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MEDIEVAL

JAPAN Heiankyo = Kyoto

Edo = Tokyo

0 CJ

Fig 1 Some important locations in medieval Japan

THE TRADITIONAL THEATRE OF JAPAN Kyogen, Noh, Kabuki, and Puppetry

John Wesley Harris

;911,.1;,1;r-l The Edwi~ Kf ellen Press

Lewiston-Queenston-Larnpeter

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harris, John Wesley. The traditional theatre of Japan : kyogen, noh, kabuki and puppetry/ John Wesley Harris.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7734-5798-4 I. Performing arts--Japan--History. l. Title.

PN292 I .H366 2006 79 I .0952--dc22

2006041952

hors serie.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

The Edwin Mellen Press Box 450

Lewiston, New York USA 14092-0450

The Edwin Mellen Press Box 67

Queenston, Ontario CANADA LOS !LO

The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales

UNITED KINGDOM SA48 SL T

Printed in the United States of America

CHAPTER4

The nature and history of the noh play

Noh, the drama of 'skill', whose origins were touched upon in the last chapter, is

normally acted entirely by men I on a unique kind of stage (see Figs 3 and 4). The

stage and the raised causeway that leads to it (the hashigakari or 'bridge') both have a roof over them. This is because, in its original form, noh was played in the

open air, and the stage part of the theatre, which probably then lacked a 'bridge',

was a pavilion erected for the performance of the sacred kagura dance, the four

pillars supporting the roof being used to define the consecrated space in which the

dance took place.2 This sense of sacredness has persisted even into modem times,

and a new noh stage still requires to be blessed before any performance can be

given on it. The stage is made out of Japanese cypress wood (hinoki), and the theatre as a whole has proportions that are very satisfactory to the eye. The floor

on which the performance takes place looks as if it is highly polished, but the

bean-curd residue called okara with which it is annointed daily actually provides a

slightly sticky, non-slip surface.

The stage area has virtually no decoration, except for the painting of a pine-

tree on the back-wall and stems of bamboo on the wall which stands at right-angles

to it, to the right of the rear stage (all positions on stage in this account are

described from the audience's point of view). These decorations are traditional,

and some Japanese believe that they simply recall the original open-air nature of

the setting, when noh plays were performed under a famous pine-tree near the

Kasuga Shrine in Nara, and clumps of living bamboo were used to mark out the

entrance and exit points for the actors. However, both the action and language of

noh plays are very symbolic, and according to the classical conventions of poetic

imagery, the pine-tree implies 'pining' for the past - the Japanese word 'matsu'

having the same two meanings as the word 'pine' in English - whilst the knotted

stems of the bamboo are used to symbolise the trials and tribulations of the world.

Since these two elements - the sorrows of life and regrets concerning the past -

seem to characterise the majority of noh plays, the decoration may well be thematic.

The performance of noh

The performance begins with the entry of the musicians - three drummers and a

flute-player - who approach the stage along the hashigakari, dressed in formal court costume of the late middle-ages, with its broad, stiff shoulders. They take up

their position on the rear stage, in front of the painting of the pine-tree - the hip-

drummer and shoulder-drummer on stools slightly to left and right of centre

respectively, whilst the two other musicians squat down on the stage floor beside

them, the stick-drummer to their left and the flute-player to their right (see Fig 4).

Next to appear are the members of the chorus, who also wear formal court dress.

They enter quickly through a low sliding door (kirido) at the back of the right side of the rear stage, below the painted bamboos. This 'concealed' entrance, which is

often jokingly called 'the bellyache door' because the actors have to double up to

get through it, is mostly for chorus use, but occasionally assistants and very minor

characters make their entry there. The most important characters all make their

entrances and exits along the hashigakari,

The first character to appear is played by the waki, the supporting actor,

and he sets the play going with an announcement of who he is, where he is

supposed to be, and why he is there. This speech is usually delivered from the

'naming place' which is beside the shite pillar (the pillar which rises where the

downstage edge of the hashigakari meets the stage). After this he moves to take

up a position, usually seated, just above the pillar downstage right, which is

named after him. This side position probably explains his name, because waki means 'side' and implies that he is an observer. The principal actor, the shite ('shtay'), who makes his appearance later on, also usually makes his first speech from the 'naming place' but, being more important, he may come further forward

to deliver it. However, sometimes the shite's first speech is not delivered on the stage

proper. There are three small living pine-trees planted on the audience side of the hashigakari at ground level, and these mark points along the causeway where the principal actors sometimes stop to make speeches. Traditionally they symbolise the situation of mankind (the middle pine) which is influenced by the powers of heaven (the pine to the left near the entry-door) and earth (the pine to the right nearest the stage). When the actors stop alongside them, these pines can sometimes have exactly that significance. For instance a god character who is making his entrance can deliver some of his speeches from 'heaven' - alongside the pine-tree nearest to the entry - and then make his appearance on 'earth' by moving swiftly forward and taking up a position beside the pine-tree nearest to the stage. Similarly a character can stop at the central 'mankind' pine to deliver a speech

reflecting their inner emotions. This can happen at any time during the performance, not only when delivering the first speech, so the hashigakari should be considered an occasional extension to the acting area.

The use of the stage space is very conventional. A noh play consists essentia~ly of an interchange between the shite and the waki. Either or both of these actors may have one or more tsure or assistants, but the play always has two 'opposed' forces represented on stage, and this dichotomy is emphasised by the fact that the downstage-right pillar is allocated to the waki and the partly upstage left 'naming place' pillar is allotted mainly to the shite. This creates a strong diagonal confrontation, along a line which divides the stage into two halves. The triangle of space to the left and front of this diagonal is used extensively by the shite to move and dance in, but the triangle of space to the right and behind the diagonal, beyond the waki, is largely considered to be 'dead' space, and any actor

temporarily sitting there is usually considered not to exist, so far as the scene

being played is concerned.

