A Japanese island preserves an ancient and ghostly theatre form
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Shinobu Kamiyama (above centre) plays the tormented ghost of a famously beautiful woman in the play, Tamakazura, at Ushio Shrine on Sado Island in Japan in June.
PHOTO: KO SASAKI/NYTIMES
Martin Fackler
SADO ISLAND, Japan – Shinobu Kamiyama is not a professional actress. The mother of two works as a caregiver at a day service for the elderly. But she is one of many residents of Sado Island, in Japan’s north-west, who share an unusual passion for one of the world’s oldest – and most otherworldly – forms of theatre.
On a summer night, Kamiyama played the lead role in a ghost story belonging to Japan’s ancient Noh form of drama.
She wore a small oval mask and an ornate kimono as she stepped out onto a Shinto shrine’s weathered wooden stage surrounded by torches. A chorus of singers chanted, and musicians played a flute and drums while she stomped and spun in stylised dance moves.
When it was her turn to sing, she delivered her verses in a low drone that climbed to climactic peaks, in Noh’s distinctive style that blends religious incantation with operatic aria.
Kamiyama being dressed backstage for the second act of Tamakazura. Noh is one of the world’s oldest surviving types of theatre and is preserved by the islanders of Sado.
“I grew up with the beauty of Noh songs all around me,” said Kamiyama, 43, who started singing when she was in elementary school. She volunteered to perform the role before an audience of mostly fellow islanders.
On this evening, she played Tamakazura, a famed lady of the imperial court so tormented by her own beauty that she returns after death as a spirit. Noh dramas frequently centre on visitations by ghosts, often of famous defeated warriors or court notables.
With her face hidden behind the mask, Kamiyama’s voice also seemed to come from somewhere else, a phantom realm beyond the island’s dark cedar forest.
Islanders say it is this mysterious power that appeals to them, living on an island in the storm-swept Sea of Japan.
“On Sado, Noh is an offering made to the gods,” said Toshihiro Kondo, head of one of the island’s Noh associations.
A white mask (left) and a fan used by a performer in Tamakazura.
Nowhere else in Japan today is the ancient drama form so widely embraced as it is on Sado. The fishing and farming communities here have made the mediaeval art form a central part of their local culture, which children learn while still in school and residents perform at religious festivals.
The island of 45,000 residents, which is accessible only by ferry, has 34 Noh stages, most of them at temples of Buddhism or the nation’s native Shinto religion. That is about one-third of the total number of Noh stages in all of Japan.
In most of the country, Noh is an arcane art form practised by professional troupes. But on Sado, the dozens of performances every year are conducted by amateurs like Kamiyama.
“Noh is still a living culture here,” said Ichiji Kouzu, 80, a teacher of the drama form on the island. “But this is the last place.”
Kamiyama (left) writes notes in the margins of her script while speaking with Yusuke Kanai, a professional Noh actor, during a rehearsal of Tamakazura.
Scholars of Noh call it one of the oldest forms of theatre still actively practised today. Its roots go back to at least the eighth century, but Noh took its current form six centuries ago in an era of mediaeval warriors.
The genre’s stories of tormented beauties, slain generals and others returning from the dead, usually with a Zen Buddhist message about the brevity of existence, appealed to a samurai class for whom life could also be short and brutal.
Many of its greatest dramas were written by Motokiyo Zeami, a Japanese playwright who lived two centuries before English playwright William Shakespeare.
An aerial view of a stretch of Sado Island’s rocky coastline on the Sea of Japan.
Zeami actually spent several years on Sado, where he was exiled by a jealous ruler. However, Noh did not arrive to stay until two centuries later, when gold was discovered on the island.
Samurai warriors arrived to open a mine to extract the metal. They brought with them Noh, which was embraced by the island’s commoners who worked digging in the shafts.
After thriving for centuries, Noh has also been losing audiences and performers on Sado.
As Japan’s demographic ageing has taken its toll here, the island’s population has fallen to less than a quarter of what it was after World War II. Over the same time period, the number of Noh stages has declined from about 200.
Volunteers preparing the stage for an evening performance of Tamakazura at Ushio Shrine on Sado Island.
Yashio Hino, a 30th-generation priest at a Shinto shrine with a two-century-old Noh stage, says preserving the art form means attracting more tourists, who have given the island’s economy a boost in recent years.
“I owe it to my ancestors not to give up,” he added.
About 200 people came to Kamiyama’s performance, including some from mainland Japan and overseas. But those who made her most nervous were her two sons, who are now old enough to watch her perform.
Taiki, a five-year-old boy, demonstrating his performing abilities in the Noh art form.
Kamiyama practised for months to hone the right movements to show emotion without facial expressions hidden by the mask. She wanted her elder son Taiki, five, who would be in the audience, to feel the same mystery that moved her.
“Noh has a beauty that crosses generations,” she said. NYTIMES
Kiuko Notoya contributed reporting.