Part VI:

The practice of noh as a way of life.

The performance of noh as we see it today and as we have been describing it has, of course, evolved over time. Each new generation has added its stamp, interpreting traditional practices in a new light. Still the ideals and goals of Kannami, Zeami, and Zenchiku, Zeami's son-in-law and inheritor of some of his treatises, remain apt today. Their writings still speak to the modern actor. To understand the world of noh today, one must reach back to its medieval heritage, to some of the prevailing ideas of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The concept of a way or path (michi, also pronounced do) was central to the culture of that period (Konishi 1975, 1985; Pilgrim 1972; Nearman 1980). To follow a way is to immerse oneself in an activity, to practice it until one attains mastery. What one masters is not as important as the process of mastering. Anyone who attains true mastery, even in a humble art, enters a sphere of consciousness unknown to the average person. This consciousness might be defined as enlightenment or as art, for the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane has never been as well-defined in Japan as in the West, and aesthetic values have had as much force as moral ones.

Mastery in noh was seen by Zeami in his treatise Kyui as spanning nine levels from "the way of crudeness and leadenness" to "the art of the flower of peerless charm" (Rimer and Yamazaki 1984: 120-23). In explaining these types of mastery, and indeed in developing many aspects of the aesthetic-religious way of noh, Zeami draws on concepts from Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Esoteric Buddhism, especially the thought of Kukai (774-835) who systematized the secret rites of Indian origin which he had learned in China, provided some important underlying concepts for Zeami's art. Kukai held that the universe manifests itself through art, and that artistic activity leads the mind to identification with universal truth. Each human possesses three mysteries in which all secrets reside and through which enlightenment can be attained: 1) the mysteries of the body including hand gestures (mudra), postures of meditation, and manipulation of religious implements, 2) the mysteries of speech including true words (shingon) and secret formulae (mantra and darani), 3) the mysteries of the mind, methods of perceiving truth which often include the use of mandala, graphic representations of the cosmos (Tsunoda 1958: 137-75, and Ochi 1984:3-91).

Just as these three mysteries include the body, speech, and the mind, so a knowledge of noh is only possible through somatic, oral, and psychic immersion in the art. To practice noh, to know noh, is to have it ingrained in body and psyche�

As we have seen, the training of a noh performer aims at such knowledge and its results can be seen on many levels. A simple example is that a noh actor does not memorize a text as a string of words or a series of thoughts, but rather as a song to be sung. If you ask an actor about a particular line of text, he will immediately know what play it comes from and begin singing the appropriate section of the play in a low voice until he comes to the passage in question. Similarly, movements are not learned through verbal instructions or diagrams, but rather by the student dancing side by side with his teacher miming the dance until it becomes ingrained.

Another aspect of esoteric Buddhism which is of special importance to the practice of noh is the concept of secret transmission. The mysteries of esoteric Buddhism were transmitted orally from master to disciple, a relationship which was consequently extremely close. The innermost secrets were often transmitted only to a single outstanding disciple. This practice was adopted by various medieval Japanese arts including noh. The actors regard certain refinements of their art as secrets to be carefully guarded, to be passed on only to the initiated...

There are other levels at which secrets play an integral role in the life and training of a noh performer. Each step in the refinement of an actor's art is seen as the possession of a further secret. Performers are only taught as much as they can understand at their current level of skill�Indeed, for the uninitiated or unskilled the significance of a "secret" would not be apparent�

The medieval way of noh has been gradually transformed into a more modern concept of the profession of noh, but a dedication to and an understanding of the aesthetic-religious aspects of this art is found to a greater or lesser degree among all contemporary performers. Most professional noh performers give their entire lives to the practice of noh and continue to transmit their art to their sons and disciples. Noh performers are not actors in the sense that a Western actor is, performing Greek tragedy today, Shakespeare, Chekhov or Sam Shepard tomorrow, and soap operas whenever the need or opportunity arises. Noh actors are noh actors. They normally spend their lives immersed in the noh tradition, thoroughly trained to perform the classical repertory, and sincerely concerned with transmitting it intact�

The practice of noh and transferability.