The diagonal is also observed in another piece of conventional stage

movement which is common in noh plays - the action of 'travelling' from one

place to another - which is often accompanied by a song in which the chorus

describes the features of the landscape that are being passed. The track which is

travelled by the actor can have a number of different shapes. The usual trip begins

from the 'naming place'. The actor then moves in a curving path past the 'sight-

guiding pillar' (downstage left) towards the 'waki pillar' (downstage right) where

he executes a tum and then moves in a straight line back to where he started. This

results in a path that is shaped very much like an archer's bow and avoids the

'dead' area of the stage. There is another version of the trip in which the actor

does not stop at the 'naming place' on his return but enters the hashigakari and

ends his trip at the first pine, and there is yet another in which he proceeds a few

steps down stage from the 'naming place' then turns sharply to his left and goes

upstage centre to stop in front of the stick-drum player.

When the performance begins, the lyrical melody of the beautifully clear but

slightly reedy noh flute (nohkan) will be fairly accessible to any western visitor,

but when the actor's voice is first heard, either unaccompanied or added to the

music, they will be struck immediately by the strangeness of the chant which is

used to deliver most of the words. It is a very musical kind of chanting, very precisely pitched, which soars and swoops through a range of tones, and the

western ear does not always find it easy, at first, to distinguish the chants from

the songs of the piece - although the songs are, in fact, more melodic. The

spectator's best policy is simply to relax and absorb the general effect and their

ear will soon become attuned to the music. They will also begin to appreciate the

skill of the chanter, which is all that is necessary, because on the musical level a

noh play is best appreciated, like western opera, as a display of outstanding vocal

virtuosity. This is true even for a modern Japanese audience, since most of the

language of any noh play is far too archaic for them to understand, and like the

western visitor, they need to use a plot-summary to follow what is going on. The movement of a noh play is more accessible to a westerner than the

music, although it is presented with such a high degree of control that it may initially appear stilted. The visitor is first likely to notice the smoothness of the actor's walk. He wears no footwear apart from white tabi-socks, which have a big toe separated from the others, and, when moving, the actor's heel and toe seem hardly to lift from the floor. It is a perfectly achieved kind of movement and the noh has sometimes been described as 'the art of walking'. The posture of the actor is almost always erect, both when walking and sitting, and his gestures are very

limited and functional. However, the feature of the noh play which in most cases is more important

than the text and the chanting is a dance or series of dances. These, too, will seem very restrained to the western visitor, because they are almost always ground- based and have none of the lightness and upward aspiration of the western ballet, except on the occasions when a god dances after he has become intoxicated. Nonetheless, as the viewer gets to know the style better, these dances can become very moving - for instance, the sheer restraint of the ghost of a murdered man dancing out the story of his death to the chant of the chorus can give the performance an incredible degree of emotional tension.

Even silent movement, unaccompanied by a chant or music, can be extremely powerful in the noh. There is a play called Sumida River (Sumidagawa) where a mother driven mad by worry because her son has been taken away from her by slave-traders, follows their route for many days and eventually finds his grave. After she has expressed her agony at the loss, and the words of the play are expended, she walks two or three times around the stage in silence, and the effect is an extremely poignant one. By contrast an actor will sometimes stamp on the stage, particularly if he is an assertive character, to reinforce a point, and such a stamp is also conventionally used to mark his disappearance if be is a god. When this happens, the sound of the blow will be amplified by open pots placed strategically under the stage to catch and echo the sound.

The costumes of the performers can range from an austere black, or black-

and-white, for priests and nuns, to rich and elaborate robes for gods, court ladies,

and emperors. The more elaborate robes are made of the most beautiful brocades

and printed materials. They are never gaudy, and have none of the over-

theatricality, and occasional garishness, of some kabuki costumes. This is not

surprising because, originally, they were often donated to the actors by rich nobles

or Buddhist abbots, who had very discriminating tastes, and this tradition of

tastefulness has been carried through directly into the modern noh.

A mask (nohmen or omote) will be worn by the principal actor-dancer

(shile), and by his companion (/sure) if he has one, when the character that he is

playing is a woman, a warrior, an old man, a demon or a god - and the subject-

matter of the play will almost always ensure that the shite is, in fact, playing one

of these roles. The rare exceptions are plays where the hero is a male character

who once actually existed, and in such roles, instead of wearing a mask, the shile is

required to 'kill the face', draining it of expression and turning it into the

equivalent of a mask (hitamen). This practice is followed by all the unmasked

performers in a noh play. When killing the face, the facial muscles must not be

used to form any expression and, strictly speaking, the actor should not even

allow his eyelids to blink. The 'dead' face is then used in exactly the same way

that a mask is used. It may be tilted upwards to 'brighten' it (omote o terasu)

which usually expresses joy, or tilted down to 'cloud' it (omote o kumorasuy which expresses sadness, or it can be turned from side to side, either quickly to

show a strong emotion like anger, or slowly and perhaps repeatedly in order to

show some deeper and more inarticulate emotion.

