Talk:Noh

About the terms nō and nōgaku

These two terms are not really synonymous. Nōgaku is a term for the theater tradition that includes nō and kyōgen. So, nō and kyōgen are both nōgaku. Geertrinkel (talk) 16:05, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Spelling

Explanation of No and Noh contrasted with Nō — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.236.167.243 (talk) 07:42, 2004 June 28 (UTC)

Chinese theater

Noh theater originates from Tang Dynasty Nuo theater specifically —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.179.227 (talk) 07:52, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeh, here's a link to the Tang "Nuo," which was brought to Japan and influenced/became Noh.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-42552_ITM

"Description Modern interest in the Chinese ancient Nuo rite and drama did not take a strong hold in China until the final two decades of the last century; however, the Nuo rite and drama remain an aspect of Chinese culture that is hardly known to the West. While a fair amount of research on the origins of Japanese Noh drama has been done in the West, no historical investigation has yet been made in a Western language on the role of Chinese Nuo into its origin and formation. This is so in spite of the historical fact that prior to the birth of Noh, the Chinese Nuo rite had long been practiced in Japanese temples, shrines, and fields where Noh was born and developed.

The general consensus now is that gigaku, gagaku (and its dance form, bugaku), and sarugaku (from sangaku), forerunners of Noh, were forms imported or generated from ancient Chinese Wu music (Japanese: kuregaku) and Tang music and dance (Japanese: togaku), mainly from sanyue (miscellaneous music and plays) and daqu (grand music). In bugaku, the solo dance Ranryo-o (Chinese: Lanling Wang) is a variant of the Lanling Wang Ru Zhen Qu (Prince Lanling in Battle) of the Sui and Tang dynasties; (1) bugaku's jo-ha-kyu, the core structure of Noh drama, was adapted from the music and dance structure of the daqu developed during the Tang dynasty. The Tang daqu integrates singing, dancing, and instrumental music and consists of three sequences: the sanxu (beginning random sequence facilitated by instrumental music), zhongxu (middle sequence composed primarily by singing), and po (fast exposition accelerated primarily by dancing). Sanyue (sangaku or sarugaku, the latter being a Japanese pronunciation of sanyue) forms the core of sarugaku Noh..... "

Intranetusa (talk) 01:30, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The English word Noh or No is in English dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster with one or both of those spellings. The Romanization Nō is a foreign word, and an appropriate indicator of pronunciation of the Japanese word. That's why I put the English words in bold in the first line, and the transliteration inside parentheses along with the kanji. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.236.167.243 (talk) 07:42, 2004 June 28 (UTC)

Do you have any academic sources to back this theory up? In my research for Noh I have never seen anything that says it is related to Chinese Nuo. Bs6127 (talk) 10:23, 19 October 2008 (UTC)BS6127

Nuo's influence in Noh theatre is possible yet marginal compared to other major sources such as Gigaku and Kagura. I would not expand on this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tairanokiyotsune (talk • contribs) 23:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm reading this article right now, and just wanted to add my support to Taira no Kiyotsune. Yes, all (most) Japanese music and theatre can be traced to influences from China, but that doesn't mean that the Nuo directly became Noh, or that Noh came directly from China in any way. LordAmeth (talk) 20:06, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

"Noh Masks" Section?

I'd say expand on Noh masks. . . That section seems a bit sparse. 69.151.196.177 01:33, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Videos and DVDs

Does anybody know anyplace that sells videos of Noh being preformed. I saw a very small clip once on a documentary about theater when I was in highschool, and have been looking for more ever since.--The_stuart 22:09, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Noh videos and dvds seem to be extremely rare, even in Japan. Last year I gave some money to a Japanese friend who went home, and asked her to buy me something, anything she could get. But she found nothing... There are a few cds with Noh soundtracks though - I like this one - and some Japanese films in which Noh plays can be seen. For example Banshun, where a father and daughter visit a performance of, I think, Hagoromo. Unfortunately that scene lasts only a few minutes.

There's a Japanese film entitled Tenkawa Densetsu Satsujin Jiken (aka The Noh Mask Murders; Toei 1991) that includes several scenes of Noh performances, some of which are reasonably lengthy. It's otherwise a fairly standard detective movie with some comic overtones. I don't know whether it's been translated into English; a cursory search turns up nothing on Amazon. The Japanese version, however, is available here, among other places. As for actual recordings of Noh plays in their entirety... I've never heard mention of any. It seems not to be done. Shimeru 22:26, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

xx

I've watched a couple in class so they exist

Of course Noh DVDs exist and it is possible to purchase them online at specialised shops such as Iwanami shoten or Hinoki shoten. Complete performances are also regularly transmitted on TV by NHK. However, Noh videos are not representative of the real performance at all and I would not suggest to add anything to the Wiki page.Tairanokiyotsune (talk) 06:22, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Kanji names please

