theater
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.
Copyright © 2006 John Wesley Harris
All rights reserved. For information contact
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
CHAPTERS
Aesthetic principles underpinning the noh
The successful presentation of noh depends first and foremost upon concentration
and economy of means. This is particularly well illustrated by the reaction of a
Japanese noh master who was attempting the impossible task of teaching some
American dance students how to perform noh over a period of six weeks in 1966.
Let us call him 'the Master in America' .1 The students were learning to perform a
play in which, at the moment in question, the Lady Yuya was supposed to be
travelling in a chariot to view the cherry-blossoms in the capital. The student
playing Yuya had been undulating his head during the song describing the journey.
'Ask him what he thinks he is doing.' demanded the master. The interpreter
communicated the inquiry. 'I was justifying the journey,' said the student. 'You
know. By moving my head ever so subtly I was trying to convey the feeling of
motion. It's a long promenade according to the lyrics. It travels all over the city of Kyoto. A sense of advancing, of transportation has just got to be there.'
The master was curt: 'Tell him not to try anything like that... Tell him the
point is that a noh performer has no right to limit the flight of the spectator's
imagination by impudently and selfishly acting out the basic meaning of the text,
he must show more humility ... The noh audience cannot sit back and wait to be
spoon-fed. They must participate vigourously in creating every scene with their imagination. The performer in tum must not move even half an inch unless he is
positive that the movement is saturated with meaning, and creates a truly revealing
image. Without this humility, this self-restraint, I don't think any movement can
arouse a spectator's heart to the point where they feel something lying beyond the
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surface of the world - reaching into its other dimension.' He went on to explain
that it is the audience and the actor working together who create a performance.
'Zeami said that what is called the flower of this art has no separate existence.
There would be no flower at all were it not for the spectators who read into a
performance a thousand excellencies.'
The term for expressive movements or movement sequences in noh (as in all
dramatic forms) is kata, which can be translated as 'forms' or 'patterns'. These
movement sequences. which distil and illustrate the essence of an emotion, consist
of precise indicative gestures. For instance, joy or elation is expressed by waving
an open fan twice in front of the chest, while weeping is shown by simply
bringing one or both hands up in front of the eyes - the single hand implying that
the character is weeping secretly and both hands that it is weeping openly. There
are more than three hundred of these forms, some abstract and some concrete, and
it is these that are woven together with dance, action and chanted speech to form
the actor's interpretation of his role.
However, as the Master in America indicated, the form used for
communication is so minimalist that, if it is not packed full of energy and intensity
in performance, it will appear little more than a technical exercise. A role must be
brought to life by the energy and concentration of the performer on stage, and he can only do this after he has undertaken years of strict and repetitive training and learnt and perfected the role through experiencing it frequently, by which time his performance will have become as free and instinctive as a sword-master's parry.
Buddhist principles in action
The dramatic tension in a noh play is not usually achieved, as in other kinds of drama, by the conflict between two characters who have opposed objectives - a protagonist and an antagonist - it is much more based on the frustration of the desires or purposes of the central characters, like the lovers in Nishikigi. All the other characters, the waki, and the chorus contribute to plotting the course of this
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frustration and illustrating either its final persistence or its transformation into
something positive. The fact that the central characters' frustration leads to misery
is, of course, sound Buddhist doctrine, because the frustration is the result of their
failure to control their passions or desires, which in the case of an aristocrat often
include wounded pride and a consuming preoccupation with their personal or
family honour. On very rare occasions two apparently opposed characters will
appear in a play, but closer examination will show that they are both seeking the
same spiritual goal but are temporarily at different levels of enlightenment - so we
are really faced with a comparison and not a conflict.
Such a situation is at the centre of Komachi and the Hundred Nights (Kayoi
Komachii, one of Kan'ami's plays. The action is concerned with the famous
poetess and courtier Ono no Komachi. Legend has it that when she was young she
was very beautiful and desired by many men. She was also very arrogant about her
sexual allure and ordered one of her lovers, Shosho, to visit her house for one
hundred nights before she would grant him her favours. He faithfully came every
night, cutting a notch on the hitching rail outside her house to keep a tally, but in
the end he grew ill, and on the hundredth night he died. Komachi suffered intense
remorse for what she had done and wandered the roads for many years in a kind of
self-imposed penance, constantly aware of her growing age and loss of beauty and
seeking to reconcile herself with the ideals of the Buddha until she too died. In the
play she is a shite tsure (companion of the shite) and appears to the waki, who is a
priest !_n a mountain hermitage, as a young girl who brings him fruit every day.
