On Noh Drama

Extract

The current popularity of the Japanese arts in this country has extended only in a very limited way to what is perhaps the most beautiful of those arts: the Noh drama. The reasons for this are simple. One is the inaccessibility of the Noh. Unlike the Kabuki, it has never been performed in this country and probably never will be, at least in its pure form. Only once in its history, in fact, has the Noh been performed outside of Japan, at an Italian drama festival in 1954. Another reason for this relative neglect is the esoteric quality of the Noh. A Noh play is about as difficult for a Westerner unversed in Japanese culture to understand as, say, a medieval mystery play or Jacobean court masque would be for a Japanese who knew no English.