The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan

by Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound

Fifteen of the most celebrated plays of the Noh theatre repertory are given here in their entirety and five more are presented in synopsis. The translations are grounded in a critical discussion of the Noh theatre, its history and place in the court life of Japan, a description of the stage on which it is performed, its music, costumes, and masks, and the dance which is usually the high point of the performance. Both Pound and Fenollosa discuss the special elements of Noh poetry, and Pound’s poetic organization of Fenollosa’s authoritative translation and notes creates a fortunate collaboration.

Genres: Japan, Plays, Drama, Poetry, Nonfiction, Theatre

163 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1917

Reviews

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars for Fenollosa's scholarship, four stars for Pound's translations.
Therefore, my rating really comes to 4.5 stars.

An amazingly fruitful collaboration from beyond the grave between Ernest Fenollosa, an expert on Chinese, Japanese and oriental literature and fine arts in the late 19th and early 20th century and the controversial radical-genius of Ezra Pound, before he regretfully turned to fascism and praise of Mussolini (in the 1930s).

If only this partnership could have occurred while both Fenollosa and Pound were alive, it would have been even better. While Pound brings an indescribable splendor and grace to the translations of the Japanese that only a proper poet could deliver, I feel that parts of the translation suffer from what translators call 'overtranslation' and this happens when the translator gets too creative and begins to 'interpret' the original lines too freely.

I don't have the original Japanese Noh plays to compare Pound's translation against but having lived in Japan for almost 20 years now, I detected a few errors in the text and old orthographical conventions that New Directions should really fix up.
For example, the famous Shogun-general Oda Nobunaga is rendered as "Ota Nobunaga" in this book.
Pound sometimes leaves some Japanese words in the original when exact equivalents exist. Two examples are "mushi" (insect) and "miyako" (capital). For people who don't know Japanese, these parts must be quite confusing. Also, Pound's lack of knowledge of Japan shows in parts. When Fenellosa compares how people used to sit around a Noh performance like spectators would do when they go to a Sumo bout, Pound seems perplexed and just writes, "whatever that means."

It says in the front of the book that Pound consulted Arthur Waley, someone who was more of an expert on the East than Pound, to clear up a few matters so I wonder why these inaccuracies remain.

However, once you get past these slight irritations, the benefits of this book are enormous. Pound's 'translations' (if they can be called that) really bring the texts to life and some parts are quite beautiful.

The supplementary explanations about masks, the history of each play, costumes, the dance (mai), stage, actors and various other details make this book even more fascinating.

What made me pick up this book was I was asked at the last minute this year to teach an extra course of literature at my university and I decided to teach Gary Snyder's masterpiece, Mountains and Rivers Without End. Before teaching the class, I was lucky enough to speak to Snyder's official Japanese translator, who advised me to study Japanese Noh plays a little before plunging into Snyder's work, which I had read before. Well, this book did help as Snyder's MRWE does contain a section called The Mountain Spirit which is heavily influenced by a Japanese Noh play called Yamamba (Old Woman of the Mountain). Although Yamamba isn't in this book by Fenellosa/Pound it helped me immensely in terms of getting a feel for the ambience of a Noh play and how this has been equally conveyed in Snyder's work.

At the end of this book, New Directions have included the original introduction to Pound's book on the Noh by William Butler Yeats. Yeats' prose on the noh is a joy in itself to read so really, this book really has three authors when you get down to it - Ernest Fenellosa (who did all the hard research and scholarly work), Ezra Pound (who worked his magic and turned it into something truly poetic: after Fenellosa's death, his wife entrusted her husband's manuscripts to Pound) and William Butler Yeats who not only wrote the introduction (which comes at the end of the book) but went on to incorporate certain facets and features of the Noh in his own Irish plays. Highly recommended. Forget yer Dan Brown, Dean R. Koontz and George RRRRRR Martin. This is true caviar for the crowd.

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ| Spanish Immersion Week‽ · Rating 3 out of 5]

fairly detailed, but wouldn’t recommend to someone completely new to this genre

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book I've kept on the shelves for at least 40 years. I think I was saving it for when I thought I might need an injection of Pound's craziness and didacticism. That was a very unfair expectation of this book.

Fenollosa was a real scholar, who had done significant work in Japan and with Japanese texts before he died. But he left what must have been significant notes (do they exist in some special collections library somewhere?), and his second wife chose wisely when she picked Pound to interpret those notes. Pound clearly wanted to learn about all of this, and he sifted carefully through Fenollosa's notes and ideas.