Then on the day when the play takes place her image dissolves before his eyes
and, from hints that she has dropped, he realises who she must be. He prays for
her spirit to gain enlightenment. This raises the ghost of her dead lover, Shosho,
played by the shite, who emerges in a very angry mood together with the contrite spirit of Komaehi who returns with him. They are at very different levels of
enlightenment, but the priest manages to get Shosho to re-live the story of his
obsession, with Komachi's help, in the form of a dance which forms the heart of
the play, and thus manages to bring about understanding and forgiveness on
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Shosho' s part and a reconciliation between the two spirits, as a result of which, in this case, they are both saved and not only obtain release from the world but also immediate freedom from the Wheel of Rebirth, thus attaining Buddhahood.
The jo-ha-kyu aesthetic
An essential aesthetic principle that was imported into the noh from the court
music and dance of China (gagaku), is the sequence of jo-ha-kyu,2 which meant
that a dance was constructed in three sections each of which had a different quality and tempo. Jo, which governed the first part of the dance, means 'orderly progression' and was relatively slow and stately; ha, which governed the second part means 'breaking the pattern' and was quicker and more irregular; and kyu, which governed the last part means 'urgent' and was fast and furious. The noh presumably inherited this principle because it was itself a form of dance. Zeami certainly believed that it applied to the five levels (dan) of a good noh play which we have already described. The first and second steps should have ajo quality (the waki' s and shile's entries), the third and fourth steps should have a ha quality (the spoken exchanges between the waki and the shite and the main narrative dance), and the last step should have a kyu quality (the relatively fast concluding dance). The fact that he uses the word dan implies that the steps are ranked in ascending importance, each having more impact than the one that has preceded it, although it is clear that the second step tended to blur jo and ha together, and the fourth step
tended to anticipate an element of the coming kyu.3
Many scholars are convinced that Zeami is not using the terms jo-ha-kyu simply to indicate a graded increase of tempo and some think that they imply a structure of beginning, middle and end, similar to that suggested by Aristotle. There can be little doubt that the terms will have meant more to Zeami than simple increases of tempo, but what they meant is not so easy to define. For instance, in his own time, they were paralleled with the three stages involved in mastering calligraphy: shin-gyo-so, Shin meant the formal copying of a character exactly as it
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was written in the copybook, gyo the changing of the character to satisfy your
own liking and so, or 'grass-like', the achievement of a fluent, natural style, where you were not constrained by any fears of 'not doing it properly'. This suggests a
process of growing control and would cover Zeami's claim that the actor's training
in the noh should also be seen as a process of jo-ha-kyu throughout his life. However, later, he goes even further and claims that jo-ha-kyu is evident in all
natural processes, both in the process as a whole and in each of its parts.
This suggests a much more general application of the terms, the key to
which can perhaps be found in his description of voice production. He says that in
chanting the jo element is found in the gathering of breath, the ha element in the
pushing out of breath, and the kyu element in the production of the voice.4 From
this one would gather that a state of jo involves accumulation, a state of ha a controlled application of the reserves that have been accumulated, and a state of
kyu the form which those reserves are induced to take. 'Nourishment-growth- flowering' would therefore seem a better set of terms to use, since they can be
applied to natural processes in general much more appropriately than 'slow-
medium-fast' or even 'beginning-middle-end' which is too 'static'. It would also
naturally extend into drama in the form of 'exposition-development-climax'. If this
is so, then Zearni's remarks would mean the five steps of any noh play involve:
exposition; development which still contains an element of exposition; pure
development; further development with a hint of climax; and the climax itself. The
waki expounds, the shite advances the story and expounds further, the dialogue
between them develops the situation, the narrative dance expands the theme and
points towards the climax, and the climax is achieved in an animated dance of
either agony or joyous release.
