effect: "Aaaah, it's no good! No good!"(19) Miraculously, the head of Mary begins speaking in answer to the prayer. If prayer is indeed a conversation with the divine, Tanaka dramatizes it as a conversation between the believer (Shika) and the miraculous speaking stone head. Mary engages Shika and the other petitioners, offering them comfort, offering several times to let them "suckle at my breast," saying, "First [page 109] drink, then I will listen to your prayers."(20) A prayer to the "Sweet Mother" is then heard being sung off stage as Shinobu begins to lift the giant head. The play ends with this complex symbol of prayer being answer through action of the petitioner.

While Rimer argues for a prayer structure for this drama, I see the drama as being constructed more in the manner of a well-made play, a form which the playwright has previously employed. Tanaka's previous work, Kyoiku, argues Rimer, is a well-made play.(21) I also see The Head of Mary as a well-made play, with its four act structure (with a concluding confrontation in each), its last act short and climactic, and its secret knowledge that the audience learns but that the characters do not always become aware. I have argued elsewhere that this play owes a dramatic debt to the well-made plays of Ibsen, a playwright who often utilized the well-made play structure in his dramas.(22) I also suggest that the lifting of Mary's head may be equated in some ways with Nora's door slam or Hedda's final shot. I have further argued elsewhere that shingeki is essentially a Christian form, rooted in the Christian drama of the West.(23) While Buddhist elements will naturally occur in a play written and performed in a culture dominated in many ways by Buddhism, The Head of Mary does not use as many Buddhist terms and symbols as Goodman suggests. Shingeki is a form rooted in the Western, Christian tradition, and Tanaka's play remains equally rooted in that form.

Nagai Takashi's book, Nagasaki no kane (The Bells of Nagasaki) is, according to Treat, "without a doubt the single best-known work of Nagasaki atomic bomb literature."(24) Written over the year following the dropping of the bomb, the book is part autobiography, part summary of the effect of the atomic bomb on human anatomy (Nagai was a doctor and university professor), and part theological exploration of the nature and purpose of the suffering of Nagai and other victims of the bomb. Nagai completed the book in August of 1946, but because of the objections of the American occupation censors it was not published until [page 110] 1949.(25) An immediate best seller, the book was subsequently made into a narrative film. Nagai wrote twenty more books between 1946 and his death in 1951, but The Bells of Nagasaki remains his greatest work. It is a distinctly Christian work, full of prayers, thanks given to God, and discussions of His nature, purposes, and will.

In 1996, Father Ernest Ferlita S.J., a playwright with a Doctor of Fine Arts in playwriting from Yale, and a professor of drama and speech at Loyola University in New Orleans, adapted Nagai's book into a one-act drama to accompany his earlier work, The Mask of Hiroshima. The Spectrum Theatre in New York presented both plays as a double-bill in that same year, directed by Ken Lowstetter. Whereas Tanaka's play is a shingeki or proto-angura piece rooted in Western, Christian drama, The Bells of Nagasaki is an adaptation of a Japanese autobiography, rooted in the Noh theatre of Japan, adapted by an American playwright, for an American company, to be presented to an American audience.

The companion piece, The Mask of Hiroshima, which had won the Christian Theatre Artist Guild Prize in 1977 and was subsequently adapted for radio under the title The City of Seven Rivers (taking third prize in the International Catholic Radio Drama competition in 1982 and first prize in the 1985 American Radio Theatre Scriptwriting Competition), had been written almost two decades before the Nagai adaptation. It was published as The Mask of Hiroshima in The Best Short Plays of 1989, and subsequently in a single volume with Bells of Nagasaki entitled Two Cities.

This first play, The Mask of Hiroshima, tells the story of a young couple in Hiroshima, dying from the effects of the bomb while the wife gives birth to a baby she will not live to see grow up. Set in 1952, seven years after the bombing, the play waivers between poetic symbolism and realistic conversation as the characters debate the approaching birth. Hisa, the wife, dies after giving birth to their son while the chorus recites imagery from the Book of Revelation. Interestingly, Ferlita made the family in The Mask of Hiroshima Catholic as well, quoting from sermons, and the Bible, crossing themselves, and praying; though statistically speaking there were far fewer Christians in Hiroshima than there were in Nagasaki. Nagasaki, as noted above, was known for its active Catholic parish and its huge cathedral. Ferlita's choice [page 111] was interesting, if not unlikely, for the Church was almost non-existent in Hiroshima at the time.

I should note that The Mask of Hiroshima displays an affinity for Noh. The script contains lines from Nishikigi, Awoi no uye and Genjo, classic Noh plays that Ferlita found in translation in The Classic Noh Theatre in Japan by Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa. The set is described as a bare stage with a raised platform at the rear: "On the wooden panels behind the platform is a painting of a Japanese pine tree."(26) The pine tree suggests a Noh stage, which also features a painted pine tree on the rear wall. Lastly, the play is structured episodically, with a chorus and choral leader chanting songs of commentary and narrative in between the dialogues of the main characters. While the play does not follow a standard Noh structure corresponding to jo-ha-kyu, nor do the characters reflect the roles of shite or waki or kyogen, for example, this earlier play of Ferlita's unmistakably carries the influence of Noh and combines elements from that theatre with the realistic theatre of the West to create an original fusion piece about the effects of the Hiroshima bomb.

