THE beguiling Japanese art of noh, said to be the world’s oldest form of theatre, created quite a buzz when it was performed as a one-night-only show at the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (DFP) in KLCC way back in September 2017.
Now, two classical noh performers — Soichiro Hayashi and Hiroyuki Matsuno — from the Land of the Rising Sun will be conducting masterclasses, organised by the Japan Foundation Kuala Lumpur (JFKL), come Feb 25.
Noh, which is an interesting mix of music, dance and drama, has been performed for over 600 years since the Muromachi period, circa 1336 to 1573.
It was developed together with kyogen, which are a series of comical pieces performed during interludes of the main noh performance.
LASTING TRADITION
Listed as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008, today there are only five schools — Kanze, Hosho, Komparu, Kongo and Kita — that continue the ongonig process of training principal actors, otherwise known as shite.
Each distinguished institution has a number of clans whose members uphold the unique techniques and philosophy of their forebearers.
Trained from childhood, Soichiro is the 14th-generation noh master of the Hayashi dynasty. He came with his troupe to perform at the DFP in 2017, and gave a masterclass later at Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan (Aswara) in Kuala Lumpur.
He says that performers take on several roles in noh, such as shite, sure, waki, jiutai, koken and hayashi. Shite refers to the central character in the noh story.
Sure corresponds to the other supporting roles. Waki, on the other hand, are the ones that support the supporting actors. Jiutai refers to the people who sing the chorus, while Koken are akin to the understudies for the various performers.
Hiroyuki, who was part of the troupe for that previous DFP show, started learning noh from his grandfather, the late Matsuno Yoshiteru.
In 1994, he became a student of Hayashi Kiemon and in 2001, he progressed further and became an independent artiste and has been both performing, as well as teaching.
SIMPLE UNDERSTANDING
Hiroyuki is said to have a real gift of explaining the intricacies of noh in very simple terms that everyone would be able to understand and appreciate.
It was a short trip for the troupe, but Hiroyuki recalls that Malay food left an indelible impression as it was very tasty to him.
On any similarities between noh and mak yong, Hiroyuki says: “They may have something in common in terms of the mentality of the artforms.
“However, I cannot easily say that they are both similar because noh has a variety of titles from the ritualistic ones to the ones which describe the depth of human heart.”
The noh masterclass, which are all free entry events, will be conducted in the Japanese language with an English interpreter present to make it accessible.
“Students don’t need to know Japanese before they attend the masterclass. We will teach them Utai in Japanese, but they can learn by listening to the sounds,” he says.
Utai represents the melodious singing parts during a noh performance.
FINDING COMMON GROUND
“We are actually expecting a lot (of common ground). I hope that we can find or discover a similarities, especially between dancing part of noh and other Southeast Asian dance forms,” he adds.
There is a unique philosophy embodied in Japanese traditional cultures.
Says Hiroyuki: “I would like to talk about the history of noh, which has been accumulated via the great noh masters of the past and how philosophically noh pieces are made. This includes the titles which tell us how human beings should be, and contrarily, the titles which describe the vulgar existence of humans as well.”
The noh masterclass by Soichiro and Hiroyuki will be held from Feb 25 to 28. Visit the JFKL website at www.jfkl.org.my/events/call-paticipants-noh-masterclass-soichiro-hayashi... for more details.