Shinto and Noh and Diplomats

Last Saturday I was interpreting at a seminar that Jinja Honchō held for the Diplomatic Corps in Tokyo, on Shinto and Noh. This was the latest in a series that used to be annual, but that got interrupted by the pandemic — it finally restarted this year.

As the speaker who opened said, Noh has a reputation for being hard to understand, boring, and soporific. Fortunately, the seminar wasn’t.

That opening speaker, Kenji Kato, noted that there has been a lot of work on the relationship between Noh and Zen or Pure Land Buddhism, but very little on the relationship between Noh and Shinto. This is odd, first because there are lots of kami in Noh plays, and also because there are some strong parallels in the practice. He particularly focused on one play, “Okina”, which means “old man”.

This is not exactly a play, because the character, an old man, simply recites prayers for peace and abundant harvests. However, one of the “founders” of Noh, Zeami, described Okina as central to Noh. There is also a lot of special ceremonial around it. For example, the actor who will play Okina is said to have to purify himself in advance, like a Shinto priest preparing to preside at a matsuri, and then purify himself again before mounting the stage. The Okina actor walks along the centre of the passage to the stage, unlike other actors who walk to one side, and puts the mask on while on stage, which is also unique. Kato suggested that in Okina, the actor in some sense is the kami, unlike in other plays where he merely plays the role of the kami. Indeed, Okina is so sacred that the Noh actor leading the second part of the seminar, Chitoshi Matsuki, was refused permission to show a video of it, even though he was playing Okina in the video in question. (He showed a video of different play instead.)

There are also quite a few jinja that have Noh plays, and we had a priest from one of them, Ōyama Afuri Jinja, come to tell the diplomats about it. This jinja is found on a mountain near Tokyo, Ōyama, and there is a long history of Noh on that peak. According to tradition, the site was very popular with pilgrims from Edo about 300 years ago, but there were Shinto priests, Buddhist monks, and Shugenja on the mountain, and they kept getting into arguments and suing each other. The shogun was worried that these conflicts might cause wider unrest, and so he ordered the groups to cooperate to put on Noh plays twice a year. At first, they didn’t much like each other, but given the circumstances, they rehearsed together. This contact apparently resolved the problems, the mountain became peaceful, and the tradition of Noh continued. The jinja still has a three-century-old Okina mask, which the priest brought along to show everyone. The tradition is suffering from a lack of people to continue it, but the priest, and Matsuki, are training children to take over the tradition.

The workshop involved dressing one ambassador in full Noh costume, as a woman descended from the heavens, and then giving everyone the chance to try on a Noh mask and play a kotsuzumi, one of the Noh instruments. We also learned that the average age of Noh performers is 67, which is even worse than Shinto priests, and that about half the people who attend Noh performances are Noh performers. This is why Matsuki actively conducts seminars like this, and there is an article about it on the Matsu no Kai blog. It’s in Japanese, but you can see photographs, including one of the ambassador.

It was an interesting seminar to interpret, and several of the attendees told me that they were looking forward to future seminars. I think the ones with better Japanese told my colleagues the same thing, because I saw some conversations that seemed to be going the same way. We talked a bit about what we might do next time, so I am also looking forward to that. But three hours of solid interpreting is tiring…