Twilight of a Crane

Summary of the Drama

Twilight Crane, a contemporary Japanese play by Junji Kinoshita (1914–2006), begins when a group of children arrive at the isolated country hut of Yohyo, a peasant. They are regular visitors because Yohyo’s wife Tsu will good-naturedly play with them and sing, even now in the snowy winter. They wake the sleeping Yohyo, and though he grouches at them, he comes out to play when they cannot find Tsu because she has gone out. When she does return, Yohyo lovingly persuades her to join him with the children.

Conflict arrives with the appearance of the remaining two characters who are men from the village: Sodo, who hopes to persuade Yohyo to let him broker the fine cloth Tsu weaves, and Unzu, who is Sodo’s sidekick, and previously has purchased this fine cloth. They barge right into the unoccupied house and only apologize when Tsu finds them. They question her about the fantastic cloth—could it be the famed semba ori (made from 1000 feathers plucked from a live crane), but she appears not to understand, and flutters, birdlike, away.

Sodo and Unzu want Yohyo to make Tsu weave more cloth, but he has noticed that every time she weaves she becomes thinner. They wonder at his luck in getting Tsu as his wife and find that she arrived at his door one night and has been loving wife since then. Sodo recalls to himself a folktale about a man helping a crane once. The crane became the man’s wife in gratitude. Could this folktale be happening in real life?

Because of Sodo’s promise of more money than he has ever imagined and travel to Tokyo, Yohyo persuades Tsu to weave more cloth, even though he had promised she would not need to do so. She knows she is losing her simple husband to the greedy villagers. She agrees to weave again, and reminds Yohyo he must NEVER look in on her while she is weaving.

Sodo and Unzu have been hiding nearby. When they see Tsu has gone to her weaving, they rush to fine Yohyo. Sodo intentionally breaks the “no look” rule and peeps into the weaving room where he sees a crane weaving in place of Tsu. Unzu and then Yohyo also peek.

When Tsu emerges very thin and weak, she has made not one, but two beautiful pieces of cloth. She knows he has broken the “no look” promise also. She tells him she has lost most all her feathers and now has just barely enough to allow her to fly back. She asks him to keep one piece of cloth because she has made it for him with her heart (not for material gain). Tsu disappears from the stage just as the children come once again to play. One of them sees a crane flying away in the distance.