The nature of a goban
This emerges more clearly when Zeami is speaking about the putting together of a
noh programme (later known as a goban or 'five-in-order'). The first play of
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the programme, which is a play about a god and conveys a sense of blessing, should have aJo quality, with a simple source and no complex detail and it should be easy to understand. The second play, which is based upon the story of a warrior, begins to introduce a ha mood while still retaining some Jo quality; it should have a specific source in history or legend and it should be emotionally powerful and dignified in conception. The third play, which will be a play about a woman (known as the 'wig' play because the shite needs to don a wig to play the part) begins the completely ha section and needs to break the mood of Jo by placing emphasis upon richness and subtlety of expression, with the central character being a complex personality rather than a type. This play is the climax of the programme. The fourth piece, which will usually involve some kind of 'lunatic', needs to continue the ha mood without eclipsing the piece that has gone before it and is usually more obviously moral and emotionally lighter. The function of the last piece, which includes a demon, is to introduce a kyu quality, which extends the quality of ha, adding to it powerful movements, rapid dance steps, and fierce and strong gestures; this final play of the programme should be characterised by agitation and excitement.f
In a goban, as a result of the five categories of character involved and the way in which they are treated, the programme takes on a particular shape, which investigates the Buddhist theory of salvation at many different levels. The god in the first play is always very positive and brings a blessing to the deserving, which is taken to include the audience: the mood then plunges from an ideal state to virtually its opposite, after which, play by play, the darkness gradually lightens, as the programme surveys a series of situations each of which is slightly better than the one before it. The warrior, who is the worst case, is usually a ghost and portrays the agonies of a spirit which is still bemused by concepts of duty and honour and trapped in the agonising memory of his death in battle; the woman, who follows him, has usually failed to free herself from the mental and emotional attachments of the world that are binding her spirit to the Wheel of Rebirth, but her state is less perilous than the warrior's; the lunatic, often a madwoman, is
99
generally obsessed with anger.jealousy or sorrow, which is driving her away from
the possibility of salvation, but there is almost always some kind of compensation
in these pieces - a discovery of what was lost, an act of forgiveness, an instant of
realisation, or even a moment of revenge - which makes the final state of the
central character less negative than those that have gone before it; and, finally, to
provide a fitting conclusion, the demon play deals with the temporary repulsion of
an evil force or a demonic creature by prayer or the chanting of the Buddhist
sutras - which have the power to drive away the vengeful ghosts of the dead and,
in one case, even to endow a Dragon Princess of the Ocean with enlightenment and
Buddhahood.
It is sometimes difficult for a western, non-Buddhist spectator to perceive
the compensation present in the lunatic play. Let us consider perhaps the most
extreme case, that of the mother in Sumida River (Sumidagawa).6 She has learnt
that her son is dead - and to a modem westerner the loss of a child seems the
worst thing that can happen in life - but there are compensations. At least she
knows that he is not being ill-treated by the slaver who abducted him or by a cruel
master; she has found the place where he fell sick and is buried; and she has seen
the local people gathered around the grave to formally commend his spirit to
Amida Buddha. The positive quality of this discovery is shown by the fact that
her madness disappears - to be replaced by grief, certainly, but grief is the
consequence of an 'attachment' which can be overcome with the help of faith in
Buddha's teachings and personal commitment, however harrowing the loss. A
moth~r once came to Buddha to ask him to restore her dead son to life, but he sent
her to fetch him some salt from a family where there had been no death - thus
bringing home to her the universality of her experience. To accept death is to see
'things as they are' (tathata), and therefore to come one step closer to the
necessary rejection of all attachments which, if it can be achieved, will bring the
seeker to salvation.
While considering the go ban in this way, as a sequence of varying moods, the point should be made that the application of the laws of jo-ha-kyu are also
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likely to be felt by the viewer in an emotional way and not at an intellectual level.
Starting with a gently-moving god play which is lyrical and almost undramatic, the
programme proceeds through an accelerating and intensifying sequence until it
ends with a frenetic burst of activity in the demon play before achieving a
temporary calm. The complexity of the pieces is also patterned, the first and last
plays (god and demon) are usually the simplest, the second and fourth plays
(warrior and lunatic) are of moderate complexity and produce a strong emotional
impact, while the central 'wig' play is a suhtle creation, which is full of the spirit
ofyugen and contains fine poetry, and a sensitive reading ofcharacter.7
It must be said, in passing, that the categories of plays are not quite so clear- cut as the ideal pattern would suggest: there is the occasional woman who appears
in a warrior play, and the occasional man who appears in a 'wig' play, while
category four, that of the 'lunatic', is not limited to the deranged but is used as a
convenient repository for a range of plays that cannot easily be put anywhere else
- for which reason it is also known as the zatsu, or 'miscellaneous', category. In addition, some pieces are classified differently by different companies, or have
slipped in the course of time from one category into another, presumably because
they have begun to be performed with a different emphasis.
When the goban is given in full - which nowadays occurs only on very special occasions like New Year's Day or the ritual induction of a new stage - it is
customary to round off the programme with the final and most propitious part of
another god play (shugen), or at least with the chanting of a particularly positive chorus from such a piece (tsuke-shugen). This implies that the sequence of plays docs not end with the vanquishing of evil but continues in an unending cycle of
death and rebirth - which is also an ongoing cycle of spiritual struggle and eventual salvation.
