Umewaka Minoru I
Minoru Umewaka（1934）Japanese Noh Plays: How to See them, Board of Tourist Industry, Tokyo [EN]
- 8This was mainly clue to Prince Tomomi Iwakura who patronized it, and to three great Noh actors of the period, Kurо̄ Hо̄shо̄, Minoru Umewaka and Sajin Sakurama.
- 44When Commodore Perry forced open the door of the East in 1854, hitherto closed for more than two hundred years to Western barbarians, Mr. Umewaka captained a little band of No players attached to the then all-powerful household of Keiki, the last of the Tokugawa Shoguns.
- 45Mr. Umewaka himself brought the best gift of all, profound and practical knowledge of the stage technique, which is curiously elaborate in spite of seeming simplicity, and bristles with professional secrets.
- 48The part of Shunkwan was played by Mr. Umewaka himself with much pathos, depending entirely on tone, carriage, and gesture, since all facial expression is barred by the strict convention of playing the No in masks.
- 129As early as 1880, I began to study it in Tokio, taking private lessons from Mr. Umewaka, who had been before 1868 a leading soloist in the Shogun’s troupe, and from whose lips I took down the Japanese text, writing over it on an improvised ” staff,” and in European notation, an approximation to the sounds of the chant.
- 129The rendering of the music, the dances, the symbolism, the staging, all this can be learned only from the tradition of the actors; and, besides my private lessons, Mr. Umewaka has given me freely his memories of the customs of the stage in old court days.
- 133But in 1873, Mr. Umewaka, second soloist under the Shogun, got together a few performers and revived the art, from his own memory and from the old stage books in his possession.
- 401With a letter of introduction, I, or rather my jinrikisha man, found the way to Mr. Umewaka, who lived at Asakusa Minami moto machi Kubanchi.
- 32As Umewaka Minoru says: “The longer you look at a good· mask the more charged with life it becomes.