 | "Noh", or, Accomplishment : |  |
I dare say the play, Suma Genji, will seem
undramatic to some people the first time they
read it. The suspense is the suspense of waiting
for a supernatural manifestation—which comes.
Some will be annoyed at a form of psychology
which is, in the West, relegated to spiritistic
séances. There is, however, no doubt that
such psychology exists. All through the winter
of 1914-15 I watched Mr. Yeats correlating
folk-lore (which Lady Gregory had collected
in Irish cottages) and data of the occult writers,
with the habits of charlatans of Bond Street.
If the Japanese authors had not combined the
psychology of such matters with what is to me
a very fine sort of poetry, I would not bother
about it.
The reader will miss the feel of suspense if
the priest eager to see "even in a vision" the
beauty lost in the years, "the shadow of the
past in bright form." I do not say that this
sympathy is easily acquired. It is too unusual
a frame of mind for us to fall into it without
conscious effort. But if one can once get over
the feeling of hostility, if one can once let
himself into the world of the Noh, there is
undoubtedly a new beauty before him. I have
found it well worth the trial, and can hope
that others will also.
The arrangement of five or six Noh into one
performance explains, in part, what may seem
like a lack of construction in some of the pieces;
the plays have, however, a very severe construction
of their own, a sort of musical construction.
When a text seems to "go off into nothing"
at the end, the reader must remember "that
the vagueness or paleness of words is made
good by the emotion of the final dance," for
the Noh has its unity in emotion. It has also
what we may call Unity of Image.[1]
At least,
of a single Image: the red maple leaves
and the snow flurry in Nishikigi, the pines in
Takasago, the blue-grey waves and wave pattern
in Suma Genji, the mantle of feathers in the
play of that name, Hagoromo.
When it comes to presenting Professor
Fenollosa's records of his conversations with
Umewaka Minoru, the restorer of Noh, I find
myself much puzzled as to where to begin. I
shall, however, plunge straight into the conversation
of May 15, 1900, as that seems
germane to other matters already set forth in
this excerpt, preceding it only by the quaint
record of an earlier meeting, December 20,
1898, as follows:
Called on old Mr. Umewaka with Mr. Hirata.
Presented him with large box of eggs. He thanked
me for presenting last Friday 18 yen to Takeyo for
my six lessons, which began on November 18. I
apologized to him for the mistake of years ago,
thanked him for his frankness, his reticence to others,
and his kindness in allowing me to begin again with
him, asked him to receive 15 yen as a present in
consideration of his recent help.
He was very affable, and talked with me for
about 1½ hours. He asked me to sing, and I sang
"Hansakaba." He praised me, said everything
was exactly right and said that both he and
than a Japanese could make. He said I was
already advanced enough to sing in a Japanese
company.[2]
Mosse and I are the only foreigners who have
ever been taught Noh, and I am the only foreigner
now practising it.
We spoke much of the art of it, I giving him
a brief account of Greek drama. He already knew
something about opera.
He said the excellence of Noh lay in emotion,
not in action or externals. Therefore there were no
accessories, as in the theatres. "Spirit" (tamashii)
was the word he used. The pure spirit was what it
(Noh) worked in, so it was higher than other arts.
If a Noh actor acted his best, Umewaka could read
his character. The actor could not conceal it. The
spirit must out, the "whole man," he said. Therefore
he always instructed his sons to be moral, pure
and true in all their daily lives, otherwise they could
not become the greatest actors.
He spoke much about the (popular) theatre, of
its approximation of Noh when he was about thirteen
years old. The present Danjuro's father and his
troop disguised themselves and came to the performance
of Kanjin Noh, from which they were normally
excluded. This was the one opportunity for the
public to see Noh, it is (as said elsewhere) the single
actor. Other actors were excluded.
Then it was that Ichikawa, having seen these
Noh plays, imitated them in the famous "Kanjiinjo,"
which the present Danjuro still plays as one of
his 18 special pieces. Under the present regime,
the popular actors have access to the Noh plays, and
the popular plays have imitated them still further.
Almost all forms of music and recitation have now
(1898) taken more or less of their style from Noh.
Noh has been a purification of the Japanese soul
for 400 years. Kobori Enshu classified the fifteen
virtues of Noh, among which he counted mental
and bodily health as one, calling it "Healing without
medicine."
"Dancing is especially known, by its circulation
of the blood, to keep off the disease of old age."
