Noh Theatre: Japan’s Classical Performance of Spirit, Stillness, and Storytelling

Noh theatre, traditional Japanese theatrical form and one of the oldest extant theatrical forms in the world.

Noh—its name derived from nō, meaning “talent” or “skill”—is unlike Western narrative drama. Rather than being actors or “representers” in the Western sense, Noh performers are simply storytellers who use their visual appearances and their movements to suggest the essence of their tale rather than to enact it. Little “happens” in a Noh drama, and the total effect is less that of a present action than of a simile or metaphor made visual. The educated spectators know the story’s plot very well, so that what they appreciate are the symbols and subtle allusions to Japanese cultural history contained in the words and movements.

Noh developed from ancient forms of dance drama and from various types of festival drama at shrines and temples that had emerged by the 12th or 13th century. Noh became a distinctive form in the 14th century and was continually refined up to the years of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867). It became a ceremonial drama performed on auspicious occasions by professional actors for the warrior class—as, in a sense, a prayer for peace, longevity, and the prosperity of the social elite. Outside the noble houses, however, there were performances that popular audiences could attend. The collapse of the feudal order with the Meiji Restoration (1868) threatened the existence of Noh, though a few notable actors maintained its traditions. After World War II the interest of a larger audience led to a revival of the form.

There are five types of Noh plays. The first type, the kami (“god”) play, involves a sacred story of a Shintō shrine; the second, shura mono (“fighting play”), centres on warriors; the third, katsura mono (“wig play”), has a female protagonist; the fourth type, varied in content, includes the gendai mono (“present-day play”), in which the story is contemporary and “realistic” rather than legendary and supernatural, and the kyōjo mono (“madwoman play”), in which the protagonist becomes insane through the loss of a lover or child; and the fifth type, the kiri or kichiku (“final” or “demon”) play, features devils, strange beasts, and supernatural beings. A typical Noh play is relatively short. Its dialogue is sparse, serving as a mere frame for the movement and music. A standard Noh program consists of three plays selected from the five types so as to achieve both an artistic unity and the desired mood; invariably, a play of the fifth type is the concluding work. Kyōgen, humorous sketches, are performed as interludes between plays. A program may begin with an okina, which is essentially an invocation for peace and prosperity in dance form.

Three major Noh roles exist: the principal actor, or shite; the subordinate actor, or waki; and the kyōgen actors, one of whom is often involved in Noh plays as a narrator. Each is a specialty having several “schools” of performers, and each has its own “acting place” on the stage. Subsidiary roles include those of attendant (tsure), of a “boy” (kokata), and of nonspeaking “walk-on” (tomo).

Accompaniment is provided by an instrumental chorus (hayashi) of four musicians—who play a flute (nōkan), small hand drum (ko-tsuzumi), large hand drum (ō-tsuzumi), and large drum (taiko)—and by a chorus (jiutai) consisting of 8–10 singers. The recitation (utai) is one of the most important elements in the performance. Each portion of the written text carries a prescription of the mode of recitation—as well as of accompanying movement or dance—although application of this may be varied slightly. Each type of dialogue and song has its own name: the sashi is like a recitative; the uta are the songs proper; the rongi, or debate, is intoned between chorus and shite; and the kiri is the chorus with which the play ends.

About 2,000 Noh texts survive in full, of which about 230 remain in the modern repertoire. Zeami (1363–1443) and his father, Kan’ami Kiyotsugu (1333–84), wrote many of the most beautiful and exemplary of Noh texts, including Matsukaze (“Wind in the Pines”) by Kan’ami and Takasago by Zeami. Zeami also formulated the principles of the Noh theatre that guided its performers for many centuries. His Kakyō (1424; “The Mirror of the Flower”) detailed the composition, the recitation, the mime and dance of the performers, and the staging principles of Noh. These constituted the first major principle of Noh, which Zeami described as monomane, or the “imitation of things.” He advised on the selection of properly classical characters to be portrayed, from legend or life, and on the proper integration of the visual, the melodic, and the verbal to open the eye and ear of the mind to the supreme beauty he crystallized in the second main principle, yūgen. Meaning literally “dark” or “obscure,” yūgen suggested beauty only partially perceived—fully felt but barely glimpsed by the viewer.

Two factors have allowed Noh to be transmitted from generation to generation yet remain fairly close to earlier forms: first, the preservation of texts, containing detailed prescriptions of recitation, dance, mime, and music, and, second, the direct and fairly exact transmission of performing skills. On the other hand, Noh was subject to the changing preferences of new audiences, and new styles and patterns inevitably evolved. Further, there was constant refinement of received forms to express more clearly or intensely the objectives of Noh, but these were always only minor deviations from traditional form. Even the differences between the five schools of shite performers represent only slight variations in the melodic line of the recitation or in the patterns of the furi or mai mime and dance.

In the 20th century some experimentation took place. Toki Zenmaro and Kita Minoru produced Noh plays that had new content but adhered to traditional conventions in production. Mishima Yukio, on the other hand, took old plays and added new twists while retaining the old themes. Experiments to elaborate the humorous kyōgen interludes and the attempt to add (in the manner of Kabuki theatre) a long passage onto the stage through the audience and a spotlight on the shite received little public acceptance. Instead, Noh has been sustained in the postwar period by theatregoers who have come to enjoy it not simply for its status as a “classic theatre” or because of innovations but as a perfected and refined contemporary stage art.