Illustrated Japanese Culture
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Noh is a Japanese theatre form combining chant, instrumental music, movement and dance. A small cast can evoke a journey, a memory or a supernatural encounter with few stage objects. Noh and the more dialogue-centred, often comic kyōgen together form nōgaku.
01
The shite is the principal role; the waki is the counterpart, often a traveller whose arrival begins the encounter. Supporting tsure roles may join them. A kyōgen actor can appear as an ai, explaining local events between parts of a play. The waki is generally a living adult man and performs without a mask.
The jiutai chorus describes places, actions and feelings, and can take over words belonging to a character. Musicians provide the hayashi accompaniment. Kōken attendants remain available to arrange costumes and props and, in an emergency, take over a performance.
02
The flute is the nōkan; the drums are kotsuzumi, ōtsuzumi and taiko. Some plays omit the taiko.
The instruments are the transverse nōkan flute, the small shoulder drum kotsuzumi, the larger hip drum ōtsuzumi and the stick-struck taiko. Some plays omit the taiko. Vocal chanting is called utai. Shamisen is not part of this basic Noh ensemble.
The performer’s basic stance, kamae, and sliding walk, hakobi, give the movement its form. Raising a hand toward the forehead can indicate weeping; two hands intensify the gesture. Dance combines established movement patterns. The drummers’ vocal calls help coordinate the music without a conductor.
03
The square main stage has four pillars and a pine painted on the rear board. The hashigakari bridge links the backstage area to the main stage and is itself a performance space. Actors prepare in the kagami-no-ma, the mirror room. Even indoor Noh theatres retain the roofed stage form inherited from outdoor settings.
Noh uses little scenery and normally has no front curtain. A cloth-wrapped bamboo or wooden structure, called tsukurimono, may represent a boat, carriage, well or building. A fan can function as an everyday object or take on another meaning through the performer’s action.
04
Masks identify kinds of characters. Ko-omote represents a young woman; the hannya mask expresses a woman’s jealousy and rage. Changing the mask’s angle and the light alters its apparent expression. Other roles are performed with the actor’s face uncovered.
Richly woven or embroidered Noh robes help establish the role together with the mask, wig and props. They are performance costumes, not a straightforward picture of what people wore in daily life. Their volume and pattern also shape what the audience sees as the actor moves.
05
In a common mugen Noh structure, a traveller meets a local figure who tells of the past. That figure leaves; an interlude gives further explanation. The principal character returns in a revealed form, often a spirit, and dances the remembered experience. This is one important structure, not the plot of every Noh play.
In Izutsu, a travelling monk encounters a woman’s spirit connected with the poet Ariwara no Narihira. A well and old clothing bring a past relationship into the present performance. The restrained stage objects help the story move through recollection.
Sumidagawa follows a mother looking for her abducted child. She learns that he has died. Its unfolding tragedy shows why Noh cannot be reduced to a theatre in which every story is a dream about a deity or ghost.
Traditional categories are often summarised as deity, warrior, woman, miscellaneous and demon plays. A five-play programme drew from these groups, with kyōgen between them; modern programmes are often shorter. Okina is a special ritual performance and sits outside the ordinary five-part classification.
Jo-ha-kyū concerns changes in pace, emotional intensity and dramatic development. It can organise a single play or the progression of a full day’s programme. It is more than a rule that every moment must be faster than the last.
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Sangaku entertainments arrived from China in the eighth century and mixed with local performance, developing into sarugaku. Temple and shrine entertainments, ritual performance and dengaku also contributed. Mature Noh emerged much later than these early roots.
In the fourteenth century, Kan’ami and his son Zeami developed sarugaku Noh with support from the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Zeami drew on classical literature and refined song and dance, writing treatises including Fūshikaden. On’ami and Konparu Zenchiku were among those who carried the art forward.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi supported Noh in the Momoyama period. Under the Tokugawa shogunate it became ceremonial theatre, with domains supporting performers. Townspeople also learned chanting and short dances. Official warrior patronage did not mean that only warriors took part.
07
The Meiji Restoration removed the old sources of income, and masks and costumes were dispersed. New government figures, aristocrats and business patrons helped sustain performance, while indoor Noh theatres developed. Research and public interest grew during the Taishō and Shōwa periods.
War damaged the performing community, followed by postwar recovery, overseas exchange, new works and revivals of older plays. The National Noh Theatre opened in 1983. UNESCO proclaimed nōgaku a Masterpiece in 2001; it entered the Representative List in 2008. Those are two different milestones. Women also perform professionally in contemporary Noh.
The five shite schools are Kanze, Hōshō, Konparu, Kongō and Kita. Waki actors, instrumentalists and kyōgen performers have their own schools, and performers from different specialisms collaborate. These lineages are distinct from the five categories of plays.
The combined tradition of Noh and kyōgen.
The principal role and its counterpart; the waki often begins an encounter as a traveller.
Yes. It can narrate and also take over words belonging to a character.
Nōkan flute, kotsuzumi shoulder drum, ōtsuzumi hip drum and, in some plays, taiko.
No. The bridge also forms part of the performance space.
No. Mask use depends on the role.
A lightly built prop structure may stand for a boat, carriage, well or building.
An apparently ordinary encounter opens into the past, with the principal figure returning in a revealed, often spiritual form.
They developed medieval sarugaku Noh, while Zeami also wrote influential works on performance.
The Masterpiece proclamation and the later inclusion on the Representative List.