A Day in the Life of the Nun Rengetsu and A Little Jealousy

A young man arrives at Rengetsu’s hermitage carrying a poem he believes will win her love. The nun, a maker of pottery who has known marriage, motherhood, and bereavement, speaks instead of a freedom beyond possessive attachment. Across four scenes, visitors question her work, an elderly monk offers simple kindness, and desire takes a threatening turn before dawn brings another kind of labor.

Alongside the drama stands A Little Jealousy, seventy short poems in which affection and resentment share the same breath. Sake cups, hair combs, face powder, a torn paper screen, and the feel of spring darkness become precise measures of longing. These poems can be tender, teasing, wounded, or unexpectedly severe.

Okamoto Kanoko (1889–1939) writes across devotional and erotic experience without flattening either. This new English translation preserves the play’s stage directions and the poetry sequence’s ten thematic sections, with concise notes on cultural and Buddhist references.