Now Minoru and his sons occasionally go to
Danjuro's theatre. He spoke much about the
Shogun's court. When a Noh actor was engaged
by the Shogun he had to sign long articles to the
effect that he would never divulge even to his wife
or his relatives any of the doings or descriptions of
things in the palace, also that he would not visit
houses of pleasure or go to the theatre. If caught
doing these things he was severely punished.
Occasionally a Noh actor would go to the theatre in
disguise.
With the exception of the Kanjin Noh, common
people could not, at that time, see the Noh, but a very
few were occasionally let in to the monthly rehearsals.
The notes for May 15, 1900, begin as
follows:
He (Minoru) says that Mitsuni (a certain actor)
has learning and great Nesshin, or technique, but
that, after all the technique is learned, the great
difficulty is to grasp the spirit of the piece.
He always tells the newspaper men to-day not
to write criticisms of Noh. They can criticize the
popular theatre, for there even the plots may change,
and amateurs can judge it. But in Noh everything
comes down by tradition from early Tokugawa days
and cannot be judged by any living man, but can
only be followed faithfully.[3]
Although there is no general score for actors and
cats (i.e. the four musicians who have sat at the back
of the Noh stage for so many centuries that no one
quite knows what they mean or how they came
there), there is in the hands of the Taiyu, or actor-manager,
a roll such as he (Minoru) himself has,
which gives general directions, not much detail.
This contains only the ordinary text, with no special
notations for singing, but for the dances there are
minute diagrams showing where to stand, how far
to go forward, the turns in a circle, the turns to
right or left, how far to go with the right or left
foot, how many steps, eyes right, eyes left, what
mask and what clothes are to be worn, the very
position of the arms. There are drawings of figures
naked for old men, women, girls, boys, ghosts,
and all kinds of characters sitting and standing;
they show the proper relation of limbs and body.
Then there are similar drawings of the same figures
clothed.
But one cannot trust merely to such a set of
instructions. There is a great deal that must be
supplied by experience, feeling, and tradition, and
which has always been so supplied. Minoru feels
this so strongly that he has not yet shown the rolls
to his sons, for fear it might make them mechanical.
"Kuden" (Tradition)
A book of this sort has been handed down by
his ancestors from early Tokugawa days, but it is
only a rough draft. He has written a long supplement
on the finer points, but has shown it to no one.
One should not trust to it, either. Such fine things
as Matsukaze, the pose for looking at the moon, or
at the dawn, or at the double reflection of the moon
in two tubs, and all the detail of business cannot
be written down; at such places he writes merely
"kuden" (tradition), to show that this is something
that can be learned only from a master. Sometimes
his teacher used to beat him with a fan when he
was learning.
Relying on record plus such tradition, we can
say with fair certitude that there has been no appreciable
(that is to say, since the beginning of the seventeenth
century, or about the end of Shakespeare's lifetime).
Kuden, or this feeling for the traditional intensity,
is not to be gained by mere teaching or mimicry,
or by a hundred times trying; but it must be
learned by a grasp of the inner spirit. In a place,
for instance, where a father comes to his lost son,
walks three steps forward, pats him twice on the
head and balances his stick, it is very difficult to
get all this into grace and harmony, and it certainly
cannot be written down or talked into a man by
word of mouth.
Imitation must not be wholly external. There
is a tradition of a young actor who wished to learn
Sekidera Komachi, the most secret and difficult of
the three plays, which alone are so secret that they
were told and taught only by father to eldest son.
He followed a fine old woman, eighty years of age, in
the street and watched her every step. After a
while she was alarmed and asked him why he was
following her. He said she was interesting. She
replied that she was too old. Then he confessed
that he was an ambitious Noh actor and wanted to
play Komachi.
An ordinary woman would have praised him,
but she did not. She said it was bad for Noh,
though it might be good for the common theatre,
to imitate facts. For Noh he must feel the thing as
a whole, from the inside. He would not get it
copying facts point by point. All this is true.
You must lay great stress upon this in explaining
the meaning and aesthetics of the Noh.
There is a special medium for expressing emotion.
It is the voice.
Each pupil has his own voice; it cannot be made
to imitate the voice of an old woman or a spirit (oni).
It must remain always the same, his own; yet with
that one individual voice of his he must so express
himself as to make it clear that it is the mentality
of an old woman, or whatever it happens to be, who
is speaking.
It is a Noh saying that "The heart is the form."
Costumes
There is a general tradition as to costumes.
Coloured garments cannot be interchanged for
white. The general colour is a matter of record,
but not the minute patterns, which may be changed
from time to time. It is not necessary that one
dress should be reserved for one particular character
in one particular piece. Even in Tokugawa days
there was not always a costume for each special
character. Some were used for several parts and
some were unique; so also were the masks.
