The Edinburgh Festival is featuring the Noh play "Sumidagawa" which inspired the Benjamin Britten opera "Curlew River".

Independent: There's no business like 'Noh' business

Most Japanese don't like Noh theatre. It's the jewel of Japanese culture, but, says Poh Sim Plowright, "many don't even recognise the high Japanese language spoken in performances of Noh plays." Not, as Jean-Louis Barrault, the French actor, has pointed out, that you need to speak Japanese to understand Japanese. At least, not when it forms part of the oldest and most eloquent theatre in world...more...

Benjamin Secher's guide to the ancient performance art, Noh

While we now have sushi in our supermarkets, sudoku in our newspapers and anime in our cinemas, Noh - an inscrutably ritualistic form of drama - remains a stranger in the West. In the week that a rare production of Sumidagawa (the most tragic Noh play ever written) arrives at Edinburgh, we offer an introduction to the jewel of samurai theatre...more...

Telegraph "Sumidagawa" Review

...The dignified selflessness of the performers, apparently inspired by profound inner self-discipline, is both astonishing and humbling. Here are values, both aesthetic and spiritual, of which our speed-addicted and novelty-obsessed culture can have only the dimmest intuition.

Telegraph "Curlew River" Review

It wasn't at all moving, nor did it clearly relate the haunting story of a wandering madwoman who reaches the ferry where her son was murdered.

Guardian "Curlew River Review"

Profound, distressing and impossible to get through without tears.

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Yomiuri: Noh finds new style in women
The 21st century is one of equal opportunity for both men and women in traditional performing arts, once a world only for men. Women have increasingly become the driving force behind traditional performing arts. This is the last installment of a three-part series on women's contributions to such arts. More than half a century has passed since the first noh actress appeared in 1948. While an increasing number of women have followed suit, 2004 marked special significance. In July, 22 noh actresses were made the first female members of the Nihon Nogaku-kai, which means they were officially recognized as professional noh performers.

In December, a noh play titled "Onna ni yoru Onna no tame no Onna no Noh" (Women's Noh--Played by Women for Women) was performed at Yokohama Nohgakudo in Yokohama. The story was from "Ono no Ukifune," a new work by poet Akiko Baba, based on Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji from the Heian Period (794-1192). Genji's main character is a playboy aristocrat named Hikaru Genji who falls in love with many women. "We perform noh in the same format as men. As the masks and garments are too big for women, it's in some ways difficult for us to perform noh," said Satoko Tsumura, 41, who played the lead. "However, we can express feelings in different ways than men, such as when dancing to music that represents jealousy, for example. I want to perform noh to express women's feelings," she added.

Japan's traditional performing arts, such as noh and kabuki, have developed elocution, body movements and other elements of performance from a male viewpoint. Naturally, this makes it less accessible for women to perform. At the same time, some have criticized plays tailored to be easier for women to perform. Musume Gidayu, or gidayu played by women, became extremely popular in the Meiji era (1868-1912). Gidayu is another form of Japan's traditional art born in the Edo period (1603-1868), in which a performer tells stories with accompaniment by the shamisen, a three-stringed lute. Musume means young woman.

In a Musume Gidayu performance, the performer tells stories through a singing narrative, and at the climax of each story, she deliberately shakes her head to cause her hairpin drop to attract the audience's attention. At the time, while some female performers became stars, such moves against tradition were disapproved by critics. "At that time, female performers were discriminated against," said Yuko Mizuno, 59, a researcher on gidayu played by women. "People said gidayu performers should tell stories, not sing them, and they didn't consider the singing method as authentic. They also said it was salacious to shake off the hairpin."

After World War II, an increasing number of women started to work in various industries, including traditional performing arts. Now the number of women who start training as rokyoku and koshaku performers, both traditional forms of storytelling, exceeds that of men. Ichiryusai Teiyu, 47, a koshaku-shi (storyteller), also is a popular voice actress, best known as the voice of the mother in the popular cartoon "Chibi Maruko-chan." She started training with living national treasure Ichiryusai Teisui 13 years ago after deciding to continue her career by using her voice. "I think my own attitude toward my profession as a voice actress changed after I started koshaku. It made me more sensitive to a character's feelings," Teiyu said. "Traditional arts are very profound. The harder I train myself, the more koshaku reminds me that it's a man's art. However, I want to try and see how far I can go using my own means."

After seeing a noh performance titled "Hanjo," in which the lead was played by a woman, Kanze Sakon, the 24th master of an old family of noh performers, told his grandson Kiyokazu that men could not do as well, according to Kiyokazu. Kiyokazu, 46, is now the 26th master of the Kanze family. "A woman can dance more softly and express the character's sweetness," Kiyokazu quoted Sakon as saying. Men have their own way of expression, and women have their own style. Traditional arts will add to their brilliance through different forms as female artists create or perform a masterpiece of their own.