Zeami

(Seami, Kanze Motokiyo)

(ca. 1364–ca. 1443)

   Zeami is generally recognized as the most important playwright in the tradition of Japanese Nō theater.He became so well known that at one time, half of the 240 extant Nō plays were attributed to him, though modern scholarship has identified between 30 and 40 plays as indisputably his. He was also chief actor of his company and the foremost theorist of Nō art, having written some 21 treatises on the subject, most of which have been recovered only in the 20th century.

   Much of Zeami’s success came to him as a result of his association with the Ashīkaga shogunate, the most powerful force in the Japan of his lifetime.At the age of 11, while performing for the acting company of his father Kan’ami at the Imakumano Shrine in Kyoto, Zeami was observed and admired by the 17-year-old shogun Ashīkaga Yoshimutsu, and quickly became the young shogun’s favorite and companion. Zeami became head of his troupe at the age of 20 upon the death of his father, but the patronage and protection of Yoshimutsu gave Zeami’s troupe financial security and a permanent residence in the capital.Writing specifically to appeal to Yoshimutsu’s refined tastes, and those of other educated aristocrats in the capital, rather than to the preferences of the masses, Zeami revolutionized Nō theater, changing it from a popular entertainment to an elegant art form. When Yoshimutsu died in 1408, Zeami’s privileged position began to deteriorate. He continued to write in the style he had developed under Yoshimutsu, but subsequent shoguns did not share Yoshimutsu’s tastes.Under the next shogun,Yoshimochi, Zeami lost some prestige, but was fortunate in that his daughter married the successful playwright Komparu Zenchiku, whose success enabled him to support his father-in-law as Zeami’s fortunes declined. Under the succeeding shogun, Yoshinori, Zeami’s nephew Motoshige became the shogun’s favorite, and Zeami incurred Yoshinori’s wrath when he refused to assist his nephew in his new position. Zeami’s decline continued when, at the age of 70, he was ordered to two years of exile on Sado Island, for reasons that are unclear. Zenchiku is known to have looked after his affairs while Zeami was in exile. Precisely when Zeami returned from his banishment is not known, but one legend claims that he died in a Zen temple upon his return.

   Several innovations separated Zeami’s plays from those of his predecessors. Instead of traditional popular heroes, he chose his protagonists from classical Japanese literature, such as the TALE OF THE HEIKE or figures from classical HEIAN culture. Zeami’s plays are less realistic than previous plays, relying on unrealistic masks and costumes, a virtually empty stage with only a few insignificant props. More important, his plays achieve their dramatic tension not from the confrontation of characters so much as from the chief character’s internal anguish. In a typical Zeami play, a monk or other secondary figure encounters an old man, who may relate the story of an ancient battle that occurred at the spot where they are standing. In the second part of the play, the monk realizes that the old man is the ghost of some dead warrior. The ghost begins a dance—a symbol of his inner turmoil—as he relates and works through an ancient obsession that prevents him from leaving the mundane world and achieving final enlightenment.

   Zeami’s plays are still performed today. His most anthologized play is ATSUMORI, a drama of the type in which the protagonist (or shite) is a warrior. The play, based on chapter 9 of The Tale of the Heike, opens with an encounter between the ghost of Atsumori, disguised as a grass cutter, and the monk Renshō, who had killed the 16-year-old Atsumori in battle, and had become a monk to leave behind that life of killing. The ghost, fixated on his defeat and death and obsessed with the man who killed him, has the opportunity to avenge himself but in the end lets the obsession go.

   Izutso (The well-curb) is another of Zeami’s most admired plays. In the genre called kazuramono, or “wig piece”—that is, a play with a female shite—this play focuses on the daughter of Aritsune from the 17th episode of the ISE MONOGATARI (Tale of Ise). The woman in the play struggles with her feelings for her lost love Narihira, and relates her love and memories of him. Ultimately she appears in Narihira’s clothing. She goes to view her reflection in the well, and imagines her lost lover returning to her.

   Zeami’s critical writings may have sprung from a need to justify the new direction he was taking the drama. In any case, of his 21 critical treatises, Zeami’s best-known is his earliest, Fūshikaden (Teachings in style and the flower), written about 1400–02. On the practical level, he emphasizes the bare stage and simple props, and regarding acting style, insists that actors should underplay their emotions, advocating very subtle gesture and movement. In terms of theory, Zeami is extremely difficult to translate, as many of the terms he introduces are quite ambiguous.He borrows language from the classic treatise on Japanese poetry (waka), Ki no Tsurayuki’s Japanese preface to the KOKINSHŪ. Tsurayuki had declared that Japanese poetry has as its seed (tane) the human heart (kokoro). Zeami declares that in Nō theater, the tane or cause was the performance, while the kokoro was what he called the “flower.” What he meant by “flower” is complex, but basically he seems to mean the effect that the actor produces in the audience.

   Zeami’s most difficult critical term is yūgen, his chief criterion for the art of Nō. The term refers to elegance and beauty but also to mystery and depth. Thus the quality of yūgen denoted emotion so subtle and profound that it could only be implied. The value of implication expressed in the concept of yūgen permeated Japanese poetry as well as drama, and, in fact, was an aesthetic ideal in all Japanese arts, from painting to calligraphy. Thus the change in the course of Nō theater under Zeami was ultimately a change that was in line with the direction of classic Japanese aesthetics since the time of the Kokinshū.

   Bibliography

   ■ Hare, Thomas Blenman. Zeami’s Style: The Noh Plays of Zeami Motokiyo. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986.

   ■ Japanese Nō Dramas. Edited and translated by Royall Tyler. London: Penguin, 1992.

   ■ Rimer, J. Thomas, and Yamazaki Masakazu, trans. On the Art of Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

   ■ Sekine, Masaru. Zeami and His Theories of Noh Drama. Gerrards Cross, U.K.: C. Smythe, 1985.

   ■ Terasaki, Etsuko. Figures of Desire: Wordplay, Spirit Possession, Fantasy, Madness, and Mourning in Japanese Noh Plays. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.