The properties of the noh stage are highly conventionalised and kept to a

minimum. The folding fan which the actor usually carries is perhaps the most

important property of all. It is mainly used to extend and emphasise the

movements of his arm in the dance, but it can also be used to represent many

objects, such as a wine-jug, flute, water-scoop, or writing brush, sometimes even a

sword - though usually weapons are more realistically represented, and the short-

sword, belt-sword, bow, pike, spear, and Chinese broad-sword all make an

appearance. A boat or a chariot will be represented on stage by an open framework of bamboo. Palaces, houses, cottages, and huts, are all represented by four supporting posts covered with a roof, their different natures often being indicated by the degree to which the sides are enclosed to indicate constriction. Some stage-props are very specific to the plays they serve; amongst these are the grave mound in Sumida River, the pine-tree that the ghost of Matsukaze mistakes in her madness for her long-lost lover, or the temple bell that is brought crashing down by the vindictive serpent spirit in Dojoji - this last is a stiff structure made wholly of cloth, but it needs to be very large, because the shite has to leap up into it, and change his mask inside it. There are also two properties with a more general use: a wooden, cloth-covered platform the size of a tatami mat (ichijo-dai) which is used to represent a high place such as a dais, a hilltop, or a location up in the clouds; and the same large cylindrical container with a lid that was mentioned when discussing kyogen (the kazura-oke) - in noh this is often placed centre stage for the shite to sit on, and it is sometimes used for the same purpose in the mirror room, while the actor is waiting to make his entry. However, everything is kept as simple as possible so that it does not interfere with the actors' movement and

dancing.J The mood most frequently induced by a noh play to-day, when the language

is not understood, except by the actors, and the chanting, dance and movement are all extremely concentrated and powerful, is a kind of detached appreciation of a superbly orchestrated multi-media performance. The spectator is drawn into a relaxed but alert frame of mind, almost a meditative state, which is extremely conducive to pondering the serious matters that the play deals with - at least this is the effect on a modern spectator.

As we shall see later on, descriptions of early noh performances suggest that in those days the plays had a very different, and much more immediate, kind

of appeal.

The dramatic action of a nob play

At this point, it will be helpful to look at the shape of a typical noh play, so let us consider the dramatic action of a piece called Nishikigi (Love Tokens), which represents a type of play that is frequently presented, the 'noh of ghosts'.

The first character to appear is a priest, who is instantly recognisable from his costume. He is, of course, the waki, who always sets the scene. He enters down the hashigakari and, when he reaches the stage, tells the audience that he is taking advantage of a short vacation to do some sight-seeing in the provinces. He wonders exactly where he is and moves across the stage to his usual position at the right front, just beside the chorus. He says he has heard that the village of Kefu is on the coast nearby and wonders if he can reach it before nightfall.

Two other characters now appear on the hashigakari, a man and a woman. These are the shite and his companion. They are dressed like two peasants, but they linger near the 'heaven' tree, and exchange speeches there which suggest that they are deeply entangled in some kind of hopeless love-affair, and because they linger in that position, the audience suspects that they are perhaps not entirely beings of this world.

The chorus now intervenes to suggest that the man has offered his love to the woman for a thousand nights without being accepted and, as it does so, the two characters advance down the hashigakari, The priest, who now sees them, takes them for a man and his wife. He observes that the woman seems to be holding a narrow length of woven cloth and that the man is carrying a wooden rod (which the audience can sec is coloured red). He asks the travellers what these objects mean. They tell him that these two things are famous mementos of an event that happened in the area. The priest asks them to tell him the story. The chorus say that it all happened long ago, and for the first time they imply that the seeming man and his wife are in fact disembodied spirits. The man tells him that it is the local custom for a suitor to set up one of these wooden rods, or nishikigi, inscribed with his name and a poem, as an offer of marriage in front of the door of

the girl he loves. The woman then takes up the wand of the man she wants, and leaves all the others where they are. The female character tells the priest that there is a local legend about a man who never had his love-tokens accepted and after a thousand nights died of despair and was buried in a nearby cave together with all his love-wands. The priest says he would like to see the cave, which is near Kefu,

and they agree to take him there. They travel to the cave, illustrating their action with a 'journey' (michiyuki)

round the stage which follows the usual 'archer's bow' shape, while the chorus sings a travelling song recounting the places they pass and the sights they see as they go. The song concludes with a description of the autumn weather, the shadows of night approaching, and the lonely cry of an owl. The shite and his companions have now reached the 'earth' end of the hashigakari. The two ghosts pause as the priest returns to his usual place, where he sits and takes up a sleeping posture. They then retreat up the hashigakari and exit. The chorus declares that

they have gone into the cave. The priest wakes; he is restless and prays to Buddha to ease the spirits of

the man who died of despair and his unyielding lady-love. The two spirits reappear and thank him for his prayer, which has now united them in love after so many hundreds of years. The chorus draw attention to the cave. The priest tells us that he suddenly sees its interior glittering brightly, looking like the inside of a house, with a loom set up, and a pile of love-tokens on the floor. He begs the spirits to show him the story of what happened. They do so, in the form of a dance, accompanied by a song which they partly share with the chorus, showing him the offering of the love-tokens and the unresponsiveness of the girl at her loom. Meanwhile the chorus recounts the emotions of the man as he gradually sinks into despair, and give voice to his unfulfilled yearning to be married.

Then the dance changes and becomes more animated. As a result of the priest's prayers the miseries of the unfulfilled lovers have been brought to an end. Their spirits, which have been trapped for so long on earth by their inability to set aside their emotions of regret and disappointment, are now united and freed,

.....

and can at last be reborn. The chorus imitate the cock crowing. It is morning. The priest again falls into a sleeping posture. The two lovers move towards the hashigakari and slowly depart, whilst the chorus beg the audience to recall that, even though they and the priest will soon wake up again, the whole of life is as insubstantial as a dream. They declare that there is nothing left now but a bare field containing the empty cave which is hidden in its own darkness, whilst up above the morning wind is blowing through the pine trees.f

The structure of a noh play

The structure of this play is fairly typical. Zeami, who created the form of the modem noh drama described the ideal shape for it to take in 1423 in his Treatise

on Composing Noh Plays.5 There he says that a play should normally be divided

into five steps or sequences (dan). In the first sequence, the waki introduces himself and explains the background of the coming action; in the second sequence, the shite enters and delivers a solo song; in the third sequence, there is a brief exchange of questions and answers between the waki and the shite; in the fourth sequence, there is either a musical kusemai (a kind of danced story) or a tada-utai (a popular song with irregular rhythms); and in the fifth sequence, the shite re- enters transformed into his real character, and there is an appropriate climactic dance or some other vigorous action. If it is a dance, it can be either hayabushi (rapid music, with two syllables of the text to each beat), which is exciting, or kiribyoshi (a slower rhythm, of one syllable per beat) which produces a calm and majestic effect.

