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Mishima’s Muse

Japan Society’s Yukio Mishima centennial series culminated with “Mishima’s Muse – Noh Theater,” which was actually three programs of traditional noh works that Japanese author Yukio Mishima adapted into modern plays. The theatrical works were performed by the Hosho Noh School in its North American debut. Established in the mid-fifteenth century, the Hosho School is one of the five main noh schools in Japan. Mishima regularly immersed himself in Japan’s traditional arts, being a strong advocate for preserving the national essence and distinctive cultural heritage of the Japanese people. Mishima’s enthusiasm for the elegant and refined noh theater, a multidisciplinary form dating back to the late fourteenth century, resulted in his adaptation of eight noh stories into his Modern Noh Plays.

Performance

Hosho Noh School: “Mishima’s Muse – Noh Theater” 

Place

Japan Society, New York, NY, December 6, 2025

Words

Karen Greenspan

Sano Noboru and Seki Naomi in the Hosho Noh School's performance of “Aya no Tsuzumi.” Photograph by Ayumi Sakamoto

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Noh is a more than six-hundred-year old form of masked theater combining chant, instrumental music, poetry, dance, acting, and architecture. First appearing during the Muromachi period (1336-1573), noh is an expression shaped by this golden age of aesthetics, samurai warriors, and Zen Buddhism as well as the spiritual systems and practices that led up to this time. The form is visually spare yet energetically charged─to the point that the actor makes no distinction between acting and dancing in terms of physicality. The actor moves from a basic, bent-knee noh stance that is meant to radiate energy outward in all directions. 

Everything about this theatrical expression is formal. Each evening’s program was structured in the traditional format featuring: a music or dance excerpt from a noh play, a kyogen (comedic play) interlude, and a full-length noh drama. The noh dance excerpts, called shimai, were selected from “Kantan” and “Yoroboshi”─both plays that Mishima crafted into modern adaptations. Performed without mask or costume, the dancer simply wears a kimono and hakama (loose pants) and carries a fan. These shimai are basically song-dance expressions of the protagonist’s state of mind in a climactic moment of the drama. In each excerpt, the protagonist walked onstage with four vocalists, they sat on the floor across the back of the stage, and then the lead stood to sing and dance. In the noh drama “Yoroboshi,” an elderly father journeys to a temple to reunite with the son he abandoned as a child, who is now a blind monk. The excerpt, performed by the blind monk, captures his rumination on the beauty of the surrounding scenery. He dances with his eyelids lowered as a blind man, relying on a cane. As he sings of the scenic vistas in the four directions, he moves to each of the directions expressing the joy of “seeing” the beauty—all through his mind. But a moment later, he mimes stumbling into an obstacle, falls with a thud, and drops his staff. Clumsily feeling around to retrieve the stick, he sings of his pathetic and hopeless state. This poignant shimai demonstrates a regard for the Japanese landscape and for Buddhist thought with a bow to universal human frailty.

Yamamoto Norishige and Yamamoto Norihide with the Yamamoto Tojiro Kyogen Family performing the kyogen
play “Busu.” Photograph by Ayumi Sakamoto

The kyogen play “Busu—Poison” drew plenty of laughter with its simple, cartoon-like physical comedy. Kyogen, like noh, is a traditional theatrical form with roots in the early fourteenth century. Although the comedic sketch contained no dance per se, its humor resulted from cleverly integrated comical movement and vocal modulation delivered with skillful timing. In the story, a master leaves on business while his two servants guard the house. The master warns the servants that they should stay clear of the big pot of deadly poison on the premises. Of course, the warning both terrifies and fascinates the servants. They engage in a series of hilarious forays—untying the lid, opening the pot, looking inside, and eventually tasting the contents—each time frantically waving their fans to diffuse the noxious fumes and using exaggerated movements to sneak up on it. After each maneuver, they race back to the bridgeway (walkway connecting the main noh stage to the green room), their high-pitched voices nervously assessing and planning their next move. When they discover the “poison” is sweet and delicious, they have a tug-of-war over the pot but eventually share and consume the entire contents. Suddenly they realize they will have some explaining to do when the master returns. So the head servant commands his assistant to rip up the master’s scroll painting. Next, they smash his precious teapot. Of course, the assistant is anxious to know (as is the audience) how this will help explain things to the master. When the master returns and observes the situation, the head servant explains that to keep themselves awake and guard the house, they practiced sumo wrestling. Things got a bit rambunctious, causing the scroll to be torn and the teapot to be broken. They knew they would be punished for this, so they decided to eat the poison hoping to die. But no matter how much they ate, they could not kill themselves. In the end, the two dance a silly little prayer of gratitude for their miraculous survival. The audience breathes a sigh of relief as the master chases the servants off the stage.

