Blog 6- Japanese Noh Theater

In today’s blog I will be discussing the Japanese Noh and some of its elements. As the textbook briefly states, “Noh is the classical theater of Japan.”(W. Alves p.208) Like any other fine art, noh is very popular among its culture and it highly developed, fashioned, and kept as a classical theater. The roots of Noh classical theater came about in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and are based on folk drama. The famous Japanese Noh theater youtube video that I choose for this blog is the Japanese Culture Styling: Noh youtube video. The first thing that stands out in this video is the bright attractive colors and a mask in which the dancer had on in the performance. The performer seems to glade across the stage while moving to the song. The beautiful colors and setting of the performance grabbed my attention from the beginning of the play to the end. Once closely observing the Noh classical theater performance I noticed the slow tempos of the music, the sense of space between the notes played, and the different sound joined together. For example, nohkan bamboo flute and three other small drums which I believe them to be the kakko, tsuri-daiko, and shoko drums. The flute was the loudest instrument being played. All of these instruments are played and have a different sound. Instead of actually singing in the performance, it sounds like there is chanting with fushi to help produce great sound. Something I found to be funny is the fact that there was a man on the set who seemed to be a performer or musician but just sat on the stage doing nothing and finally just go up and walked off the stage as if nothing was happening.