This pattern is essentially followed in Nishikigi, although the two lovers are clearly implied to be ghosts from their first entrance, which is a little unusual, and they return as their 'real characters' in the fourth, rather than the fifth, sequence, which happens quite often. Otherwise the recommended structure is observed, and the dances in the last two sections differ in tempo - a slower narrative dance and a quicker dance of rejoicing - as Zeami implies they should. In other plays the

transformation of the ghost from what is apparently a local peasant or everyday

person into their 'real' form can be quite startling, and involve the shite in making a

striking change of costume and adopting a second mask. For instance, a ferryman

can be transformed into a fierce and emotionally ravaged warrior, or a maidservant

into a savage lion. In Nishikigi the change is more a psychological change of

attitude than an alteration of external appearance but it is, in its own way, no less

memorable.

The growth and development of noh

Having looked briefly at the structure and content of a noh play, we are now in a

position to discover where this form of theatre came from and how it took the

shape that it has to-day.f We have already considered its very early origins in the

sarugaku entertainments when we were describing the origins ofkyogen. Here we

need to consider what happened to it later.

In the twelfth century, when the Heian court in Kyoto was still pursuing its

ideal world of music, poetry, love and fine calligraphy, a new form of drama began

to spring up in the important Buddhist monasteries. It was used to round out

festivals or ceremonies, or to entertain important guests, and it was provided by

troupes of sarugaku performers who were servants of the monastery. These men

were accustomed to take religious names ending in '-ami' which was an

abbreviation of the name of Amida Buddha, the benevolent saviour who gathers

thesouls of true believers into his Western Paradise - names like Kiami ('spirit of

Amida'), Zoami ('essence of Amida'), and so forth. These names suggest that the

actors were considered to be lay-priests, although they never in fact took holy

orders or conducted any ceremonies.

The new type of play took the form of song-and-dance pieces which

showed demons being overcome by priests armed with the teachings of Buddha.

These were not yet noh plays but later some of them were refined and taken into

the noh repertory as 'demon plays', which were the plays usually performed to

round out the day's programme. 'Demon plays' are one of the five main categories

of play into which the noh repertory is divided. These new plays proved to be so

popular with the general public that the actors added them to the programmes of

general entertainments and farces that they toured round the countryside at times

when the monasteries did not need their services. The monasteries were happy

with this arrangement, because when the actors were on the road they provided

their own upkeep and ceased to be a burden upon the community resources. In

any case, they were only really needed by the monasteries at specific times, like

local festivals or the visits of important nobles. But woe betide the actors if they

did not turn up at the monasteries when they were supposed to be there! If that happened the very least the leaders of the troupe could expect were twenty strokes of the heavy bamboo!

When the time for a ceremony came round, the acting troupes often had a very important part to play. The most famous occasion, from a noh point of view, was the Wakamiya festival at the Kasuga Shrine, which in those days used to occur on the 17th and 18th of December, although nowadays it occurs in October. On the first day of the festival there was a long procession from the small temple at the Kasuga shrine to the Kofuku-ji monastery nearby, in order to transfer the image of the local god to the monastery for the duration of the festival. During the procession, various groups of performers took turns to give a series of short musical dance pieces in front of a sacred tree - a majestic and very ancient pine - that stood beside the second torii, or ceremonial gate, set up on the road to the main temple. This tree, as has already been noted, is regarded by some as the original of the pine-tree painted on the panel at the back of all noh stages. Performances of plays were also presented to the image of the god when he arrived at his temporary shrine at the great south gate of the monastery, with the actors facing the shrine. On the second day the god was ceremonially returned to the Kasuga temple from the temporary shrine at the monastery by means of another procession. When the image had left, further performances were given at the temporary shrine but now the performers turned their backs upon it and played

to the audience outside, and the pieces given were pure entertainment without any

particularly religious content.

As time passed, the contact of the actors with the scholars in the

monasteries, and the noblemen who constantly attended their performances,

became closer and this led them to add speeches of a poetical nature to the pieces

they were presenting in order to enhance the song and dance. The first examples of

this took the form of chanted monologue that was used to establish the particular

setting and situation of the coming drama and, in this way, the waki's role was born. More significantly, though, the contact with these same noble patrons led

the actors to incorporate elegant songs and dances that were currently popular at

court and, in particular, to borrow the dance techniques and style of the serious

gagaku, or 'court music', which had been imported from China and which, even as early as the eighth century, contained well-developed theatrical elements in the

form of narrative dances, performed by a single dancer in a mask, which celebrated

the achievements of great military heroes and famous emperors of China or the

deeds of the ancient Chinese gods. These dances eventually provided another of

the five categories of play into which the noh is generally divided, the 'play of

blessing' or 'god play' which was usually used to introduce a noh programme. The

controlled gestures and movements of the court dances were also absorbed into the

'god play' and endowed it with an air of stateliness and dignity.

