A mixture of the faddish and
the genuine, but whose fault was it? The name Kizuna was known all over the
nation and their music was making people feel good. But when the side that
takes over as fashion tips the scales, then the momentum slows down and things
are taken for granted or forgotten; or worse still, become fossilized
platitudes. And there was always the possibility that this could happen to The
Kizunas.
As if a harbinger of what was
to come, or indeed what was actually happening, a trivial incident occurred at
a performance in the capital. Just as they had finished their last song, a
sequin from Ms. Kizuna’s right sleeve broke its thread and flickered down to
the floor of the stage. It happened in an instant and only the people in the
very first row could have noticed it, if at all. But to the Kizunas it was like
a cast iron plate thudding into the wooden boards beneath their feet. And as
they came off, they realized that the loud applause that always accompanied
their exit to the wings was a subdued patter. They could hear their footsteps
padding off into the dressing room; they had never before heard the rustle of
their clothes as they were going off.
Is this what Zeami meant by opprobrium from the masses? Were these
the first stages of losing the Flower?
The Kizunas flopped down into their chairs. They were in decline; people didn’t
care about them that much any more. What had changed? Why were they not
considered to be as necessary as before? Was it inevitable that a good thing
cannot last forever? Yes, the climate of the times had changed; people had
changed; feelings, emotions, and lifestyles had been re-prioritized to suit
values recognized and reinforced, even coerced, by society as it now was. The
Kizunas were slowly being forgotten, their fame and meaning tapering to a
hardly discernible footnote in the back of people’s minds.
