The No plays Of Japan

The Nō Plays of Japan
by Arthur Waley

Translations of a selection of Nō dramas, which have deep connections with Japanese Buddhism, Shinto, and Japanese folklore.

Part prose, part verse, the visually stunning No plays of Japan deal with such subjects as insanity, obsession and historical characters, and frequently have as their focal points demons, gods, and beautiful women. Among the 19 works and 15 summaries included here are Ukai (The Cormorant-Fisher), Hatsuyuki (Early Snow), as well as a farcical interlude, or kyogen, titled The Bird-Catcher in Hell. A unique introduction for Western theater-goers to classic Japanese drama.

A few people in America and Europe want to go in the opposite direction. They would like to see a theatre that aimed boldly at stylization and simplification, discarding entirely the pretentious lumber of 19th century stageland. That such a theatre exists and has long existed in Japan has been well-known here for some time. But hitherto very few plays have been translated in such a way as to give the Western reader an idea of their literary value. It is only through accurate scholarship that the "soul of Nō" can be known to the West. Given a truthful rendering of the texts the American reader will supply for himself their numerous connotations, a fact which Japanese writers do not always sufficiently realize. The Japanese method of expanding a five-line poem into a long treatise in order to make it intelligible to us is one which obliterates the structure of the original design. Where explanations are necessary they have been given in footnotes.