Part II:

Once the master teacher has certified that a young actor has attained sufficient professional proficiency, most commonly when he is in his mid-twenties, he may move out of the master-teacher's house and begin to train students himself�

Both live-in disciples and young professionals can participate in youth training groups (yoseikai) which generally consist of all the young performers in a geographical area who are aspiring to become senior professionals. These groups put on regular full noh performances after which they critique each others' performances and are also critiqued by senior professionals associated with the group. These performances are generally not open to the public, but are an extremely important part of training and mutual support system for young performers. This system is supported by the national and prefectural governments and by professional noh actors resident in the area. After five years in the youth training group, the young actor may join one of a variety of more loosely structured study groups which provide him with continued opportunities for partially supervised performance. At the same time the young actors will be called upon to participate in fully professional performances as chorus members, tsure, junior stage attendants (koken) and increasingly as shite (main characters).

The role of stage attendant is an important one which requires some explanation. The stage attendant sits at the back of the stage right near the bridge from the time the shite enters until his exit. A seeming non-participant except when he adjusts the shite's garments, sets out or removes a prop, or performs an on-stage costume change, the stage-attendant in fact has the responsibility for making sure that all the details of the performance proceed smoothly, so that the main actor is entirely free of any worries and can concentrate on his role. Should the shite forget a line, the stage attendant serves as prompter, and should the shite become incapacitated in any way, the stage attendant steps in as an understudy�

The plays in the noh repertory are ranked according to difficulty, and an actor must have the permission of the head of the school to perform certain plays�The particular plays which serve as landmarks of development vary somewhat from school to school, but the four plays which most often serve this function are Shakkyo, Midare, Okina, and Dojoji. The last is most often performed when the actor is in his late twenties to mid-thirties. The Kanze school actor Tsumura Reijiro claims: "For a Noh actor this play (Dojoji) represents the single most important barrier to be overcome in order to be accepted as a fully qualified member of his profession. The critical evaluation of this first performance is of such importance that it can dominate the course of the professional life."

In addition to learning his own part, each noh performer is also trained in most of the other roles necessary to produce a play. Shite or main actors memorize entire plays, learning to sing all the roles except that of the kyogen, which is not considered part of the play proper. They also learn to beat at least two of the three drums and frequently to play the flute. Kyogen actors, who, in addition to performing in the comic plays (called kyogen) between noh plays, also perform the interlude scene between acts of a noh play and sometimes have minor roles within a noh play, usually learn something of all the arts, although the music for the independent kyogen plays is much simpler than for noh. The training for waki or secondary actors emphasizes rhythm and song�An actor often starts to learn the instruments before he is ten years old by studying with professional instrumentalists. As a child he will typically begin with a stick drum� Thus by the time the actor is a young professional he will not only have learned to chant and dance all the plays in the repertory, but he will also know, at an advanced amateur level, how to play the instrumental parts.

Another route is open to young people who want to become professionals but who did not receive childhood training. They typically become interested in noh in their teens or early twenties, usually through amateur lessons, often through noh clubs at colleges and universities. When they decide to turn professional, they must be accepted as live-in disciples by a certified master and belatedly learn all the arts of noh performance.

An even more radical experiment began in the summer of 1984. The National Noh Theatre in Tokyo, built by the government and opened in September 1983, has established a program to train twenty students to become instrumentalists, kyogen and waki actors, as it was felt that the numbers of these performers is not equal to the demand. Shite actors will be continued to train in the traditional manner, although the National Noh Theatre will also help to encourage their training�

Though performers trained in a non-traditional fashion are accepted within the noh world, it is too soon to tell if any person who began his training so late will ever become a great performer. Most noh performers insist that these "newcomers" will always lack a certain something in their performance; this "something" is identified as that which is attained unconsciously and viscerally through the traditional early childhood training and which does not in any way rely on intellectualization.

At every level of training, teaching concentrates on form, even though the art of the performer is judged by his expressive intensity. While learning the form, the young performer is expected to make it his own and fill it with meaning. This process is regarded as too personal, too individualized to teach overtly. Yet it is exactly this which constitutes the secret art and which the observant student hopes to gain from a master. The observant master in turn nurtures the spiritual growth of his trainee by ignoring it, so as not to encourage self-conscious manipulation.