If anyone is looking for something to do, please add the kanji for the names of the Noh plays. brain 00:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Women

I came to this article to find out if women were allowed to act in Noh productions as they were (for a time) in Kabuki, but I had to go to the simple english article to find out that they were not. I'm going to see if I can't throw something in there about it, but this isn't my area of specialty (though if I do do my term paper on it, I might be able to help improve the article). Kuronue 01:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

"Allowed" is a tricky word. Women aren't traditionally associated with noh, but several women have made or are making names for themselves in noh in Japan. Exploding Boy 06:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Kanji

Over the next few days I will attempt to upload Kanji and get them in the article. I'll keep ya'll informed as I get into it. --Amaraiel 14:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

References

There are three references now, so I'm removing the tag. Richard Pinch (talk) 19:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Video on YouTube

Here's a video that plays with the name of Noh theatre.

• The Mystery and Science of Noh Theater

Fg2 (talk) 21:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

Because the section on Performance Elements provides a lot more context for the subject than the Roles and Plays sections above it, may I suggest that it be moved up to be the first section? As currently written, someone coming in cold is thrown straight into the deep end. Possibly, the Roles section could then fit as a subsection of it, but I don't know enough to know if that works. Nor do I know enough to feel bold enough to make my suggested move. —Quasirandom (talk) 23:08, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Sources?

Okay, I see NO citations whatsoever. If I'm missing something, someone please say so, but there is no tag anywhere on the page for where this information is from. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.113.162.40 (talk) 02:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I invite you to add a citation to material you can find in a reliable source. Fg2 (talk) 08:33, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Introduction

That first section completely failed to answer the question "What the heck is Noh?" for a general audience. I've moved most of what was there to a 'history' section and put a few general remarks at the beginning. I'm not sure where that paragraph about each performer setting his own rhythm should go, but it certainly shouldn't be in the introduction! Franzeska (talk) 17:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

The real history of noh

Noh is a japanese drama made in the 14th century it was first staretd by a buddist monk name Chi Lu'Lee. This form of dance never became much biger until the 14th century when traveler from china came to japana and brought the idea of mask and from there the drama just went higehr and higher up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.218.53 (talk) 01:12, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Stage Right Vs. Stage Left

Someone had it saying the stage is on stage right, with that picture beside the paragraph clearly showing that the bridges are on stage left. Stage right and stage left mean the right versus left from view of the audience, not from view of the performers. It is to clarify to the performers that the director means from the audience's perspective, so they don't get confused and go by their own right and left. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.22.238.118 (talk) 22:29, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

No. You have it exactly wrong, so I changed it back. Xanthoxyl ^< 03:37, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it depends. In some countries you distinguish left/right from the perspective of the audience, sometimes from the perspective of the actors. I have a feeling that American and British usages might differ.Tairanokiyotsune (talk) 00:23, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

In this case, American and British practices agree. See the article Blocking (stage). This is of course only a Wikipedia article, so it is not a reliable source, but I believe in this case it may serve as a starting point.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:35, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Introduction from Brooklyn College

Hello fellow Wikipedians! I will be editing this article throughout the rest of the year as a project for my theater history course at Brooklyn College. Especially because I'm really new to Wikipedia editing, any constructive criticism and/or error corrections will be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to working with you all on this article! Decafespresso (talk) 21:24, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

To editor Decafespresso: Welcome! I just used Template:To to give you a notification (see WP:Notifs) that I'm responding to you here.

I was going to add the Template:Culture of Japan to the top of this article's wikitext (in the edit window, which shows you the plain text including its mark-up language) after moving around the images a bit. But why don't you consider doing it instead, especially if you've never used a WP template before? You put the name of the template—Culture of Japan—inside two sets of curly braces: {{}}.

There is help that covers all this, but my my starting point in learning about editing WP was just through looking at the edit page of articles with interesting formatting or a useful message. Then I would look at the help pages that addressed what I wanted to do. Different people learn in different ways, so that might not work for you, but for me, it made editing WP a big, fun puzzle. Earnest, good-faith edits are welcome, so be bold and learn lots by helping out!

Use the relatively new notification system on this page (by using the To template or something similar) if you want me to revisit this talk page. Have fun! --Geekdiva (talk) 11:35, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Hayashi Shouts

Maybe you should mention somewhere that the drummers in the hayashi-kata or musicians emit shouts to coordinate the music, but this is just to keep the time of the music, it has no semantic content related to the play. The audience ignores that? 66.241.130.86 (talk) 16:28, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

There is a mention that the hayashi (except the flute-player) "shout encouragement" and "shout to create a particular mood for the performance". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blOzH842IYg#t=49.293813 99.243.73.146 (talk) 02:20, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Noh/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 20:59, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll take this on. At a first reading it seems a fine candidate, with only some small issues to tidy up. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:59, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	lead: ok; layout: ok; weasel: ok; fiction: ok; lists: A couple of lists near the end are a little doubtful but in the context of the article, and given that there's no obvious alternative, I think they're acceptable.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	Need a ref for the Theme section (the 5 groups)
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
	2c. it contains no original research.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.

