The thing that I shall miss the most about being circumstanced out of the theatre festival in Transylvania this year is the Noh troupe. Extraordinarily worthwhile.
The attraction to Japanese ritual and contemplative forms might be historically and culturally inflected. In the late 19th c. many Slavic immigrants had just come over to the Midwest, and Japan had prevailed in a stunning triumph over Russe. So there was a fascination among the eastern elites (e.g., Teddy Roosevelt) with Japanese culture, and this perhaps became a cultural force, perhaps displacing or preempting the Eastern forms that had reached the US by going west, instead of east. Just a notion, but the outlines of the facts seem to correspond. Far and few are the ikonostases and Holy Doors in the Midwest. In fairness, even the Roman church was explicitly equated with the Hindu pantheon in the correspondence of the Framers. A protestant nation at founding, but a permissive one (hence Baltimore).
But for whatever reason, the eastern forms do stand in my mind for the necessary focus and mediation that keeps a traveller on his path in summer heat and winter cold.