Takamatsu, Kagawa — one of a series of shore days Japan Royal Service builds for residents and guests of The World.
A Noh mask is carved so that it has no fixed expression. Tilt it a few degrees down and the face is grieving. Tilt it up and the same face is luminous. The actor does not change anything; the light does.
Six hundred and fifty years of a theatre form rest on that one piece of joinery, and it can be put in your hands.
The oldest one still running
Noh took its present shape in the fourteenth century under Kan'ami and his son Zeami, working with the patronage of the Ashikaga shoguns. It has been performed continuously ever since — through civil wars, through the closing of the country, through the Meiji collapse of samurai patronage that nearly killed it — which makes it the oldest major stage art in the world still performed by professionals in an unbroken line. UNESCO inscribed it as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008.
It is also, for a first-time audience, difficult. The pace is slow to the point of stillness. That is exactly why it should be seen with someone explaining it rather than endured in a public theatre with a programme note.
What a private performance is
The form we would propose is mai-bayashi in full costume: the danced climax of a play, performed with the instrumental ensemble and chorus, without the full staging.
Two pieces suit an audience seeing Noh for the first time. Takasago is a celebration — a pair of ancient pines standing at opposite ends of the country as the emblem of a long marriage, and the piece Japanese people still perform at weddings. Hagoromo is the feather robe: a fisherman finds a celestial maiden's robe on a pine branch and will not return it, and she cannot go home without it.
At full scale that is eight performers — the flute, the two hand drums and the stick drum, the dancer, and the chorus. It can also be reduced. At the smallest, a single professional comes with the masks and the costumes and performs to recorded accompaniment. Both are real Noh; they are different amounts of it.
The part most people are never offered
Hiring a professional for a day costs what it costs whether they perform for twenty minutes or spend the day with you. So the sensible thing is to take the day.
That opens: the history of the form explained in English; the masks handled, and the tilt demonstrated on your own face; the costumes shown, layer by layer, which is its own education in Japanese textile; utai, the chanting, attempted; suriashi, the sliding walk that never lifts the foot, attempted and found to be much harder than it looks; and the drums, which make a sound no recording reproduces because part of it is the player's voice.
A performance is a thing you watch. This is a thing you are inside.
What we arrange
The performer and ensemble at the scale you want, the piece, the venue, and an interpreter — without whom the day is a beautiful thing you did not understand. We would rather book one professional for a full day and use all of it than book a short performance and leave.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long is a private Noh performance?
The danced portion is short by design. The value is in taking the performer for a full day, because the fee is the same whether they perform for twenty minutes or stay: the history, the masks, the costumes, the chanting and the drums all become available at no additional cost.
Can we handle the masks and costumes?
Yes. The masks can be handled and the tilt demonstrated, and the costumes shown layer by layer. This is normally offered only to students of the form.
Is it performed in English?
No. Noh is chanted in a classical Japanese that modern Japanese audiences also need help with. We supply the interpreter and treat it as part of the performance rather than an extra.
More on this rotation
- Sanukite, the stone that rings — Takamatsu
- The stonecutters of Aji — Takamatsu
- Isamu Noguchi's studio at Mure — Takamatsu
For residents and guests of The World
The ship lies at Takamatsu for days, not hours. That single fact changes more than anything else on this page. A place that opens three days a week stops being a gamble. An artisan can give you a whole afternoon instead of a demonstration. Nothing has to be cut short to fit a gangway.
We are a Japanese company, working in Japanese, with the people who own these places. The arrangements are made by someone the other side already knows.
Enquiries are handled privately and directly, at japanroyalservice.com/contact. We do not publish our clients, our itineraries, or our rates.
Access notes
We asked these questions of each place directly, and the answers are specific to it. Most guests will have no use for them; they are here because somebody will.
A hall with a designated wheelchair space can be used. The performer's own advice for a guest in a wheelchair is worth repeating because a venue would not say it: lengthen the watching and shorten the doing — the seated portions are where the art actually is. Going up onto the stage requires a ramp from stage left, a mat, and tabi or plain white cotton socks, since the stage is never walked on in shoes.