As a result of this, by the thirteenth century we see something that we

definitely recognise as noh developing and, indeed, by then it is already being

called by that name, which means that the actors were beginning to see themselves

as 'skilled' professionals rather than priests. Y ct it did not as yet have any kind of

fixed shape, despite its contact with the 'court music', which had a very strong

aesthetic of jo-ha-kyu that we will consider later. It was also during this period

that nobles began to patronise the players heavily and invite them to their

mansions and, as a result, they began to tell the stories of famous Japanese

warriors in their plays, thus creating another of the five basic categories of noh, the

'warrior play', which usually took the second place in the programme. The actors

performed in the courtyards of noble houses, and the lords, we hear, sometimes required them to enact 'warrior' pieces in full armour and even mounted upon war- horses.

Meanwhile the dengaku actors, who tended to be associated mostly with Shinto festivals and small rural temples in the countryside, noted the success of the sarugaku actors and began to develop noh plays of their own. These were, of course, still sarugaku noh plays, even though they were performed by dengaku actors, as will be seen from the description of a medieval performance given later. They seem to have differed from the offerings of the sarugaku companies by using simpler stories and mostly traditional songs and dances and in the early stages they certainly depended more on the participation of the whole troupe than upon the expertise of individual actors - although it was not long before the dengaku troupes began to develop famous shite of their own. Perhaps the relative simplicity of their approach appealed to the jaded palates of the courtiers, because there were violent crazes for dengaku performances ofnoh at court, particularly in the first three quarters of the fourteenth century. Nonetheless, by I 603, when Ieyasu had finally settled the country down and established the Tokugawa Shogunate, dengaku troupes were falling steadily out of favour, and never recovered their appeal - so all the noh troupes we have today are the descendants of sarugaku companies.

The establishment of an enforced peace after several centuries of violent civil war caused the samurai warriors and their lords to look elsewhere for something to occupy their minds and the result, amongst other things, was an attempt to revive the artistic values of the ancient Heian court. It was this artistic revival that directed their attention to the poetry and other writings of the period, which, like Lady Murasaki's famous novel, The Tale of Genji, were deeply involved with sensitive and highly emotive tales oflove. As a result the play about women, the 'wig' play, came into existence, traditionally the third and most artistic category of noh, and together with it the 'madwoman' or 'lunatic' play, which formed the fourth category, and was sometimes more Confucian than Buddhist in its values.

At this time, too, the simple form of demon play which was currently used to end a performance, began to be rather looked down upon, and more refined treatments of the defeat of evil, or its conversion into good, developed, like The Valley Rite

which we will consider later.

Subscription list (kanjin) performances

By this time a large number of noh stages existed but they were all located in Buddhist monasteries, Shinto temples or noblemen's courtyards. When the troupes performed in country villages on tour they used any stage that was available or even played on the ground. Noh had by now become so popular, that it began to be used by priests from the Buddhist temples to raise money for essential public works like repairing a local road or bridge or building a new one. Such shows were known as kanjin or 'subscription-list' performances and usually took place on a temporary noh stage erected in the countryside, most often on a dry river bed, which provided a naturally level foundation to build on. The organiser (kanjin-hijiri) would allow about a month for the building of a stage, if one did not already exist, and for the erection of stands and boxes, which tended to be commissioned and built by those who were going to use them. The boxes were set up in a circle around the stage at a distance of about fifty or sixty feet and accommodated the rich citizens and noblemen attending, while the poorer people sat on the ground within the circle and other nobles and gentlemen brought their carriages to any points at the edge of the audience area where there were no boxes and watched the performance from there. However, not all kanjin performances were presented in the open - they were sometimes given in one of the halls of a temple, probably because this did not involve the extra expense of building a stage or, indeed, of making any arrangements except those to collect the money.

Kanjin programmes were usually presented in the form of three separate one-day performances, with intervals of three or four days in between, to rest the actors and increase the attendance. After all, not everybody would be willing, or

indeed able, to watch plays on three consecutive days. Sometimes, though, the

gaps between the playing days would get lengthened by bad weather, which

inhibited performance because in the open air nobody was protected except the

actors under their roofs and the nobles in their boxes.

For many years the financial strings of kanjin performances remained in the hands of the monasteries but it was inevitable that the actors were going to cash in

on this kind of performance sooner or later and this eventually happened when the

power of the monasteries was reduced by the Tokugawa Shogunate after 1603.

An eventful performance in 1349

These early noh performances had great popular appeal, which seems rather

curious to us today, because we view the noh as a highly refined and intellectual

form of drama. However, the elegance and exclusiveness of the modem noh is

partly the bequest of Zeami, of whom we shall have more to say later. A

description we have of a kanjin noh in 1349 shows us the nature of an early

performance and also draws attention to the dangers of public disorder in the days

of the clan wars. It occurred at a time when competitions between noh troupes

were becoming very popular and fiercely contended - a practice which led to noh

masters passing on 'secret writings' about the art to their successors in the clan.

The whole passage is worth quoting in full: 7

'On the eleventh day of the sixth month of this year, a wandering priest,

who planned to build a bridge at Shijo, brought together the dengaku players of

the Shinza ('the new guild') and the Honza ('the old guild') and, dividing them into

two companies of old and young performers, set them against each other in a trial

of skill. The stands were built on the river bank at Shijo. As it was to be a rare

spectacle, men and women of all ranks thronged to it in extraordinary numbers.

The entertainment was to be enjoyed by nobles, including the Regent and

government ministers, by abbots of noble blood, and by warriors like the Shogun.