In some ways the goban is similar to modern 'aleatory' art, although it is not
strictly aleatory, because chance is not involved. Aleatory art, most often found in music, occurs where the composer makes a provision for the players at some
point to use dice (Latin 'alea') or some other chance method to determine the
IOI
elements of a composition - it can even be left to each musician to choose
whichever continuation they like best. However, the composer always produces a
number of alternatives from which the selection is to be made, any one of which
will fit into the piece at the point where the 'random choice' occurs, so that the
overall shape of the work is preserved. Mozart was one of the the first people to
use this idea in an amusing little work he wrote to allow non-composers to create
short minuets by throwing dice and copying down pre-established bars of music,
but the idea was not really exploited by musicians and playwrights until the
middle of the 20th century. Its appeal is that, theoretically, you never get to hear
or see the same work twice and the composition as a result always achieves a
certain freshness and novelty, without losing its overall mood and structure.
Every noh company has a wealth of plays of each of the five categories in its
repertory and the senior actors compose a goban by choosing one. play of each kind - taking into account what pieces would work particularly well together and perhaps seeking to reflect the mood of the season, or the occasion on which the plays are to be performed. Whatever plays are chosen, the combination will create essentially the same overall pattern, surveying the potential range of states that the human spirit can experience - we cannot call it a soul because this is Buddhist drama and, on account of the prevalence of cause and effect, Buddhists do not accept the existence of an 'immortal' soul that is unchanging and indestructible.
Zeami on the construction of ooh plays
To return to Zeami's exposition of the theory behind the plays; when he describes how the playwright, normally the shite, should approach the construction of a
new noh play, he directs our attention to yet another trilogy of distinctions.8 The
three elements involved in composing a play, he declares, are its seed (by which he means the central character used as a dynamic impulse to action), the piece's structure, and its expression in words arid music. He says that you should select a suitable central character from the classics or legends; then divide the material up
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into five sequences according to the principles of jo-ha-kyu, in the way that we
have already seen; and after that compose the text and add appropriate melodies.
The actions of the main character you choose need to be especially suited to being
expressed by use of chanting and dance, the two basic arts of noh.
The best main characters to choose, he explains, are gods or goddesses,
heroes, highly cultivated people of great elegance, women famous for their artistic
accomplishments in poetry or dance, or priests who are artistically inclined.
Otherwise characters should be chosen who have associations with famous historical sites.
The situations used should be easily recognisable, particularly in the first
play of a programme. Poems or songs relating to the subject or mood of the play
should be woven into it and a quotation from a particularly famous source should
be included for the shite to recite. If a famous place or historic site is involved then
some well-known song or poem about that should certainly be included in the last
ha sequence, the one which contains the narrative dance and is the most crucial
section of the whole play. He suggests that if you want to make a courtly woman
the seed of your play, then Lady Murasaki's Tale of Genji will provide many excellent examples, whereas if you want to concentrate upon a warrior, then the
Heike Saga (Heike Monogatarii should be your source.
He draws attention to the fact that plays can appeal to the eye, the car or
the heart - another trilogy 9 - and that the quality of a play differs depending upon
which kind of appeal predominates. Plays that appeal to the eye are colourful,
involving attractive dancing and music, and they appeal even to those who know
nothing about the art of acting. However, they can be superficial because they lead
to overstimulation of the audience and deaden their awareness to any subtleties in
the performance. By contrast, plays that appeal to the ear have a serious
atmosphere and if they are performed with music and language chosen to accord
with the season and the time of day, they create a gentle, relaxed, enjoyable effect.
In such plays maintenance of the right atmosphere is essential and, if it is
achieved, the acting becomes more enjoyable as the story goes along. The third
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category, plays that appeal to the heart, have a more poetic quality, and usually
create a mood of 'melancholy elegance'.
Unfortunately, he observes, the last two kinds of play are too sophisticated
to be understood by the common people, and, though it is always possible to
'play down' to the capacities of an inexperienced and unknowledgeable audience,
the praise of knowledgeable aristocrats is the only truly valuable tribute that a noh
actor can obtain - so it is the aristocrats in the audience that the actor should play
to and, because he wants to give them satisfaction, any imitation of them in the
plays should be exact. For instance, any actor who is not sure of how to play a
courtly female role should make detailed inquiries to ascertain the precise
behaviour of court ladies and all actors should regularly study the elegant poetry
and costumes favoured by the aristocracy. By contrast any imitation of the lower
classes can, and should, remain generalised.U'
Beauty as hana.yugen or rojaku
Zeami has other important points to make when he considers the acting of the
noh, but before we consider these, we need to explain something that he takes for
granted. He stresses both directly and indirectly that the aim of the noh is to
represent the truth of the emotions in a beautiful form, but he does not explain the
terms that are used to describe the different kinds of beauty involved. These are
again essentially three - hana, yugen, and rojaku. In simple terms, hana is superficial beauty, which is obvious at once, like the appeal of the actor's
performance; yugen, as we have observed elsewhere, is a mysterious, emotional beauty which can only be hinted at, not shown; and rojaku is a cool, quiet beauty,
which is deeper even than yugen, and which is associated with people or places
which are very old, like temple gardens.
