SOURCE: Ueda, Makoto. “Zeami Motokiyo: Imitation, Yugen, and the Sublime.” In Zeami, Basho, Yeats, Pound: A Study in Japanese and English Poetics, pp. 11-34. London: Mouton & Co., 1965.

[In the essay below, Ueda surveys Zeami's theories on effective Nō theater.]

A certain Japanese poet, commenting on the difference between the artisan and the artist, once said that the latter always strives to explore and expand the meaning of his art while the former simply tries to fulfil the rules handed down by the tradition. Zeami Motokiyo¹ was known to his contemporaries largely as a master artisan, yet we now know him as a rare artist. Born as the eldest son of a great nō performer, he followed his father's footsteps and came to achieve great fame for his acting, chanting and dancing; his contemporary audience enjoyed his art, quite possibly without knowing what lay behind it. Yet, although we now cannot in any way restore Zeami's performance, we do have a way to learn some of the ideas he conceived on the art of the nō. These are expressed in a body of his miscellaneous essays, written at various times of his career, aiming, primarily, to make practical advice on the training of actors, principles of acting, play-writing, dancing and music, and numerous other matters relating to the performance of the nō. Despite the variety of topics with which the essays deal, one cannot fail to recognize Zeami's never-failing passion for the perfection of his art: “a man's life has an end”, he says, “but there is no end in the pursuit of the nō”.² In fact his essays were written in order to set a high goal toward which the best of nō performers in the succeeding years were expected to strive. On the other hand Zeami was not an idealistic theorizer who merely played with abstract ideas. The essays reveal him to be an efficient, realistic, and at times even shrewd person: his scheme of actor-training is devised with the details which remind us of a curriculum at some modern professional school; he was so practical even as to warn that an actor should take a look before his performance to make sure that no nail was sticking out on the stage.

The first basic principle in Zeami's concept of art is that of imitation. “Objects to be imitated are too many to be enumerated here”, he says. “Yet they have to be thoroughly studied since imitation is a foremost principle in our art.” Then he adds: “The basic rule is to imitate things as they are, whatever they may be.”³ A nō performer should carefully observe the speech and deportment of princes, ministers of state, courtiers and warriors; he should ask them, when he meets them after his performance, whether his acting has been an acceptable imitation of what they actually say and do. When he is cast in the role of a high court lady he can rarely see, he should inquire of the traditional manner in which such a lady speaks and behaves, or of the customary ways in which she wears her clothes. The imitation of an ordinary woman is easier, as one can observe a model anywhere and at any time. Some nō actors, too intent on producing the effect of elegant beauty which they thought was the aim of the nō, often neglected the principle of imitation. Zeami warns sharply against such negligence. It was not that he thought lightly of artistic effect; on the contrary, he considered the principle of imitation as fundamental in creating an appropriate aesthetic sentiment. In a passage where he speaks of forcefulness and elegance as two important qualities of the nō, he says:

In any act of imitation, if there is a false element, the act will become coarse or weak … For instance, it will be a false imitation to create the forceful out of the weak; the act then will become coarse. To act forcefully for the things forceful—this is forceful, and not coarse. If an actor departs from the principle of imitation in the hope of producing elegance out of something forceful, his act will not look elegant but weak. Therefore, if an actor gives himself up to this principle and becomes at one with the object of his imitation, his performance will look neither coarse nor weak. Also, when a forceful thing is imitated more forcibly than it should be, the performance will appear especially coarse. If one tries to be more elegant than what is appropriate to the occasion, one's performance will look especially weak … Such unfortunate cases occur when the actor assumes that there is such a thing as elegance or forcefulness apart from the things they imitate. These two exist in the forms of things themselves. Court ladies high and low, men and women beautiful and refined, various kinds of flowers—these are the things whose forms are elegant in themselves. Warriors, rustics, devils, deities, pine trees—these may be thought of as forceful things. When accurately imitated, the imitation of an elegant thing will become elegant, and that of a forceful thing forceful … Forcefulness or elegance does not exist by itself. It springs from an accurate imitation of an object. Weakness or coarseness arises when the actor fails to observe the principle of imitation.⁴

Art imitates nature in order to reproduce what nature has. Any act of imitation which distorts nature for the sake of an artistic effect will result in either coarseness or weakness; it is artifice, and not art. An aesthetic effect like forcefulness or elegance is inherent in the natural objects themselves. The actor, therefore, should try to bring himself into the heart of the natural objects rather than to bring them into the subjective sphere of his mind. He should minimize the activities of his ego; a personal element should not enter the process through which an object in nature is transformed into its equivalent in art.