The Bells of Nagasaki is very loosely adapted from Nagai's book, following a similar psuedo-Noh structure, complete with chorus singing evocative songs, alternating with narrative episodes from the main characters. While I have argued that Goodman is inaccurate when he states Maria no kubi is a Japanese Catholic play couched in Buddhist terms, I also argue that this adaptation of Nagai's book is an American Catholic play couched in Noh (and therefore Buddhist and Shinto) styles.

Noh is a medieval Japanese theatrical form whose aesthetic comes from Zen Buddhism. Goto Hajime sees in Noh the "harmonization...of entertainment and religion."(27) Benito Ortolani, in his comprehensive survey The Japanese Theatre observes that the Noh has origins in both Kagura shamanistic rituals and Buddhist temple performances. Noh, he concludes, represents a blend of the performative cultures and aesthetics of both Buddhism and Shinto.(28) In his treatises, Zeami turns to the language and concepts of Buddhism to explain how to write and [page 112] perform Noh. As Shingeki is a distinctly Western, Christian form, so Noh is a distinctly Japanese, Buddhist form.(29)

As noted above, this adaptation is very free in its handling of Nagai's text. The book begins with a narrative of August 9th, before, during, and after the detonation of the bomb. Chapter Two, entitled "The Bomb", begins with the story of Chimoto-san, an acquaintance of Nagai's. Ferlita begins his adaptation with the chorus leader relating the story of Chimoto-san watching the bomb drop and experiencing its effects, while the actor playing Chimoto-san mimes the action and dances, as would a character in a Noh play. Nagai's text also relates many others' experiences of the moment of detonation – Tagawa, Furue, Kato, Takami, etc. – while Ferlita's adaptation moves from Chimoto at the moment of the burst to Nagai, sitting in the ruins of Urakami Cathedral seven weeks later, without mentioning any of the other accounts.

The rest of the adaptation is largely a conversation between Nagai and his friend Yamada Ichitaro, in which they discuss the events of the bomb and the days that followed. Eventually, Yamada reads the text of Nagai's funeral oration for the Catholic victims of the bomb, which is included in the original book.

Ferlita employs several dramaturgical strategies to adapt this polymorphous narrative and medical analysis into a Noh-like drama of less than an hour. The chorus and the chorus leader narrate much of the story and provide strong images through language. For example, they describe Nagai finding the body of his wife three days after the bomb fell:

As in Noh, the chorus occasionally speaks for the characters. Also as in Noh, the chorus describes action that has already taken place off-stage or in the past. The powerful image of the burned and melted rosary suggest the destructive power and heat of the bomb. But even in the image of the destroyed rosary, Nagai (and Ferlita) find a positive interpretation: she died praying.

As Yamada and Nagai discuss the bombing, Yamada offers one interpretation: "some people say the A-bomb was tenbatsu, a punishment from heaven."(31) In response, the chorus quotes from the Bible a passage not found in Nagai's text:

This passage, from the Gospel of Luke (13:4) is an interpolation from Ferlita, offering a biblical response to the argument put forth by some Japanese (and mouthed in the play by Yamada) that death and destruction are punishments from God for sinners. All can and will die, only those who repent and live in faith will go to Heaven upon death.

Having introduced this theme, Ferlita returns to Nagai's narrative, in which he relates the death by burning of twenty-seven nuns who sang "Salve Regina" as they died, "just like our first Christian martyrs / when they were crucified on Nishizaka hill."(33) Here Ferlita, after Nagai, connects the victims of the A-bomb with the Nagasaki martyrs under the Tokugawa persecutions. This linkage generates meaning by making those who died in the bomb's explosion martyrs for their faith. As its major theme, the play asserts that the bomb was not proof that God does not care, or worse, does not exist. Conversely, the play asserts that the [page 114] bomb allowed Nagasaki Christians to witness to others by dying for their faith. In other words, the martyrdom that the bomb brought is proof of God, God's love, and the faith of those who died.

Nagai (and Ferlita) see Nagasaki's Christians as sacrificial victims: "the lamb without blemish," whose deaths imitate Christ's death on the cross.(34) As promised in the Gospels, Nagai sees those who have died in Christ as receiving eternal life:

Nagai, in the original text, sees the Christians killed by the bomb as those worthy of sacrifice and eternal life. Those who survived are not in heaven, but rather left in a living purgatory, giving the opportunity to repent and become better Christians before it is too late. The victims are not victims but martyrs, witnesses, and models of Christian behavior to be emulated. Nagai's closing speech, as written by Ferlita, invokes the language and imagery of the rapture: sinners have been left behind, while worthy Christians have ascended into God's presence.(36)