Of these three terms, yugen always keeps cropping up in discussions about
the aesthetics of noh acting, and it is the most difficult to define. It was originally
used in poetry to describe transient but beautiful experiences like seeing the moon
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through moving clouds or capturing the last light just as the sun dips below the
horizon - experiences which are emotionally charged but which, of their very
nature, last for only a few seconds. However, in noh acting it is generally held to
mean that certain sensitive types of mood or emotion can only be hinted at by the
actor if they are to be effective. Yugen, in short, is part of the refinement which
Zeami's sophisticated form of noh requires, reflecting the elegant indirectness of
the court manners of his time, although it is still very important, even today. The
Master in America went so far as to insist that, 'Withoutyugen, noh might as well
stop existing, or merge with kabuki!' - but he stubbornly refused to define it.'
'How am I supposed to define yugen in a sentence!' he demanded, 'Let me ask
what the point would be in spending all your life pursuing an art that can be
summed up in a simple slogan?' 11
The more immediate beauty of the hana or 'flower' is discussed by Zeami in
some detail, 12 because it is essentially the moment when the actor's performance
becomes particularly effective. The flower represents the ability to move an
audience by using a technique that has been thoroughly practised to create a
performance which has freshness and originality of appeal. If the flower is 'true' it
will seem new and fresh to the spectator, appeal to his imagination, interest him,
move him, and be appropriate to the play. The search for what is new and fresh
applies to all areas of an actor's performance - chant, dance, gesture, and
expressive bodily movements. The flower blooms best when the actor selects
plays to perform that he knows the audience will particularly appreciate and when
he fully enjoys his own performance - in other words when he has most
confidence. The flower is particularly striking, though, when the audience has not
anticipated precisely when and where it will bloom. The seed of the flower is
technique, the various skills of the art, but the flower itself is only brought to
bloom by the actor's imagination. For instance, patterns of dance-steps can be
learned from others, but the emotions that they engender in the audience come
from the performer, The flower's petals scatter and yet it is reborn, for the seed of
any performance always comes from the flower of some previous performance.
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The nature and beauty of the flower varies with the age of the actor, but even the 'withering' flower of an old actor has a beauty of its own. In general it can be said that a flower shows its beauty at the moment it blooms and its originality as the petals scatter, in other words its beauty lies in the present and its originality is realised later. The actor produces different flowers at different stages of his career, because each level of accomplishment produces its own kind of flower, with its own appropriate beauty, but all these different, changing flowers can be seen as separate manifestations of the one essential, Unchanging Flower, which is the ideal state of the art.
So the flower is the visible expression of the actor's understanding of his role and the originality of his interpretation. It is appreciated instantly by the audience and produces in them a state of fascination. However, there is a level of skill that produces an even more intense response and simply makes the audience gasp with surprise and pleasure. This level may be termed one of 'Pure Feeling that Transcends Cognition' where there is no reflection involved, and no time for the spectator to realise how well the performance is contrived. It is interesting, Zeami observes, that in the ancient Book of Changes (I Ching) the character for 'feeling' is written without the element which means 'mind' that it usually contains. This shows that it has long been realised that when true feeling is involved, there is no room for reflection and that sensation comes before consciousness. In other words, Zeami is saying that the audience needs to be surprised into a state of instinctive
response, a state of 'no mind' (mushin).13
The same state applies to the highest level of performance that an actor can attain, which he calls 'Peerless Charm.' At that level, where 'the spirit and its manifestation in performance can no longer be divided', the actor performs absolutely instinctively and wholly without reservations. He has completely absorbed his art into his mind and body so that he is not even aware of it and his performance is free and intuitive, like the response of a great sword-fighter. Despite the highest degree of concentration his actions all show relaxation, again like the sword-fighter. He will perform with complete ease and act with apparent
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simplicity but with great depth of emotion, guided and inspired by an intuitive
conception of his role that is so ingrained that it hides his skill. In fact, his art will
surpass all skill and transcend any kind of intention, because he will have attained
the state of 'no mind' (muslzin).14
Zeami on role-playing in nob