Noh has been successfully transferred across six centuries and through a great amount of cultural and societal change. Although there were brief periods, most notably in the late fifteenth and late nineteenth centuries, when its popularity and patronage declined significantly, it has maintained an unbroken performance tradition. There are several factors that have made this possible. First is the strong tendency in Japanese culture for old forms (whether aesthetic, political or economic) to persist. Instead of being discarded, they are simply put on a side track and left to proceed in their own ways while new forms develop on parallel tracks. As is true of most Japanese arts, once noh was "perfected", noh performers felt it should be preserved rather than developed into new forms. Other performers created new theatres, such as the puppet theatre, kabuki, and various modern forms, which continue to exist alongside noh. These later arts drew on noh structures, techniques, and texts, but they did not destroy noh in the process.

Second, the support of the Tokugawa government (1603-1868), which used noh as a ritual in official functions and retained it as the theatre of the ruling warrior class, did much to preserve noh. Third, the emphasis on training as a life-time activity and the continuity between practice and performance and between learning and teaching have helped to maintain orthodox forms. Fourth, the identification of the sacred and the secular in the idea of noh as a way (michi) and the concordant practice of secret transmission meant that noh was painstakingly passed down among people who had dedicated their lives to the art.

Today the concept of noh as a way of life still fulfills many noh actors, but is found confining by others. Some young men trained by their fathers from childhood leave noh to follow other, more "modern" professions...

Among professional noh actors there are quite a number who, while remaining committed to the traditional repertory of noh, also try to reach beyond it. Experimentation includes the reconstruction of old plays whose performance traditions have been lost but whose texts remain. A successful example is the play Motomezuka which was active in the repertories of the Hosho and Kita schools...

Going one step further in their experimentation are performers who participate in productions of plays outside the noh tradition. One of the most successful plays in the modern Japanese theatre, for example, is Kinoshita Junji's Yuzuru (Twilight Crane), a story based on a popular folktale...

In the last century noh has also left its mark on western artists and theatre. Although they never saw noh performed, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats all admired the use of imagery in noh and Yeats made use of Fenollosa and Pond's noh translations to create his own plays for dancers. Bertolt Brecht made a translation of the noh play Taniko his basic text for Der Ja Sager and Der Nein Sager, (The Yea Sayer and the Nay Sayer) and was inspired by various eastern theatrical forms in developing his theory of alienation (verfundung). Benjamin Britten, who saw two performances of the noh play Sumidagawa during a visit to Japan in 1956, used it as the basis for his and William Plomer's church parable Curlew River. Mishima Yukio's psychologically oriented, modern noh plays are often performed in translation in Europe and North America, and noh troupes have performed traditional noh to acclaim in many countries�

Productions and experiments involving Western actors in noh practice also abound. The noh play Ikkaku Sennin (One Horned Hermit) was performed by American actors under the direction of Kita Sadayo at IASTA (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts) in 1964�

Finally there is a growing group of foreigners who live in Japan and are becoming increasingly proficient in traditional noh performance. For example, Monica Bethe, David Crandall, Richard Emmert�have received long years of training not only in acting but also in the instruments�

Thus it is clear that noh is attractive to a large number of artists, Japanese and foreign alike. The traditional theatre remains healthy in Japan and noh troupes increasingly travel abroad. Experiments with noh practices and noh texts occur in many countries with and without the involvement of professional noh performers. Many aspects of noh have not only proven to be cross-culturally transferable, but also to have potentials for development that go far beyond the traditional bounds of noh. There remains however, the question of just what one can and should label "noh." The noh system is a totality of and in itself. Every element contains the essence and reflects the whole, but none constitutes noh itself unless it appears in its proper place within the entire system of noh practice.


*The excerpts from the above essay are taken from the book "By Means of Performance", 1990. Cambridge University Press. Editors- Richard Schechner and Willa Appel.