SHINOBU Kamiyama is not a professional actress. The mother of two works as a caregiver in a day service for the elderly.
But she is one of many residents of Sado Island, in Japan’s northwest, who share an unusual passion for one of the world’s oldest – and most otherworldly – forms of theatre.
On a summer night, Kamiyama played the lead role in a ghost story belonging to Japan’s ancient Noh form of drama. She wore a small oval mask and an ornate kimono as she stepped out onto a Shinto shrine’s weathered wooden stage surrounded by torches.
A chorus of singers chanted. Musicians played a flute and drums as she stomped and spun in stylised dance moves.
When it was her turn to sing, she delivered her verses in a low drone that climbed to climatic peaks, in Noh’s distinctive style that blends religious incantation with operatic aria.
“I grew up with the beauty of Noh songs all around me,” said Kamiyama, 43, who started singing when she was in elementary school. She volunteered to perform the role before an audience of mostly fellow islanders.
On this evening, she played the role of Tamakazura, a famed lady of the Imperial Court so tormented by her own beauty that she returns after death as a spirit.
Noh dramas frequently centre on visitations by ghosts, often of famous defeated warriors or court notables.
With her face hidden behind the mask, Kamiyama’s voice also seemed to come from somewhere else, a phantom realm beyond the island’s dark cedar forest.
Islanders say it is this mysterious power that appeals to them, living on an island in the storm-swept Sea of Japan.
“On Sado, Noh is an offering made to the gods,” said Toshihiro Kondo, the head of one of the island’s Noh associations.
Nowhere else in Japan today is the ancient drama form so widely embraced as it is on Sado.
The fishing and farming communities here have made the medieval art form a central part of their local culture, which children learn while still in school and residents perform at religious festivals.
The island of 45,000 residents, which is accessible only by ferry, has 34 Noh stages, most of them at temples of Buddhism or the nation’s native Shinto religion. That is about one-third of the total number of Noh stages in all of Japan.
In most of Japan, Noh is an arcane art form practised by professional troupes. But on Sado, the dozens of performances every year are conducted by amateurs like Kamiyama.
“Noh is still a living culture here,” said Ichiji Kouzu, 80, a teacher of the drama form on the island. “But this is the last place.”
Scholars of Noh call it one of the oldest forms of theatre. Its roots go back to at least the eighth century, but Noh took its current form six centuries ago in an era of medieval warriors.
Noh’s stories of tormented beauties, slain generals and others returning from the dead, usually with a Zen Buddhist message about the brevity of existence, appealed to a samurai class for whom life could also be short and brutal.
Many of its greatest dramas were written by Motokiyo Zeami, a playwright who lived two centuries before William Shakespeare.
Zeami actually spent several years on Sado, where he was exiled by a jealous ruler. However, Noh didn’t arrive to stay until two centuries later, when gold was discovered on the island.
Samurai warriors arrived to open a mine to extract the metal. They brought with them Noh, which was embraced by the island’s commoners who worked digging in the shafts.
After thriving for centuries, Noh has also been losing audiences and performers on Sado. As Japan’s demographic ageing has taken its toll here, the island’s population has fallen to less than a quarter of what it was after World War II. Over the same time period, the number of Noh stages has declined from about 200.
Yashio Hino, a 30th-generation priest at a Shinto shrine with a second-century-old Noh stage, says preserving the art form means attracting more tourists, who have given the island’s economy a boost in recent years.
“I owe it to my ancestors not to give up,” Hino said. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
