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
change in Noh since the early days of Tokugawa
(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."
