RELATED TOPIC:
MEDIEVAL JAPAN

Donald Keene :: The simplicity of the stage, the bareness of the stage itself, is at once very close to Japanese ideas of aesthetics: The simplicity of the scene; nothing extraneous; not one thing on the stage which isn't necessary at that moment. If the actor has a sword and drops the sword, a stage assistant will remove the sword as an unsightly object.

Everything must be absolutely simple, clean. And the music, which suggests another world, it's not sweet music — the kind we might have in an opera — or even violent music. It's otherworldly music. It's provided by a single flute and then two or three different kinds of drums.