Comments

A little copyediting is needed: if you don't mind, I might just do this rather than trying to list each tiny instance.

Wikilinking: It would assist readers if terms and places were linked. Perhaps Tokyo doesn't need linking, but Osaka probably does.

Italics: it isn't clear when Japanese terms are being italicised. The simplest rule might be just to italicise all of them, though with familiar terms like Shinto and Samurai that would seem too much. For less familiar terms, I can't see the logic. Why, for instance, do we have iemoto italicised but okina not? This will necessitate a trawl through the whole article.

'Etymology' says twice that Nogaku encompasses both N and K. Maybe once would be enough.

'Origins': the numbers of untranslated Japanese terms must be making this article rather hard going for many readers. I have wikilinked a few terms, but I'd suggest that if we need to know that Dengaku, Sarugaku, Shirabyoshi, and Gagaku contributed elements that evolved into Noh, we need a few words of explanation or 'gloss' on each of these things. (If they're not terribly relevant, on the other hand, then we'd be better off without them.) There also seems quite a bit of overlap with 'Etymology': perhaps the two sections would be better merged; if not, the overlap needs to be removed or reduced between the sections.

'Origins': how did moving to Kyoto help? How (if at all) was this move connected to the class struggle?

'Jo, Ha, Kyu' - three words or one? The title has three, the text one. Why does this concept get a top-level chapter to itself, or to put it another way, if it's that important, why is it so short? Would it be suitable to include it with 'Performance elements', even if it is a bit abstract? (ok, probably fine as it now is)

'Plays': if there are 240 plays from 2000 texts, then over 1700 of them have never been used in a play? Or does a play span multiple texts?

'Subject': 3 categories: says who? Maybe Genzai and Mugen need to be translated. I guess 'earthly' and 'supernatural'?

'Some famous plays': I'm a bit leery about allowing plays to be 'famous' if they're neither cited nor bluelinked to their own Wikipedia articles. We ought really to have a citation for every 'famous play' in the list. The claim that the categorization is the (redlinked) Kanze school also needs citing.

English or American? We ought to use just one - not too worried which one. It looks as if the article began with 'theatre' though 'theater' is now used quite a bit, for example.

Style: In 'Costumes' we have "whether that be the formal robes": are you comfortable with the subjunctive here? Many editors would probably avoid it.

'Stage': I suggest we move the photo of the indoor stage here (it can go on the left of the text) as the text mentions it in paragraph 2.

'Composers': Why is Benjy Britten listed and linked, but not described at all? Needs some text.

'Theatre practitioners, Composers': these long lists are not very readable, aka not particularly encyclopaedic. It might be better to turn them into text, writing some sort of connected prose about these Japanophile westerners and drawing out whatever it was that attracted them (citations needed). A few photographs or other images might help, too. (I'll leave this one on file. I don't think it's a fatal objection but I doubt FAC would like it.)

While these westerners were clearly influenced by Noh, I haven't encountered any source that connects them together or makes generalization among them. I agree that a prose might be more effective if some connections among these people could be found. I'm hoping this section would help English speaking readers make connections between Noh and whatever they're interested in or familiar with. Decafespresso (talk) 17:15, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

'Aesthetic terminology': not sure what the point of this is, so late in the article. Are the terms needed for readers to understand the rest of the text? If so, the section should go earlier, and the terms, in italics, should each be used at least once in other sections. Alternatively, some sort of example should be provided for each term, to give readers some kind of clue as to how the terms relate to specific plays, for instance. (I'm doubtful about this and will leave it on file, but it's not fatal. If anyone else objects to it, the section can be cut.)

'Audience etiquette': a photograph or two, e.g. of the actors filing out, might be helpful. (Again, this is a wish not a requirement.)

Added a ref for the Theme section Decafespresso (talk) 17:15, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm now happy to say the article is well up to the required standard, and both interesting and beautiful too. Congratulations. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:37, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

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Influence in the West

Many Wikipedia articles about non-Western cultures include sections -- sometimes extensive -- about Western influences (either Western influence on the culture in question, or the culture's influence on the West). This always troubles me. Do we understand Japanese Noh better for knowing the Western performers and composers who have been influenced by it? This an encyclopedia entry, and its job is to give us a quick but thorough understanding of the term in question, based primarily on information that comes from scholarly research. Would other encyclopedias include this kind of information in an entry on Noh? I personally wonder if this information should simply be deleted from this article, or perhaps moved to a separate article. At minimum, it should be the last section of the article as it is the least relevant to understanding Noh, IMHO. I'd be interested to know what others think. CBFraoch (talk) 17:20, 6 November 2024 (UTC)