Dear friends in Boston, I would like to send my warmest greetings from far away Japan. I am Tomio Tada, the author of The Hermit Isseki. I am very happy that The Hermit Isseki is going to be presented in Boston this fall. The actors and staff will try their best to make this performance one that will meet your expectations. Noh is Japanese traditional theatre with a 600-year history. It is thus regarded as too difficult to understand and people tend to shy away from it. However recently, this very sophisticated theatre with minimal movement in its acting, is gaining renewed interest in the world, as a vivid theatrical art which represents the spirituality of Japan. We have been actively working to promoting Noh, not by just repeating performance of the classical plays but by creating new plays which describe modern day issues through the art of Noh. Noh is an art with an enormous power to impress even a modern day audience　and foreigners interested in Japanese culture through its unique physical expression. I have written several modern Noh plays. “Mumyo-no-I(The well of ignorance”; which takes up the theme of brain death and heart transplantation was taken up by the New York Times. This play was performed at the Japan Society in New York in 1993, and cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh, which are considered to be the “mecca” of organ transplantation, with great success. New Yorker magazine wrote about me as “Doctor Noh”. Around that time I became the president of International Immunology Society. The name “Doctor Noh” quickly gained a fame throughout the world scientific community. Several years after that, I suffered stroke and became polarized. I even lost an ability to speak. Friends around me came up with the plan of the Hermit Isseki performance in Boston to cheer me up. The Hermit Isseki is the Noh play with Einstein as the main character. It was premiered in Yokohama. It was also performed in Tokyo, Kanazawa and Yuki City. In 2005, it was presented at the conference to commemorate 100th anniversary of Einstein’s greatest discovery of the principle of relativity by UNESCO World Year of Physics Japanese committee, to send Einstein’s massage to the world. It may be difficult to understand Einstein’s physics. However when it is described with Noh as its tool, it is expressed beautifully and poetic, and became most poignant play. I hope you can enjoy this mysterious world. Einstein was an ardent advocate of peace. In this Noh play, we have not forgotten to mention never to repeat the tragedy of nuclear bomb and the message for world peace. Above all, we will be so happy if you could feel the mysterious world of the universe discovered by the Modern Physics and happiness of living there as human being from our Noh play. It will be expressed with the soulful music played by Oztsuzumi, Kotsuzumi, Taiko and Fue, the chorus which sound like the music welling up from the nature and by main actor’s minimal movement. It is very fortunate for us that famous musicians such as Okura Shonosuke will participate in the fall performance. Kanji Shimizu, one of important actors from Kanze School, will play the main character. Even though the language of Noh is written with old style, it is not very difficult to understand. I think you will enjoy the beautiful poem like script with an undercurrent of the Zen philosophy. This Noh play will make you feel and understand the world of modern Physics with ease.

Tomio Tada, Immunologist, Emeritus professor Tokyo University