When it comes to the practicalities of role-playing, Zeami emphasises the fact that the representation of a character can never be external, but must grasp the 'inner logic' of the part, the character's basic motivations. The Master in America was equally clear on this point: 'Zeami says that all art finds its root in the imitation of nature and human behaviour - and of course by art he means the noh. But, in the noh, the imitation is not of the exterior, but of the inner core. When you are imitating a female character weeping, to employ a shrill falsetto would be utterly out of place and even insulting to the mask: you must feel her sorrow beating in your guts. The mask refuses to flirt with superficial imitation. The noh
is a masked art. Masked!' 15
There is a story about a young actor who was about to act the part of an old woman for the first time. He felt that he did not know enough about his subject, and decided to observe how old women behaved in real life. So he fixed upon one that he thought would be a suitable subject and began to follow her about. She thought he was following her because old women appealed to him sexually, so she approached him and told him to find someone more of his own age to make love to. Overcome with confusion, he apologised and explained what he was doing. 'That's no good,' she said, 'You'll learn nothing from the outside. You must understand why an old woman does what she does .. .', 'and,' she might have added, 'why she feels what she feels.' As Zeami says: 'The stage of simple imitation represents a surface copy, mere externalisation. Becoming the essence of a character represents internalisation. The level of internalisation must be attained
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first, then it should be possible for an actor to ... create the external aspects of his
performance as well.' 16
Elsewhere he talks about the 'Three Basic Role Types' 17 - the Old Man,
the Woman, and the Warrior - which, between them, can provide all the internal
motivations that an actor needs. When he is playing an Old Man, 'the actor must
learn to keep his soul at ease and look off vaguely into the distance .. .' because,
'the eyesight of an old person is hazy .. .' He must also realise that although old
men move slowly, they want to appear young, and they envy young people.
When he is playing a Woman, which is the most difficult type of role for a male
actor, he 'must concentrate his attention on producing an inner intensity and not
place any detailed stress on his physical movements', except when he is playing a
madwoman. The roles of Madwomen 'represent the disgrace of the character' and
are particularly striking because they are contrary to the perceived nature of
woman, which is modest and self-effacing. In mad roles the actor's face must not
be concealed by a mask, as it usually is when playing a woman, because the facial
expressions are crucial to the performance. Finally, when playing a Warrior, the
actor must demonstrate 'physical strength, with a splintered heart' and 'although a
manifestation of strength is the most important element in such a role, the subtle
movements of the actor's mind must be fully exploited.' 'He should carry a bow
and arrow, move his body violently, as if to fend off another's sword, and stamp
about in a nimble fashion; yet, beneath his strength, the performer must show
concern to maintain a certain gentleness in his posture, so as to avoid pushing
himself to the extremes of violence.'
Yin and yang in performance
This idea of balancing weak and strong clements, yin and yang, is a very old Taoist idea elaborately expressed in the / Ching, which aims to show mystically all the different combinations of the two forces and their influences on life. Zeami insists that a harmonious and controlled interplay of yin and yang is essential throughout
!08
the course of any play and, for this reason, the mixing of strongly contrasted
moods together, like anger andyugen, should be avoided. Similarly, one of the great problems for the actor is the balancing of strong and weak effects in his
performance. Role playing, which is very outgoing (yang), and yugen, which is very inward and reflective (yin), must be balanced against one another. If you are playing warrior or demon roles, where there is likely to be a lack ofyugen, strength and roughness must be balanced by a delicacy of style or a graceful appearance.
Playing anger requires a tender heart, to avoid roughness. Even when the actor is
playing the role of an outlaw 'he should always seem as if he were holding a
branch of flowers in his hand'. Equally, when performing violent body
movements, the actor should stamp gently, and when he is stamping violently he
should let the body be still. The relationship between actor and audience is yet
another yin-yang balance. Zeami says that the actor should play in a yin style in daylight, when the audience are in a yang mood, and a yang style at night, when
the mood of the audience will be yin. I &
The skin, flesh and bone of a performance
Beyond this, says Zeami, a performance needs skin, flesh and bone. 19 The terms
derive again from calligraphy. Bone is the artistic strength of the brush-stroke;
flesh is the manifestation of the artist's technique in practice; skin is the ease and
beauty of his writing, which is only achieved when the other two elements are
perfected. Another way of'looking at it is that skin is what appeals to the eye,
flesh what appeals to the ear and the mind, and bone what appeals to the heart. In
dance skin is the beauty of the actor's appearance, flesh consists of the patterns of
the dance, and bone is the richness of the emotions portrayed. The Master in
America put the same idea in a slightly different way: 20 'A body consists of
skin, flesh and bone. A performer's skin is atmospheric beauty, yugen. His flesh is
technique, discipline. What then is his bone? That is what is called kiai.'