Because of this, there were all sorts of people vying with each other to set up the

most impressive stands - servants, nobles, court officials, samurai from different

clans, and even priests from a number of shrines and temples. Amongst other

materials, pillars of wood were brought from Nagato, which, when they had been

cut and shaped, were some of them five by six inches thick and others a massive

eight inches by nine, and a great, imposing structure was built, four hundred and

fifteen feet in circumference (which means that the boxes were about 60 feet from

the stage) and three or four stories high. 'When the time arrived, fine carriages made from sweet-smelling wood

jostled for places and there was no space left to tie up the richly caparisoned

horses. Drapery leapt and danced in the wind, and all the air was filled with the

fragrance of incense. The old and the young companies of performers had separate

tents to the east and the west, with a bridge leading to the stage on either side. The

curtains of the dressing-rooms were made of painted cloth. The hangings were of

gold brocade which, as they fluttered in the wind, looked for all the world like

leaping flames. The stage was spread with red and emerald rugs, and covered with

folding-chairs and stools, while leopard and tiger skins hung at the back and over

the rails, so that the eye was dazzled at the sight and all other thoughts were

driven from the mind.

'Then, as the first sounds of stately music brought a murmur from the

eagerly waiting audience, with the sound of the drums and the introductory notes

of a flute coming from the dressing-rooms on opposite sides, eight beautiful young

boys, all dressed in robes of gold brocade, richly perfumed and with highly-

painted faces, slowly emerged from the eastern dressing-room. From the west,

eight priests filed out, handsome men with lightly made-up faces and blackened

teeth, all resplendent in fantastically-coloured robes embroidered with all manner

of flowers and birds, which they wore over silver, patterned trousers, gathered in

at the ankles where the dye was the deepest. As they came in beating time, with

rush hats worn at an angle, the whole scene was truly magnificent...

'A most impressive performance followed of a sarugaku noh, about a

miraculous blessing given by the god ofHiyoshi. During the course of this play, a

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child of seven or eight, wearing a monkey mask, came out of the young actors'

dressing-room, reverently carrying a sacred staff. His top robe was of gold brocade

on a red ground and on his feet he wore slippers of fur. Entering to a tripping beat,

and travelling diagonally to and fro along the red and green arched bridge to the

stage, he jumped up onto the handrail, turned this way and that, then leapt down

and up again on the other side. The scene as he did so was like something from

another world. The excitement was unbearable, as people told one another that the

god of the shrine must surely have taken possession of the boy for him to be able to perform such marvels.

'So it came to pass that the people in the stands covering more than five

hundred feet, unable to contain themselves, or even remain in their places, filled

the whole arena with gasps and cries in a sustained clamour of excitement and

suspense. Even beautiful ladies-in-waiting, watching from lightly curtained areas

near the Shogun's box, with the hems of their shot-silk robes held high to conceal

their faces, could be seen lifting the hanging curtains with their fans. Then, as

everybody craned forward to look, one of the stands built of heavy beams five or

six inches thick began to tilt and, before you could even catch your breath, the

stands near it, two-stories high, covering an area of twelve hundred and forty-five

feet in all, came crashing down one after another.

'The number of those who died among the great piles of fallen timber is past

all knowing. In the confusion thieves began stealing swords. Some ran off with

them but others, having found blades, stayed to lay about them. Cries and shouts

rose up from people who had had limbs broken or slashed, from others, covered

with blood, who had been run through with swords or halberds when they joined

in the fighting, and from others again who had scalded themselves with the boiling

water used for making tea. The scene might well have been that of evildoers crying

and wailing in a common hell. The dengaku players, still wearing devil masks and

brandishing red canes, gave chase to thieves who were escaping with stolen

costumes. Young samurai unsheathed their weapons and went after men who had

carried off their masters' ladies. Some of the abductors turned and fought, others

were cut down as they fled, and lay with reddening bodies. It was as if Hell's unending battles and the tortures exacted by the demons were being carried out

before your eyes.'

This is admittedly a highly dramatic account of an exceptional event but it shows how different the atmosphere of performances was in the hey-day ofnoh's

popularity compared to the hushed and reverential atmosphere in which the plays

tend to be performed today. When people went to the noh in those days they

expected to be entertained by the skill of the actors and overwhelmed by the

splendour of their costumes. They ate and drank and chatted with their

neighbours, and cheered and shouted with excitement and approval at the parts

that pleased them most, as if they were in a wrestling stadium. In fact they

behaved very much like the kabuki audience did a few centuries later, because in an

age when violence and war, disease, fire and famine, not to mention the inevitable

earthquakes, were everyday hazards, the music and colour of noh was something

which enabled the ordinary people to briefly escape from their wretchedness, and

the performances must have had a vitality and force quite different to the

concentrated and controlled impression that they give today.

The nob troupes establish guilds (za)

Throughout the late Heian period and the Kamakura period that followed it - from

about 1100 to 1333 CE - the troupes of both dengaku and sarugaku performers were steadily increasing in number and, since there were only a few really

profitable performances that could be given at temples and shrines, this led lo

increasingly fierce competition for the pickings. Because of this the actors began to

consider organising themselves for greater efficiency and looking around them they

found themselves surrounded by the newly developed trade guilds, each of which

exerted a monopolistic influence over a specific area of production, within which it

controlled the flow of raw materials, arranged for distribution of the products of

its members, fixed prices, settled disputes, and so on - which was precisely

what the actors wanted. So they set about establishing guilds, or za, of their own. In their case, each za tended to be attached to a powerful shrine or temple and it would be granted a monopoly over all performances within the shrine's or temple's domains, which could be extensive. In return, it was understood that the za would give free performances for the temple on the occasion of certain local religious festivals.

