The classic No stage is a splendid example of Zen-influenced architecture. The stage is a platform of golden, polished wood
covered by a heavy arched roof supported by stout pillars at each of the four corners. The entire structure projects out into the audience, almost as though a wooden shrine had been reconstructed in the middle of the auditorium. The actors approach the platform along a wide entry ramp that leads off stage right to a curtained entranceway at the rear of the auditorium. The ramp has three small pine trees spaced evenly along its length, while on the backdrop of the stage proper there is a painting of a massive gnarled pine. As though to suggest Shinto origins for the drama, the stage and entrance ramp are symbolically separated from the audience by an encircling expanse of white sand, spanned at the very front of the stage by a small symbolic wooden stair. The acting platform is square, approximately twenty feet by twenty, with an additional rear area to accommodate the musicians and another area at stage left where the chorus kneels. Underneath the stage, unseen by the audience, are a number of large clay pots, a traditional acoustic device to amplify the resonance of the actors' voices. The few properties used in the plays are introduced and removed through an auxiliary entrance at the rear of the stage.
The beginning of the play is signaled offstage by the high- pitched wail of a bamboo flute. Two attendants with bamboo poles lift back the variegated brocade curtain covering the doorway to the ramp, and the musicians, either three or four in number, enter single file and position themselves in the prescribed order along the rear of the stage—the flautist sitting on the floor Japanese style, and the two major drummers on stools they carry with them. (If a bass drum is required, its player must join the flautist on the floor.) The No flute is not particularly unusual, except for an exceptionally strident tone, but the two primary No drums are unlike anything in the West. Although they are of different sizes, both resemble a large hourglass with an ox hide drawn over either end and held taut by heavy leather cords. The smaller drum, whose hide surface the players must periodically soften with his breath, is held on the player's right shoulder and struck with the right hand. Its sound is a muffled, funereal boom, lower in pitch than that of the other, larger drum, the larger drum is held on the player's left knee and struck with the fingers of the left hand, which may be protected by thimbles of leather or ivory. It produces a sharp, urgent click, used to punctuate the cadence of the performance. The bass drum used in certain dramas is played with drumsticks in the Western manner. The drummers also sometimes provide rhythm by interjecting monosyllabic shouts between drumbeats.
As the musicians enter, so does the chorus, eight or ten men dressed in formal Japanese "black tie" kimonos. They seat themselves Japanese style in two rows along stage left, where they must remain immobile for the duration of the play (which may be well over an hour). Since younger Japanese are less resigned to the persistent ache accompanying the traditional seating posture than their elders, the chorus usually tends to be well on in years. The chorus fills in dialogue for the actors during dance sequences; it makes no commentary on the action as does the chorus in Greek tragedy, nor does it have any special identity as part of the cast. Its members merely take up the voice of the actors from time to time like a dispassionate, heavenly choir.
With chorus and orchestra present, the overture begins. The first sounds are the piercing lament of the flute and the insistent crack of the drums, against which the drummers emit deep-throated, strangled cries. This stunning eruption of sound signals the entrance of the dramatis personae as the brocade curtain is again drawn aside for the first cast member, usually a waki, or supporting actor, who enters with measured, deliberate pace onto the entrance ramp, where he advances with a sliding, mechanical tread toward the stage.
The waki, often representing an itinerant monk dressed in subdued black robes, begins telling the story, either in his own voice or aided by the chorus, establishing the locale and circumstances of the scene about to unfold, after which he retires to a corner of the stage and seats himself to await the entrance of the protagonist, or shite. The brocade curtain parts again to reveal the shite, richly costumed and frequently masked, who approaches to sing and dance out his story before the waiting waki. The shite's splendid costume contrasts strikingly with the austerity of the stage and the other costumes.
On first appearance the shite ordinarily is intended to be a human form, albeit often a troubled one, but as his tale unfolds he becomes not so much an actual being as the personification of a soul. If the play is in two parts, in the second part he may assume his real identity, often only hinted in the first, of a spirit from the dead. Prefiguring the Shakespearean soliloquy, the confessional song of the shite speaks for the universal consciousness as he pours out his tortured inner emotions. As the shite sings, the knowing waki serves as confessor and provides a foil for any dialogue. The play climaxes with the dance of the shite, a stiff, stylized, sculptural sequence of mannered postures and gestures which draw heavily upon traditional Shinto sacred dances. With this choreographic resolution the play closes, and all exeunt single file as they entered—to the restrained acknowledgment of the audience.
The No repertoire contains five primary categories of plays. There are "god plays," in which the shite is a supernatural spirit, frequently disguised, whose divinity is made manifest during the final dance. In "warrior plays," the shite may be a martial figure from the Kamakura era who speaks in universal terms about his own personal tragedy. "Woman plays" are lyric evocations of a beautiful woman, often a courtesan, who has been wronged in love. The fourth category includes a grab bag of dramas often focusing on an historical episode or on the shite being driven to madness by guilt or, in the case of a woman, jealousy. Finally, there are "demon plays," in which the shite is a vengeful ogre, often sporting a flowing red or white wig, who erupts into a frenzied dance to demonstrate his supernatural displeasure over some event.
Many of the classic plays are a study of the tortured mental world of the dead. Even in warrior plays and woman plays the central character is frequently a spirit from the nether world who returns to chronicle a grievance or to exact some form of retribution from a living individual. Plot is deliberately suppressed. Instead of a story, the play explores an emotional experience or a state of mind—hatred, love, longing, fear, grief, and occasionally happiness. The traditional components of Western drama—confrontation, conflict, characterization, self-realization, development, resolution—are almost entirely absent. In their place is the ritualized reading of an emotional state that rarely grows or resolves during the play; it is simply described.
The artistic content of the No is embodied in the masks, dances, and poetry, all of which deserve to be examined. The masks carved for the No drama are the only representative sculptured art form of Zen; indeed, Zen was basically responsible for the disappearance of a several-hundred-year-old tradition of Buddhist sculpture in Japan. During the late Kamakura era, Japanese wood sculpture went through a phase of startling