Hosho Kazufusa, Kobayashi Yoshito, Tateda Yoshihiro in the Hosho Noh School performance of “Aoi no Ue.” Photograph by Ayumi Sakamoto

The noh drama “Aoi no Ue” (Lady Aoi) is a sublime creation blending Japanese aesthetics and Buddhist philosophy. Written by the actor and playwright Zeami (1363-1443), who formulated noh into the art it is today, the play is based on an episode from the eleventh-century classic “The Tale of Genji.” In the drama, Prince Genji’s wife Lady Aoi lays dying due to an evil spirit possessing one of her husband’s spurned lovers, Lady Rokujo. Despite what the title suggests, the play revolves around Rokujo—not Aoi, who is merely symbolized by a red kimono placed on the floor downstage center. In this production, Kazufusa Hosho, the twentieth Grandmaster of the Hosho Noh School performed the role of the possessed Lady Rokujo. 

Rokujo enters and sings of her humiliation. With stage movement that feels like a dance (even the floor patterns follow predictable configurations), she works herself into a jealous rampage—stomping her feet in fury and throwing her fan at the dying Lady Aoi. A Buddhist mountain priest is called in to remedy the dangerous escalation of affairs. Thus ensues a climactic battle scene between Rokujo, who has changed masks and is now fully transformed into a frightening demon, and the Buddhist priest. The two face off—the she-demon attacks with her wooden mallet; the priest counters, energetically rubbing his rosary beads in her face as the chorus chants a sacred mantra. After a tense series of attacks and counter offensives, the demon drops her mallet and sinks to the floor, holding her hands to her ears so as not to hear the sacred sounds. But she is no match for the Buddha’s compassion. In the final moments, the demonic spirit leaves her body, and Lady Rokujo stands up calmly with acceptance and walks away to join the world of enlightenment. 

Sano Noboru in the Hosho Noh School's performance of “Aya no Tsuzumi.” Photograph by Ayumi Sakamoto

The other full-length drama presented was “Aya no Tsuzumi” (The Silk Drum), a well-known work by an unknown author. This noh play and Mishima’s later adaptation served as the basis for a riveting dance-theater work recently presented as part of Japan Society’s Mishima centennial series. The story is about a lowly palace gardener who glimpses the imperial consort and falls passionately in love with her. The young consort agrees to meet with the old gardener if he sounds a hand drum hanging from the laurel tree beside the garden pond. He tries to play the drum but is incapable of sounding the instrument as it is made of silk.  After drowning himself in the garden pond out of despair, the old man returns as a vengeful ghost to haunt the consort. 

In a significant casting move, this Hosho production featured a female player in the role of the consort, an exciting shift in this historically male-dominated theatrical form. The role is mostly defined by her poetic aria, in which she walks to the laurel tree after learning of the gardener’s death and compares the lapping of the waves to the sound of the beating drum—thinking that she actually hears the drum. Meanwhile, the gardener, who appeared as a lovesick old man in the first act, returns in the second as an embittered, angry ghost. He berates the consort, grabs her robe, and pulls her to the tree commanding her to make the drum sound. His manner is gruff and menacing as he swivels to walk one way and spins around to change direction. The tense scene ends as he angrily disappears (vanishing into the pond), delivering yet another Buddhist precept—attachment to passion—be it anger or love—leads to endless suffering. 

Japan Society and Hosho Noh deserve a deep bow for realizing this brilliantly conceived homage to Mishima through the classic works that served as muse to his creative output.

 

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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