The dengaku players were the first in the field, in about 1200, establishing their Honza (or 'original guild') near Kyoto and their Shinza (or 'new guild') at Nara. Sarugaku players, on the other hand, were at first prevented from establishing guilds by the powerful Buddhist temples that employed them, which were not happy at the idea of dealing with an independent 'trade union' when they could simply keep the actors under their thumb. Eventually, though, the sarugaku players managed to get their own Honza established at Tamba in about 1260 and their Shinza in Settsu province a little later. Many more guilds were established after that by both types of company, and one or two sarugaku za have been preserved in Yamato to the present day; but, for the most part, the word za has come to mean the theatre in which the company is performing - their 'guildhall' as it were. The coming of the guilds had a profound effect on the development of noh, because the players began to feel that they had the guild's honour to maintain in competition with other guilds and also a guild tradition to perpetuate and noh was the most serious part of their material, where their skills could be raised to the highest level and shown at their best.

To maintain the value of their monopolistic privileges, the guilds naturally limited their membership and, even when a vacancy occurred in their ranks, they did not fill it at once but would cast about for the most useful member they could find - preferably somebody who was not only potentially a good actor but who also came from a fairly rich family. However, in various ways, dengaku noh guilds and sarugaku noh guilds differed in such matters.

So far as the dengaku noh guilds were concerned, there seems to have been a traditional membership of thirteen actors. No convincing reason has ever been

advanced for this, although various 'reasons' were discovered later, like the fact

that the Buddha had thirteen important disciples. A more likely reason is that the

number represents the thirteen lunar months of the year, because we find the

number thirteen linked 'magically' all over the world with groups who have

religious responsibilities for sowing and reaping grain, and the dengaku players

were originally a group of that kind. New members for the dengaku noh guilds

were always auditioned before appointment and their temple or shrine would then

ratify the choice by providing the new member with an official pass to their

precincts. In fact temple authorities never tried to interfere with the choice of new

dengaku actors but, as dengaku noh became more popular, rich and powerful

patrons from outside sometimes demanded that temples should license particular

performers. In the sarugaku noh guilds, there seems to have been no traditional number

of members and each guild established its own. In early times this could extend

from as few as ten players to as many as thirty. Later it became much more

formalised and we will consider its shape in a moment. So far as the new members

of a sarugaku noh guild were concerned, the players always demanded a stiff

entry fee and often dispensed with an audition entirely - but, then, we must

remember that the companies were so professional that nobody who was not

highly talented would even have dared to apply, for fear of losing face. In 1350 the

fee was at least the equivalent of sixty or seventy bushels of rice for each member

of the Upper Group of the guild, which usually consisted of six actors, so we arc

talking about at least 360 bushels of rice, which would be enough to completely fill

a large western family house!

The later organisation of a sarugaku noh guild was quite clearly defined.

There was an 'upper group' (or kami za) of six actors, referred to as tayu

('trustees'), one of them being the oza, or guild master, who was the head of the

troupe and also of the clan. These terms were virtually synonymous, because any

actor who joined the troupe from outside gave up his original name and was

adopted into the family. After the oza, the other actors were strictly ranked as

second, third, and so on, according to skill and experience. The 'middle group'

(naha no za) had a leader known as the ichiro ('most senior') and no known limit to its membership. This group consisted of all the musicians and kyogen players

of the company. Finally there was a 'boys' group', which was much less

important and consisted of the male children of all the players of the guild, most of

whom were studying to become actors - it was a guild tradition that a son should if

possible be raised in his father's trade. They usually began their training at the age

of seven and graduated to the lowest position in either the upper or middle group at the age of fifteen.

The kyogen players in the 'middle group' of a sarugaku noh troupe were

there, as has been explained, because it was customary to perform kyogen farces

between the noh plays in a programme, to lighten what might otherwise have

become a very intense performance. Also, as the archaic language of the plays

became increasingly difficult for the audience to understand, kyogen characters

were introduced in the middle of a noh play to summarise the action in

contemporary speech. When they did this, though, they were not usually intended

as comic relief, and had to be careful to keep their humorous inclinations in check.

Kan'ami and Zeami - the creators of modern noh

The history of noh extends, of course, to modem times but, for our present

purposes, we do not need to pursue it beyond the appearance of the two creators

of 'modem' noh - Kan'ami ('the perfection of Amida') and his son Zeami ('the

greatness of Amida').

Kanze Saburo Kiyotsugu, who later took the name ofKan'ami, was born in

1334, and made his reputation as a noh actor amongst the ordinary uneducated

people of the time. He was outstanding in all branches of his art, as musician,

playwright and actor. His son Zeami tells us that he was able to perform in styles

that appealed to all ranks of society, from high to low,8 and that he always seemed

young on stage, even when he was in fact an old man.? The noh plays he wrote

are full of dramatic tension but they are also extremely moving and have clements of humour and lively dialogue to carry them along. His willingness to experiment and his dedication to his art are shown by his importation of the kusemai dance into the noh play - a significant development, which enlivened the tradition and

opened up new possibilities. Kusemai was a kind of danced 'ballad' that was extremely popular,

particularly in the area around Kyoto. Its name means 'unconventional dance' and it seems to have caught the fancy of the Japanese public because it was rather jazzy in style and had a powerful syncopated beat. This enthralled them, despite the fact that they found it 'strange in the extreme'. However, it clearly did not appeal to those of a staider and more Confucian tum of mind. The retired emperor Go-Komatsu, for instance, after having it performed for him three or four times, declared that it was the music of an age of turmoil and undesirably disturbing to the spirit. It was usually danced by a beautiful young woman to the beat of a drum. The dancer, who was dressed in a plain white male costume, often carried a sword, as well as a fan, and wore a ceremonial male head-dress. The movements of the dance were also very masculine and part of its appeal may have been the cross-dressing of the performer, because, although it was sometimes danced by very beautiful young men, the supreme dancers of the tradition were always female. In Kan'ami's day, many kusemai dancers were patronised by the nobility, and, although they had no guild, and did not fit into any convenient niche in the social scale - which worried the authorities - they often mixed as entertainers with people of the very highest rank and treated them on equal, or even positively