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'Kiai', is a word which combines the meanings of 'feeling', 'forcefulness', and 'stamina', and it is also used to describe the spiritual power deriving from ki when you allow it to flow through you in a state of mushin, or 'mindlessness'. The Chinese character for it contains the clements of 'mind' and 'encounter', which suggest tension or confrontation. The Master in America found that his
students' performance had 'No kiai! No kiai at all!' 21 He told one student that he
should fight not to tum until he actually felt frictional heat under his toes. The student was not impressed: 'Oh, come on! Tell him all I've got to do here is to turn. Why fight not to?' The Master was caustic: 'You mean that you wish to turn, so you turn? In noh that is not worthy of the audience's attention. You wish to move? There is no interest in that! But suppose there is an opposing power in the space around you that constantly holds you back - that is interesting. A movement in dance must be attained only when the dancer's desire overwhelms the hostile resistance of the surrounding space. Only then will the audience trust the dancer's performance.'
The need for concentration
Zeami has nothing to say directly about using a mask, but the Master in America
revealed some of the difficulties.22 He declared that: 'a noh dancer must place his
eyes in his hips once he is masked.' He demonstrated an extended movement using the mask, and then observed: 'I had my eyes closed just now. But even if I had kept them open I should have seen nothing. All masks have such tiny holes and they are always on a different level from my own eyes. The only reliable eyes are the ones set in the centre of my moving body. Another way to see without my eyes is to keep steps of exact width, evenly paced steps, so that I can measure, and draw a mental map as I move. The first time I wore a mask I suffered nausea, dizziness, and acute fear of being lost. I must have fallen off the stage more than a dozen times since then. But now, I wouldn't mind too much if one morning I woke
up blind. Perhaps I'd be a better dancer.'
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It seems, from other comments he made, that difficulties, like not being able
to see through the mask, are welcomed in noh because they demand an increased
concentration on the part of the actor, which, combined with the intense
selectivity of movement, gesture and delivery, gives the art its distinctive force.
The intensity of the concentration needed for some roles was illustrated by
another story the Master told. He took as his example Dojoji, a play in which, at
the climax of the dance, the principal dancer and the drummer who accompanies
him work quite independently, without any score, and the dancer cannot see the
drummer because he is masked:23
'Dojoji is famous for its climactic dance: a drum-player accompanies the
dancer only with his yell and intermittent drum beats. The drum-player is
expected to "kill his face" by focussing on his yell and the following sounds, while
the masked dancer's eyes are "buried in his hips": so the communication between
them is no longer that of a co-operative duet, but nearer the life-or-death assaults
of a swordfight. Each beats his drum or takes a step with fatal commitment. On
the noh stage, where everything is distilled to the final essence, one wrong beat,
one wrong step, can destroy the entire play. The tension that rises between the
two performers as they struggle to communicate telepathically is so intense that
people watching the scene have been known to faint.
'Traditionally, to rehearse this number, a folding-screen is set up between
the two of them. There is no way of predicting when or how the next drum-beat
will come. Exactly on the beat the dancer's foot must be jolting sharply down.
This exacting timing of motion and sound adds tremendously to the theatrical
impact. Again kiai is the thing. When I made my first appearance in Dojoji, grandfather sent me to the drummer who had accompanied him half a century
earlier. This old man was known to us as a legendary figure. He had retired to
Kyushu Island, and had never consented to work for any other master, but, at the
age of seventy-four, he agreed to make a last appearance with me in Tokyo, to
save my grandfather's face. The old man held my hand in his. We sat facing in
different directions with our eyes closed. He cried out: "Yahatt!" Then an
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interminable silence followed, during which I was to feel out when the next drum-
beat would be struck. On that crucial instant I was to squeeze his hand. If he squeezed mine at precisely the same second, then the timing was right.
'I stayed on the island for a month, repeating this same traditional exercise with him day and night. When I had mastered the steps of the entire dance, even if I tried consciously not to be dominated by his beat, the moment the old man's yell attacked me, my entire body had already been put into motion in spite of myself. His kiai was far superior to mine, and made a puppet of me. He was a great professional.'
The life of a noh actor
The Master in America also gives us some idea of what it means to be born into a
noh family: 24
'At the age of five or six, a child training for the noh, except when he is sleeping, must continually rehearse dancing, chanting, flute, drums and costuming, going from one teacher to another. A fan or a fist flies out and strikes him each time he makes a mistake. He's often sent to bed without supper if he hasn't been able to remember something or if he's been lacking in concentration. There's no room for family life!