Zeami further develops his idea of non-personal quality in artistic imitation and comes to reject the actor's conscious will toward imitation. “In the art of imitation there is a stage called ‘non-imitation’”, he says. “If one proceeds to the ultimate of imitation and entirely enters the thing he is imitating, he will possess no will for imitation.”⁵ In the highest stage of imitation the actor becomes unconscious of his art; the imitator is united with the imitated. And he can do this only when he completely projects himself into the essence of the object which he imitates; the man and the object become at one in the essence they share with each other. Zeami calls this essence the “true intent”. A nō performer, in a more elementary aspect of imitation, will try to represent the things of life as they are. But, over and above this, he should endeavor to express the “true intent” of the thing; for the sake of the “true intent” he might not make an exact copy of the outward appearance. In point of fact it is impossible to imitate realistically a demon from hell, the ghost of a butterfly or the spirit of a pine tree; the object of imitation is often supernatural in the nō drama. Still, such a thing could be convincingly represented if the artist successfully creates the feeling of its “true intent”. “Nobody has seen a real demon from hell”, says Zeami. “It is more important, therefore, to act the role in such a manner as to deeply move the audience, rather than to attempt to imitate the demon.”⁶

What Zeami exactly means by the “true intent” is difficult to define, but we may have a fair idea of it as we read his comment on the art of acting a frenzied man's role. He writes:

It is extremely difficult to play the roles of those who are mentally deranged because of various obsessions, such as a person would experience at the parting with his parent, at the loss of his child, or at the death of his wife. Even a fairly good actor does not distinguish between different obsessions but portrays frenzied men all in a similar manner; the audience, therefore, is not impressed. A man is frenzied because of an obsession; therefore, if the actor makes the obsession the true intent of his portraiture, and the frenzy an effective expression of it, then his acting will certainly impress the audience and create a breathtaking climax. If there is an actor who moves the audience to tears by such means, he is a performer of rare greatness.⁷

The “true intent” of a character, then, is the inmost nature that constitutes the core of his person. In a frenzied man mental derangement is merely the outward expression of an inner cause; the deepest truth in this person lies in his obsession, or what has caused the obsession, rather than in his madness. One who wants to portray such a man will try to represent that specific obsession, instead of merely copying the features of any madman; he will imitate the characteristics of a frenzied man in such a way that the primary cause of the man's madness may manifest itself. Realistic details do not much matter; or rather, it would be better if they are eliminated wherever necessary for the sake of the “true intent”. A good actor, Zeami implies, should pierce through the surface of everyday reality and reach for the hidden truth of things. Only then the effectiveness, or beauty, of a performance will be attained.⁸ Zeami's idea of beauty is thus closely related to his interpretation of life. Yūgen, his ideal beauty, is not only an aesthetic principle but a mode of perception. The term, originally used in Taoism and Buddhism, literally means something mysterious and profound which lies beyond the reach of ordinary human senses. Since it was imported from China and employed in literary criticism in Japan, yūgen had been greatly expanded in meaning and came to imply a kind of beauty which is elegant, remote and subtle. Yet its original meaning, with its mystical overtone, always stuck to the term. “Yūgen is ultimately a sentiment inexpressible in word, a landscape unseen in form”, says a thirteenth-century scholar. “As its sentiment has profound truth, and its word utmost beauty, the effect naturally springs from it.”⁹ Zeami, inheriting the tradition, advocates yūgen as the final goal for the art of the nō. After explaining the manifestations of yūgen in various character types, he goes on:

An actor should master all these character types so that he can successfully cast himself into any of them at will. But, whatever kind of imitation he performs, he should never depart from the principle of yūgen. This will be like seeing a noble princess, a court lady, a man, a woman, a monk, a peasant, a humble man, a beggar, an outcast, all standing in a line each with a spray of blossoms. Although they differ in social status and outward appearance, they are equally beautiful blossoms insofar as we feel the effect of their beauty. The beautiful blossoms are the beauty of human form. The beauty of form is built by the creative spirit.¹⁰

Yūgen is not a superficial surface beauty; it lies deep in the heart of things. Therefore, even an imitation of something which is not externally beautiful may be made beautiful if the inner beauty finds its way out. A withered old man, ugly in appearance, can be made to have certain beauty: Zeami describes the beauty as “blossoms blooming on a dead tree”. A dreadful demon of hell can be made beautiful too: Zeami describes it as “blossoms blooming on a crag”. What creates real beauty is the “creative spirit”. Zeami uses the term in many different ways, but basically it seems to imply a spirit in pursuit of the highest type of beauty. To learn the “spirit” of composition, one should carefully study classical poetry; to learn the “spirit” of mimicry, one would better start with the imitation of elegant people. An actor should firmly get hold of what makes a person or thing beautiful, and attempt to embody this essence of beauty in his performance. Zeami aptly explains this process of artistic transformation with an anatomical metaphor—the bone, the flesh and the skin.¹¹ The bone is the spirit that tries to discover and express ideal beauty; it is “pre-art”, as it were, and this sometimes enables a genius to attain an amazing success even at a very early stage of his training. The flesh is that part of art which can be learned by training. The skin corresponds to artistic effect; it is the visible part of art. A human body consists of the bone, the flesh and the skin, although we see the skin only. Similarly, the beauty of the nō consists of personal inspiration, traditional framework and external action, although the audience sees only the last of the three. Zeami emphasizes the harmony of these three elements as essential to a successful performance.