familiar, terms. Despite the primary appeal of the <lance's rhythmical drum beat, the words

of kusemai were also important. The performance always contained a strong narrative clement, taken either from the sagas of clan warfare, like the Heike Saga (Heike Monogatari), or from legends about Buddhist champions and famous Buddhist shrines. As a result of this it used a lot of descriptive movement and mime. Kan'ami was clearly attracted to it by its vigour and its theatrical potential

and realised that it could be incorporated into the structure of the noh play as a

form of narrative to the great advantage of the form. But before he could use it he

needed to understand it thoroughly. This could only be done by studying under a

master of the art and the traditions of kusemai were handed down secretly by

word of mouth from woman to woman within a few specific families. Zeami tells

us that his father learnt the dance from Otozuru, a member of the Kaga women's

group in Nara. He spent a year doing so and it seems that he chose to study under

a woman because the women dancers' performances were less harsh and crude than those of the men.

In the Japanese society of that time it was very daring of Kan'ami, as a man,

to study under a woman - few Japanese men would do it even to-day. It was also very daring of him, artistically, to consider incorporating the strong, catchy

rhythms of kusemai into the noh play, which had previously been dominated by

a soft, melodic ko-uta style. Nor did he incorporate it immediately. He first

presented it as a separate item in the programme, which was possible because a

sarugaku performance in his day still consisted of several different 'turns', of

which the noh play was merely the most important. However, he soon went on to

incorporate kusemai into the noh itself, softening the form, Zeami tells us, so that

it would blend with the current style of sarugaku dancing. By 1374 the dance was

wholly integrated, and gave the company's performances of noh a unique

'flavour'. It now forms a significant element in about three-quarters of the noh

plays that are performed and is found, as we observed earlier, in the fourth

sequence of the play, the point where the shite and the chorus are recounting and

enacting the emotional story that lies at the heart of the piece. In most cases it is

kept quite short, so it does not detract from the final fast dance, but in two plays

it appears in an extended form as 'a play within the play'.

It may have been the originality of his company in the matter of kusemai

that caused Kan'ami to be called in 1374 to give a 'command performance' before

the great Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who was then just sixteen years old.

Kan'ami, who had never previously appeared before any Shogun, was 41 years

old at the time, and Zeami, who performed with him, was eleven. The young

Shogun immediately fell in love with Zeami, and his passion for the boy changed

the whole history of noh, because, as a result, he took the company under his

patronage and he and Zeami became lovers - not a new experience for Zeami, who

had been sent up to a local monastery from the age of seven, with all the other

beautiful boys from the village, to exchange his sexual favours for rice and fuel,

which he brought back the next morning for his starving family. Homosexual

liaisons were accepted without question by the Japanese society of the time but

the affair with Yoshimitsu caused some comment at court because the prince had

chosen to associate with an actor - and actors were considered as the dregs of

society. However, Yoshimitsu ignored the courtiers' reactions and undertook the

education of Zeami in court manners and good taste, turning him into a man of

great restraint and refinement, who carried those characteristics through into all the

plays he wrote and performed,

Kan'ami only enjoyed the benefits of the prince's patronage for ten years,

because he died in 1384, but Zeami and the Kanze family company continued to

perform at court until 1443, when Zeami died at the age of 80. Throughout his life,

he based his work on what he had learnt from his father, always trying to give the

noh greater narrative power and emotional expressiveness and a more effective

shape. He also endowed it with a 'literary' flavour that would appeal to the

courtiers by including references to famous poems and Buddhist writings. So far as

the acting was concerned, he greatly strengthened the role of the shite, paying

particular attention to the kusemai and, on the whole, reduced the importance of

the chorus, which he considered a rather primitive component of the play. He

wrote, composed, choreographed, directed, produced and performed in more than

a hundred plays, all of them dramatic masterpieces and was also famous for his

ability to write pieces for the principal dancers of other companies - by no means

an easy task, since each of them had a distinctive style of his own,

Unfortunately, his later life was not very happy. After Yoshimitsu died in

1408 he received scant attention from the son and grandson who succeeded him,

probably because the whole family had always disapproved of the liaison with an

actor. However, as he started to find his services less in demand, he spent his time

polishing his theories about the noh and writing secret treatises about it to pass on

to his sons and his nephew - although ironically the tradition he created was

eventually continued not by the Kanze troupe at all but by the Komparu clan, one

of whose members, Komparu Zenchiku, had married his daughter. We will look at

some ofZeami's theories in the next chapter.

NOTES

1 There have however been some 'official' women performers of noh since 1900. A Japanese friend informs me that a Belgian actress, Miss Dupont, played in llagoromo, which is principally a dance play- see Waley (1921), p 217 - in 1919, whilst the first 'officially approved' female performer was Kimiko Tsumura who played At aka in 1939.

2 Like the kyogen stage, as we have already noted. The sacred structure is called a kagura- den and it is a slightly larger version of the worship pavilion (hai-den) illustrated in Fig 2.

3 Komparu (1983), Chap 16, discusses the properties and provides several illustrations. 4 An excellent translation of Nishikigi will be found in The Translations of Ezra Pound,

Faber, 1953, p. 286. The hand of W.B.Yeats can be traced in it. Yeats later used the piece as the basis for his own dance-play The Dreaming of the Bones.

5 Nosakusho, in Rimer and Masakazu (1984), p. 149 ff. 6 The following summary of the history of the noh is drawn from P.G.O'Neill's Early No

Drama, Lund Humphries, London, 1958. I have outlined only the main features. 7 The account quoted will be found in O'Neill, op. cit., pp 75-77. 8 Rimer and Masakazu (1984), p. 124.

9 Rimer and Masakazu ( 1984), p. 57.