The general colour and colour-effect of the dress
cannot be changed: say it were small circular
patterns on a black ground, this must remain, but
the exact flower or ornament inside the circles may
vary. The length and cut of the sleeve could not
be altered, but only the small details of the pattern.
little.
Masks
The hannia, or daemonic masks, are different.
The hannia in Awoi no Uye is lofty in feeling; that
of Dojoji is base. They are very different. The
masks of Shunkan, Semimaru, Kagekiyo, and Yoro-boshi
cannot be used for any other parts. Kontan's
mask can be used for several parts, as, for example,
the second shite in Takasago. Of course if one
has only one hannia mask one must use it for all
hannia, but it is better not to do so. The Adachigahara
hannia is the lowest in feeling.
Fifty years ago they tried to copy the old masks
exactly. The Shogun had Kanze's masks copied
even to the old spots. Now it is difficult to get good
sculptors.
Turning the head is very difficult, for the actor
must be one piece with the mask.
An ordinary mask is worth 30 yen; a great one,
200. At first one cannot distinguish between them.
But the longer you look at a good mask the more
charged with life it becomes. A common actor
cannot use a really good mask. He cannot make
himself one with it. A great actor makes it live.
Music
In the notes for a conversation of May 6,
there are the following remarks about the
in prose and part in verse; some parts are sung
and some spoken, or one might better say,
intoned]:
The importance of the music is in its intervals
[he seems to mean intervals between beats, i.e.
rhythm intervals, not "intervals" of pitch]. It is
just like the dropping of rain from the eaves.
The musical bar is a sort of double bar made
up of five notes and seven notes, or of seven notes
and then seven more notes, the fourteen notes
being sung in the same time as the twelve first
ones.
The division of seven syllables is called "yo,"
that of five is called "in"; the big drum is called
"yo," and the small drum "in." The seven
syllables are the part of the big drum, the five
syllables are the part of the small drum—but if they
come in succession it is too regular; so sometimes
they reverse and the big drum takes the "in" part
and the small drum the "yo."
The head of the chorus naturally controls the
musicians. The chorus is called "kimi," or lord,
and the "cats," or musicians, are called "subjects."
When Minoru acts as head of the chorus, he says
he can manage the "cats" by a prolonging or
shortening of sounds. [This is obscure, but apparently
each musician has ideas of his own about
tempo.]
The "cats" must conform to him. The chorus
number of changes may have crept into the tradition.
The art consists in not being mechanical. The
"cats," the chorus, and the shite "feel out their
own originality," and render their own emotions.
Even during the last fifteen years some changes
may have crept in unconsciously. Even in Tokugawa
days there never was any general score bringing
all the parts under a single eye. There is not and
never has been any such score. There are independent
traditions. [Note.—The privileges of acting
as "cats" and as waki were hereditary privileges
of particular families, just as the privilege of
acting the chief parts pertained to the members
of the five hereditary schools.] Minoru and other
actors may know the parts [he means here the
musical air] instinctively or by memory; no
one has ever written them down. Some actors
know only the arias of the few pieces of which they
are masters.
Each "cat" of each school has his own traditions.
When he begins to learn, he writes down
in his note-book a note for each one of the twelve
syllables. Each man has his own notation, and he
has a more or less complete record to learn from.
These details are never told to any one. The
ordinary actors and chorus singers do not know
them.
In singing, everything depends on the most
minute distinction between "in" and "yo." Minoru
was surprised to hear that this was not so in
"in," "yo." This adds breadth and softness,
"haba" he calls it.[4]
This looks like a sort of syncopation. I don't know enough
about music to consider it musically with any fullness, but it
offers to the student of metric most interesting parallels, or if
not parallels, suggestions for comparison with sapphics and with
some of the troubadour measures (notably those of Arnaut
Daniel), the chief trouble being that Professor Fenollosa's notes
at this point are not absolutely lucid.
The Stage
The stage is, as I have said, a platform open
on three sides and reached by a bridge from
the green-room. The notes on the conversation
of June 2 run as follows:
They have Hakama Noh in summer. The general
audience does not like it, but experts can see the
movements better as the actors sometimes wear no
upper dress at all, and are naked save for the semitransparent
hakama. New servants are surprised
at it.
Mr. Umewaka Minoru has tried hard not to
change any detail of the old customs. In recent
times many have urged him to change the lights,
but he prefers the old candles. They ask him to
modernize the text and to keep the shite from sitting
in the middle [of the stage? or of the play?], but
he won't.
