Noh is Japan's most inscrutable performing art. A tremendous influence on kabuki and bunraku puppet theater, it is a household name across the nation, yet relatively few Japanese have ever been to a show. Culture vultures marvel at the elaborate costumes and the esoteric, chantlike music; the plays are loaded with gripping stories about life and death, ghosts and demons; but the snail-like pace of the actors' movements leave most of us bored. And as for what is being said on stage, the language is so ancient that it is as foreign to most Japanese as James Joyce is to English-speakers.

Noh's cloak of inaccessibility extends to its top performers, who, in stark contrast to those in kabuki, do not invite superstar treatment. So it is surprising to be invited into the inner sanctum of the art's oldest practitioner, 86-year-old Yasuo Imai. Equally remarkable is his unvarnished candor about the future of the art form to which he has devoted much of his life.

"It will continue to go downhill, just like other forms of traditional Japanese music," Imai says, matter-of-factly. "Noh is difficult to do and takes time to learn. It is so different from regular people's hobbies that the only people attracted to it these days are slightly odd.