So there is little of the overly opinionated Pound in this collection. None of the brow-beating he is infamous for. And, of course, none of the terrifying politics. This was all done before all that stuff consumed his mind and imagination. He could give himself over to the idea of this theater, stylized, ritualized. Very formal. He makes the point several times how these narratives, such as they are, grew out of dance, and that the dance had been a kind of worship. The masks and costumes, too, were part of this quasi-religious performance.

But the book is explanation and translations of the short texts of the plays. It is a very different kind of theater than most of what we are used to. Narrative elements have no relationship to anything "realistic," and move easily between dream and myth, and landscape -- although sometimes that is given a very realistic description. Necessary narrative elements are often simply summarized by the Chorus. Gods freely exhibit themselves in human form, and then transform (by a change of mask and costume) into their resplendent true natures.

This was the book and the texts that Yeats used to make some of his plays, and this New Directions edition reprints his intro to the Irish edition his sisters printed. In his Intro Yeats says "The men who created this convention were more like ourselves [meaning Irish] than were the Greeks and Romans, more like us even than are Shakespeare and Corneille." That might be wishful thinking on WBY's part, but it was still important.

Individual lines jump out with the exact summation of emotional state. Here's just a sentence of dialogue from the play "Kinuta": "My blind soul hangs like a curtain studded with dew." This seems like a perfect image of sorrow, even if I must create in my mind, imperfectly of course, a medieval Japanese curtain. This book is filled with small moments like that, often arising from moments that I don't understand, either because Pound and Fenollosa haven't given me the cultural background to understand them, or because I simply am too ignorant of the tradition. I love finding those moments and will return to this book to find them again.

[ashes ➷]

One of those books I don't feel too qualified to review. Pound's racism is well documented, and the book generally reeks of the Orientalist environment it came from, but there is a lot of information from real Japanese people here, and the plays themselves are compelling for a variety of reasons their commentators often rightly point out. If you're looking to read some Noh, I'd certainly recommend it, though I would add the qualifier that I have no idea to what extent the book is accurate and would look elsewhere for that.

[riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

ernest fenollosa you have done no wrong. ezra pound on the other hand....

translations of the noh plays themselves are a bit clunky and strange. a few times i ended up skimming the script in the book and then pulling up a different translation online to actually understand what was going on. maybe i'm stupid idk. but i'm discovering that it's incredibly difficult to translate noh and still have the same impact & quality. particularly loved kakitsubata & nishikigi.

[Thany · Rating 2 out of 5]

**read in response to popsugar reading challenge prompt “a book set in japan”**

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t find the Noh plays in this volume very compelling. From his Chinese translations, I didn’t expect Pound’s translations of the Noh plays to be particularly true to the original works, but I did expect the language to be much more interesting. This short book of 160 pages read more like 400 pages.

I suspect a part of the problem is that a short, highly ritualized art form like Noh typically requires a highly compact, symbolic language. With such few words, they carry much more weight. But Pound’s translation doesn’t provide a lot of context, particularly in the beliefs that surround the Noh. It’s a form of Buddhism but not a form that I’m familiar with. It is much more focused on ghosts and spirits.

I can’t say that the Noh theatre in general or the plays in this selection are uninteresting, but I’d suggest starting with some different translations.

Notes on 2024 Re-reading:
Reading these again, and in the larger context of other translations, these are good but not great. It is one of the first attempts to translate this highly complicated art form, and the results are a bit uneven. Some translations are gripping, others kind of technical and dry. I also don't think Fenollosa and Pound picked the best or most dramatic or most representative plays. (Or at least what is now considered to be representative plays.) This isn't the book where I'd start reading Noh plays, but it may be something you'll want to refer to later.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a New Directions reprint under a new title of the 1916 (i.e., 1917) 'Noh' or Accomplishment , with some back matter, including Fenollosa's musical notation to Hagoromo and Pound's note about it, omitted, but with W. B. Yeats Introduction to the 1916 Certain Noble Plays of Japan , which did not appear in 'Noh', restored as an appendix.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Includes an introduction, a number of Noh plays with introductions and notes, and a synopsis of plays, notes on music, and care and selection of costumes. Originally published in 1917, this version came out in 1959.

[Bay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it was very interesting, but because you cannot get the whole understanding because it's primarily dancing - I will only give it 3 stars.

[Mills College Library]

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