'When I was seven, all the children in our theatre school were asked to gather together at the theatre. "Time for child-picking," people whispered. Grandfather came, watched each of us frightened children give a short performance, then went away. A week later I was sent to my grandfather's theatre with a bagful of rehearsal costumes and a fan. I was the "picked child". "Go and worm out all the
old madman's secrets," my family told me. 'When I came home again after spending eight years with grandfather, I
found my own father and brothers absolutely insufferable - first as artists, and then as a family - because grandfather had taught me standards to use to judge art and life that were absolutely uncompromising and made it quite impossible for me
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to accept the standards of others. When he dies, all the secret passages and
gestures he taught me night by night, when the other disciples had been sent away,
will indeed be mine, and mine alone. Any noh performer would give his right arm
for those secrets. As a result, I trust nobody in my family or in my school and,
naturally, none of them trust me ... It is inhuman. No human law governs noh
family relationships. We members of the noh families are like sprocket wheels that
don't mesh with the other wheels around us. We don't fit in with the outside
world.' On another occasion he quoted a poem:25
'The way of the warrior is to accept death.
The noh is a lifelong - a more than lifelong - discipline.
During the whole of your life, you build your own coffin.'
'It's not a matter of a career,' he explained, 'It's a vocation. My grandfather
tells me that every morning he wakes up and shudders at the thought ofnoh, just
as he used to do as a beginner some eighty years ago.' 26
This makes it clear that noh makes constant demands upon the actor
throughout the whole of his life. Zeami tells us that a noh actor only retains his
mastery through constant practice, for if he does not practise constantly his
flower will dic.27 And he must always be willing to consider the possibility of
faults in his performance that he is not aware of, because there is a very real danger
that the skilled actor, as he grows older, will fail to constantly re-evaluate his
performance, and this will result in stagnation, and make his art appear
increasingly old-fashioned.
But, according to the Master in America, there are compensations: 'I've been
working in the noh now for more than thirty years. There has never been any
repetition, rest, or respite. Noh changes every day as I change.' and 'his face was
shining with joy.' 28
i I
j
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NOTES
Uenishi, 1967, p 195, col 2. In the text I call this unidentified Japanese noh Master, 'the Master in America' Nobuko Uenishi was his interpreter for the course, and wrote a most useful and revealing article about her own and the students' experiences. See Bibliography.
2 The terms 'jo-ha-kyu' in Japanese are translations of the terms 'hsu-p 'a-chi' in Chinese, which are much older. Although they are pronounced differently in the two languages, the terms are written with exactly the same Chinese characters.
3 This is a conflation of various ideas Zeami expresses in his treatise on writing a play, Nosakusho. See Rimer and Masakazu pp 148-162.
4 From Zeami's Shugyoku tokka in Rimer and Masakazu p 139.
5
6
The relevant section in Zeami's Kakyo is in Rimer and Masakazu pp 83-86.
Sumidagawa is the play that inspired Benjamin Britten's Curlew River.
7 Komparu (1983), Chap 5, discusses the categories in detail and also deals with the links between the five subject categories and the Chinese theory of the five elements.
8 From Zeami's Nosakusho again. See note 3. 9 From Zeami's Kakyo again, in Rimer and Masakazu pp 99-100.
10 Mostly from Zeami's Fushikaden in Rimer and Masakazu p 10, p 18 & p 41.
11 Uenishi, 1967, p 194, col 2.
12 Zeami's reflections on the flower are spread so widely throughout his work that there would be a vast list of references here. The reader must trust me to represent him fairly.
13 The reference to the / Ching is Zeami's not mine. It will be found in his Kakyo. See Rimer and Masakazu p 91. He is advocating a state of 'no-mind' (mushin) where intellection does not get in the way of action. See particularly 'The appeal of zen to the samurai' in Chapter 2, and the section before that in the same chapter on zen.
14 From Zeami's Kyui, in Rimer and Masakazu pl25.
15 Uenishi, 1967, p 194, col I.
16 From Zeami's Kakyo again, in Rimer and Masakazu p 77.
17 From Zeami's Shikado, in Rimer and Masakazu p 64-65 conflated with his Shugyoku tokka in Rimer and Masakazu pp 142-144.
18 Mainly from Zeami's Fushikaden, in Rimer and Masakazu p 43-47.
19 From Zeami's Shikado, in Rimer and Masakazu p 69-71.
20 Uenishi, 1967, p 192, cols 2-3 ..
21 Uenishi, 1967, p 192, col I.
22 Uenishi, 1967, p 194, col I.
23 Uenishi, 1967, p 196, cols 2-3.
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24 Uenishi, 1967, p 195, col I.
25 Uenishi, 1967, p 196, col 3.
26 Ucnishi, 1967, p 194, col 3.
27 From several Zeami sources. Sec Rimer and Masakazu pp 42, 96, 106, & 115.
28 Uenishi, 1967, p 192, col 3.