Jibyōshi Seigi: Yamazaki Gakudō, 1915. (A study of Nō-rhythm.)
Yōkyoku Kaisetsu: Nō-plays explained in colloquial, by K. Kawashima, 1913.
Magazines such as Nōgaku Gwahō, Yōkyokukai, etc.; picture postcards and albums of photographs such as Nōgaku Mandai Kagami, 1916.
Ryōjin Hisshō: Folk-songs collected in 12th century and rediscovered in 1911.
APPENDIX I
MODERN NŌ LETTERS FROM JAPAN
The fact that Nō did not disappear with the overthrow of the Shogun in 1863 was almost solely due to the efforts of Umewaka Minoru (1828-1909), whose ancestors had for generations played tsure parts in the Kwanze theatre. When the Mikado was restored in 1868 Kiyotaka, head of the Kwanze line, was convinced that an art so intimately connected with the Shōgunate must perish with it, and fled to Shizuoka where the fallen Shōgun was living in retreat.
Minoru alone remained behind, built himself a theatre[218] (1869-70) and “manned his lonely rampart.” When confidence was re-established the other “troupes” soon returned, so that henceforward five theatres existed, the four of earlier days and that of Umewaka as a fifth. Minoru was succeeded by his brilliant sons, Mansaburō and Rokurō, who in 1919 opened a new Umewaka theatre. As a compliment to the Umewaka family and a tribute to its services, actors of the three other “schools” took part in the opening ceremony, but the Kwanzes refused to do so. The dispute turns on the right to grant certificates of efficiency (menjō) which, according to the Kwanzes’ claim, belongs only to Motoshige, the head of their school. Such certificates have, in fact, been issued successively by Minoru, his sons and the “renegade” Kwanze Tetsunojō, who sides with the Umewaka. The validity of Minoru’s certificates was, I believe, never disputed during his lifetime.
To complete this note on modern Nō I include the following extracts from letters written in 1916 by Mr. Oswald Sickert to Mr. Charles Ricketts. The sender and recipient of the letters both authorized me to use them, and for this permission I am deeply grateful. But I wish that Mr. Sickert, whose memories of Nō must already be a little dimmed, had had the leisure to write a book of his own on the two dramatic arts that so deeply interested him in Japan, the Nō and the Kabuki.
“It’s odd if people describe the Nō performance as a thing that is simple or unsophisticated or unelaborated. The poem, to begin with, is not simple, but it has a lyrical slenderness which wouldn’t one would say, lead anybody to think of going such lengths as to distribute its recitation among a chorus and actors, thus requiring perhaps eleven men to say the words, with two or three drums and a flute added, and masks and costumes fit for a museum and angelic properties, and special stages, and attendants to wipe, in this hot weather, the sweat from immovable hands and from under chins. The volume of what goes to a performance is large, but it’s all cut down outwardly and bent inwards. As for the recitation, the first necessity is to eliminate direct expressiveness in the saying of the words. This seems obvious in the saying of any good poetry. The chorus chants (it’s rather like a Gregorian chant), the actors intone. Both may come to singing, only not with any tune that might carry you off by itself. Yet, within the limitations of intoning, with some turns, the actor taking the women’s parts will achieve a pitch of pathetic intensity beyond the reach of one who sings words to an air that has an existence of its own, or who recites with meaning. The Nō actor is not directly expressive, it’s always the poem he is doing and throwing you back on.