Reproduced by permission of the Royal Society of Literature.
The Chorus
Quoting again from my paper: “Before the play begins the chorus comes in, robed in blue or blue-grey, and enters into the colour scheme. The men squat on their heels with their legs folded straight and flat along the boards on the right of the stage, and before them lie their fans, which remain closed through the whole play, but are raised upright while they are singing. The chorus chants at intervals throughout the piece, sometimes informing the audience of the events supposed to be taking place, or to have taken place, sometimes moralising on the fate or feelings of the hero or heroine, sometimes describing their emotions, sometimes even instructing them. While they are doing this their fans are raised upright, with one end touching the ground, and are laid down again directly the words are finished. The Japanese name for the chorus is ji, a word meaning also ‘ground’—the ground colour, as it were, on which the figures of the drama are painted.” As is natural, such an arrangement of chorus and stage recalls the Greek plays. The comparisons and contrasts between this and the Greek, which spring immediately to one’s mind, have already been published by Prof. Chamberlain and others, who have given some account of the Nō, and to whose works reference should be made (see list on p. [103]).
The Music
The music is an important feature of the Nō plays, when they are completely presented. Indeed, the whole play can be more fairly compared with opera than with anything else on our stage, though the “singing” is very different from ours. The songs are given with a curious voice in which suppressed breathing is an item of value. Other parts of the play are chanted in unison, and even the prose “words” are intoned in a unique way which removes them absolutely from the realm of ordinary speaking, and makes them—to a foreigner—practically indistinguishable from the songs. There are, in addition to this vocal music, four instruments, and the players of these are distinct from the chorus and do not enter into its chanting at all, except sometimes with a sudden sharp Ha! or something which I confess I can only describe as being like the howl of a cat, and which did not seem to me to add to the impressiveness of the music, but to detract from it.
The musicians enter the theatre and take their place on the stage, in the places indicated in the diagram, after the chorus is seated and before the actors appear. In a full set of musicians the first is the performer on the taiko, who plays a flat drum set in a wooden stand on the floor, ornamented with a gorgeous scarlet silk tassel of such size and brilliance as to lend a vivid beauty to the quiet colour scheme. The next musician is the player of the ōtsuzumi, which is a kind of elongated drum held on his knee. The kotsuzumi is an hour-glass-shaped drum, which is held on the shoulder. Both Profs. Chamberlain and Dickins call this a tambourine, but that name gives an entirely wrong impression both of the shape and the sound of this instrument. The last musician plays the fue or flute.
Most Westerners are content to call this music “a discord.” It is therefore pleasant to find Mr. Sansom saying, “At times the flute strikes in with a long-drawn note that has a strange and moving quality of sadness.” Personally, with the exception of the single interjected cries, the music appealed to me as being in complete harmony with the pieces and as adding greatly to their charm and meaning.
The Actors
The actors enter from behind the curtain at the end of the gallery leading to the stage. They move towards the stage one by one, and very slowly, with long intervals between each step, every motion of which has been decreed for centuries. Captain Brinkley says, “It is, indeed, more than doubtful whether any other people ever developed such an expressive vocabulary of motion, such impressive eloquence of gesture. These masked dancers of the Nō, deprived of the important assistance of facial expression, and limited to a narrow range of cadence, nevertheless succeeded in investing their performance with a character of noble dignity and profound intensity of sentiment.” The actors pause at each of the pine trees which stand by the gallery to mark a stage in their progress. Only men act, and for the women’s parts they wear the conventional masks with the white, narrow face and the eyebrows painted high up on the middle of the forehead, which is the classical standard of female beauty. Masks are also worn by those representing demons or ghosts, and these masks are much on the same plan as those worn by children on the fifth of November. They are made of carved wood with a slit for the mouth and two holes for the eyes. They are palpably masks put over the face and make no pretence at verisimilitude; indeed, sometimes the girl’s mask may be openly tied on with a fillet ribbon across the forehead. They are clearly illustrated in the plates facing pages [15] and [76], where the white mask-face is put so as to show quite frankly the tanned and corrugated neck of the elderly actor. Wild bushy heads of long hair are also worn by those taking the part of demons, and sometimes by the ghosts, as is seen in the plate facing p. [76], where the little figure represents the ghost in the Sumidagawa.