http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCcAz7SutAM&feature=BFa&list=PLC5CB745238C2779C&index=8
This is 'Catching Plovers' the comic interlude between the two Noh plays. A servant is trying to talk a saki merchant into giving his master a batch of saki for a party on credit, but the master already has run up a big debt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN201YHjjFE&feature=BFa&list=PLC5CB745238C2779C&index=13
This is slightly similar to the end of the second play 'Unrin-In' which also features a cherry tree in bloom and a character dancing in fine attire. In Unrin in, a young man has a vision reminding him of the supposed author of 'Tales of Ise' (Ariwara no Narihira), that he has always liked, so he goes on a journey to a temple related to the story. There he explains his presence to another person there, and in the final act Ariwara no Narihira himself appears, explains the Tales and dances. That final act went on so long that everyone starting drifting off into tranquility. Even the flautist and drummer were nodding off. I had the curious sensation of losing a sense of time, that it could have gone on for 10 minutes or more than an hour. Just recently I read a full translation and found that sensation was intentional because in part of it, Ariwara no Narihira says something along the lines of, "Like the stories of the Tales of Ise, this dream dance is timeless and eternal / transcends time."
The depth of allusion in Japanese arts is incredible. Eg: without extra knowledge this image by Yoshitoshi (from Wikipedia) looks like a beautiful print of a man relaxing in the evening:
But it is also a picture of Ariwara no Narihira, the famous poet, so it also calls to mind the whole of the Tales of Ise, since he is the theoretical author and hero of the anonymous work. More than that though, because he is looking at pampas grass, it calls to mind a ghost story about Narihira that does not appear in the tales - that one evening, passing through a field he heard a voice reciting the first few lines of a waka saying 'when the wind blows my eyes hurt'. He completed the poem and the following morning encountered a skull in the field, so old that the pampas reeds were growing up through it's eye sockets. Seeing an old skull in this particular field that could recite Waka, Ariwara knew that it must be Ono no Komachi, the famous female writer, about who there is a legend that she died around here. So this picture also calls to mind the story of Ono no Komachi, a beautiful and talented poet who taunted many suitors in her youth, but was rejected as she aged and thereby gained a deep enough understanding of the buddhist notions of impermanence to reprimand priests when they told her off for sitting on a shrine. So this is also a picture of buddhist principles of impermance, reinforced by the skull, the dry dead pampas reeds, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU2tZ2J-MoA
This is supposed to be Takasago, but it looks quite a lot different to the one I saw. Nonetheless, a good quality recording that gives a better idea of what it sounds like. Takasago is about a priest going on pilgrimage who asks a peasant couple why two pine trees that are very far away from each other in different towns are known as 'two pines'. They answer that just as a husband and wife always remain a couple no matter how far from each other they are, so too these two pines are known as 'two pines'. The old peasant couple are revealed to be the spirits of those two pines. There is an additional subtext, where in Japanese literature there is a familiar conceit where poetry is said to be 'leaves of speech', alluding to the sound of air in leaves, growing from the root of mind/feeling/tradition. Pine trees are evergreen, generally contrasted to Cherry Blossoms, so there is an allusion to the permanence of the pine spirits relationships, but also to the permanence of poetry, poetic tradition and the connection that it forms between people, between hearer and lister now, and across time between ancient people and people today.