A pupil of his, a wood-dealer, says that a proper
Noh stage could not be built now, for it is all of
hinoten. The floor is in twenty pieces, each of which
would now cost 250 yen. There must be no knots
in the pillars, and all the large pillars and cross
pieces are of one piece. This would cost enormously
now even if it were possible at all.
Awoyama Shimotsuke no Kami Roju built this
stage [the one now used by Minoru] for his villa in
Aoyama more than forty years ago; it was moved
to its present site in the fourth year of Meiji (1872).
The daimyo sold it to a curio dealer from whom
Umewaka Minoru bought it. Shimotsuke was
some relation to the daimyo of Bishu, in Owari, and
so he got the timbers for nothing. The best
timber comes from Owari. So the stage had cost
only the carpenter's wages (2000 yen?). Now
the wood alone would cost 20,000 to 40,000 yen,
if you could get it at all. You couldn't contract
for it.
The form of the stage was fixed in the time of
Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu. In Ashikaga (fourteenth
century) the performances were in Tadasu ga wara,
and the stage was open on all sides. The bridge
came to the middle of one side (apparently the back)
where the pine tree now is. The stage was square,
as it now is, with four pillars. The audience surrounded
it in a great circle "like Sumo" [whatever
that may mean]. They had a second story or gallery
and the Shogun sat in front. The roof was as it
now is.
The roof should not be tiled, but should be like
the roof of the shinto temples in Ise. Shimotsuke
had had a tiled roof because he was afraid of fire.
People had said that he (Minoru) was mad to set up
a Noh stage [at the time when he was starting to
revive the performance]; so he had made the roof
small and inconspicuous to attract less notice.
Under the stage are set five earthen jars, in the
space bounded by the pillars, to make the sound
reverberate—both the singing and the stamping.[5]
There are two more jars under the musicians' place
and three under the bridge. This has been so since
early Tokugawa times. The ground is hollowed
out under the stage to the depth of four feet.[6]
The jars are not set upright, as this would obstruct
the sound. They are set at 45 degrees. Sometimes
they are hung by strings and sometimes set on
posts. Minoru's are on posts.
Some jars are faced right and some left; there
is a middle one upright. Minoru says it is just
like a drum, and that the curve of the jars has to be
carefully made. The larger the jars the better.
Hideyoshi or Iyeyasu put the back on the stage.
It is made of a double set of boards in order to throw
the sound forward. They didn't like having the
sound wasted. This innovation was, on that score,
aesthetic.
"Social and palace" reasons have in some
measure determined the form of the stage.
The floor is not quite level, but slopes slightly
forward. The art of stage-building is a secret of
"daiko." It is as difficult to build a Noh stage
as to build a shinto temple, and there are no proper
Noh stages built now.
The painting of the pine tree on the back is most
important. It is a congratulatory symbol of unchanging
green and strength.
On some stages they have small plum flowers,
but this is incorrect; there should be no colour
except the green. The bamboo is the complement
of the pine. To paint these trees well is a great
secret of Kano artists. When skilfully painted,
they set off the musicians' forms.
The three real little pine trees along the bridge
are quite fixed; they symbolize heaven, earth, and
man. The one for heaven is nearest the stage,
and then comes the one which symbolizes man.
They are merely symbols like the painted pine tree.
Sometimes when a pine is mentioned the actors look
toward it.
The measurements of the stage have not changed
since early Tokugawa days. It should be three
ken square, but this measurement is sometimes
taken inside, sometimes outside the pillars.
There is no special symbolism in the bridge; it
is merely a way of getting across. The length was
arbitrary under the Ashikaga; later it was fixed
by rule. At the Shogun's court the bridge was 13
The middle palace bridge was 7 ken. Minoru's
bridge is 5 ken. The bridge must be an odd number
of ken, like 13, or like the "in" and "yo" numbers
(7 and 5). The width is 9 "shaken" outside and
8 inside the pillars.
This stamping dates from the time when some mythological
person danced on a tub to attract the light-goddess.
The stage is in the open. Minoru says elsewhere, "Snow
is worst for it blows on the stage and gets on the feet."
This intensification of the Image, this manner of construction,
is very interesting to me personally, as an Imagiste, for we
Imagistes knew nothing of these plays when we set out in our
own manner. These plays are also an answer to a question that
has several times been put to me: "Could one do a long
Imagiste poem, or even a long poem in vers libre?"
| "Noh", or, Accomplishment : | |