Yūgen, then, is inner beauty of things outwardly expressed by means of art. It is the manifestation of the “true intent” which lies in the depth of things. In this sense it is identical with truth—the truth caught by the artist's “creative spirit”. The mysterious feeling which yūgen connotes comes from its pursuit of hidden truth. Outward reality is illusory; there is higher reality lying somewhere beyond the reach of our ordinary senses. The artist, seeking for ideal beauty, instantaneously penetrates the surface reality and gets a momentary hold of hidden truth. Such a romantic concept of reality would lead anyone to prefer the elegant past to the degenerate present, the refined few to the uneducated mass. Whether this was the primary motive or not, Zeami particularly yearns for the lost world of the Heian period wherein artistic taste was most highly cultivated. Characters in The Tale of Genji such as Lady Aoi, Lady Yūgao and Lady Ukifune, are the most precious heroines of the nō. In the golden years of the Heian period men and women in the court, with their most refined taste in art, lived always in search of ideal beauty; delicate, subtle, elegant beauty was their very life, the force that kept their lives going. A nō actor, therefore, may imitate the appearance and manners of a court lady in minute detail, while he should not do so when he acts a woodcutter's role. A court lady, knowing what refined beauty is, has made herself look so; a woodcutter, who does not know it, needs the actor's art to be made beautiful. The imitation of a court lady, as Zeami teaches, is the basis of all the other imitations. When this kind of beauty is elevated to its highest level, it will give the impression of “a white bird with a flower in its beak”.¹² The famous metaphor suggests Zeami's romantic aspiration after the purest type of beauty, after a creation of unearthly beauty by means of art.

Yet it is in the very essence of yūgen that this elegant beauty is combined with a feeling of sadness. If yūgen is a mode of perception into the hidden nature of things, it cannot but bring out a pessimistic notion of life. For the law of the universe prescribes that even the most beautiful lady must suffer the hardship of life, that even the loveliest blossom must fade away. Immediately after stressing the importance of elegant beauty in nō performance, Zeami says: “But there are even more precious materials for producing the visual effect of yūgen than the elegant appearance of court ladies I have just referred to; these rare examples are seen in such cases as Lady Aoi haunted by Lady Rokujō's spirit, Lady Yūgao carried away by a ghost, or Lady Ukifune possessed by a supernatural being.”¹³Yūgen, then, lies not simply in the graceful beauty of a court lady but in such a lady going through an intense suffering—a suffering caused by a power beyond her control, by the law of causation, by the supernatural, by the unknown force of the universe. Such a suffering naturally leads to sad resignation. The court lady, lacking the masculine courage to heroically fight with her fate, surrenders to religion when she comes to realize that suffering is the condition of being alive in this world. Yūgen, in the final analysis, may be conceived as a combined quality of elegant beauty and sad resignation—the elegant beauty which is a result of man's quest for his ideal through art and artifice, and the sad resignation which comes from man's recognition of his insignificance before the great cosmic power that rules over this world. Thus Zeami defines yūgen as “elegance, calm, profundity, mixed with the feeling of mutability”.¹⁴

Of these two elements of yūgen Zeami stressed the first much more than the second in the earlier part of his career; in those years yūgen was almost equivalent to graceful beauty. Yet as he grew old the emphasis was reversed: he came to admire cold, subdued beauty more and more. Already in one of his early essays there is a suggestion of this when he confesses his preference of a withering flower to a fully blooming one. Later he becomes more explicit: he says that a superb actor, when he acts an important scene, will “perform chanting, dancing and mimicry in such a manner that the audience may, without knowing it, be deeply impressed by the subdued simplicity of the atmosphere”.¹⁵ Elsewhere Zeami calls this kind of acting a “chilled performance” and ranks it the highest of all performances.

In this respect it is interesting to observe how Zeami categorizes nō plays in some of his later essays. He classifies the nō into five types by the over-all effect which each play exerts upon the audience. He seldom tries to define the effect in analytical terms; instead, he cites a poem and a plant which are supposed to produce a similar emotional impact; he also illustrates his point by quoting passages from actual nō plays. These five types are called “celebration”, “yūgen”, “longing”, “grief”, and “the sublime”.

The drama of “celebration” is a little different from other types in that a happy mood pervades it. A play which belongs to this category celebrates the order of the universe ruled by heaven. “Its mood”, writes Zeami, “is peaceful and devoid of any malignant thought”.¹⁶ The play sings out the happy voice of the people who live in a well-governed nation. Its effect may be compared to that of a pine tree with its evergreen needles, or to a classical Japanese poem:

May our august Emperor
Live for thousands of years
Like a venerable pine tree,
So that we may all live
Peacefully under his shade!(17)

This type of nō drama presumes an optimistic view of life. There is order in the universe ruled by heaven; there is order in the nation ruled by the Emperor; man, in this world, wants to live as long as he can. The audience will feel joy and happiness as he sees this type of play acted.

The second type of drama is based on the first type; only there is an added element—graceful beauty. If the drama of “celebration” is a piece of undyed fabrics, that of “yūgen” is a piece of textile deeply dyed by sentiments, as if “white threads were dyed in five colors”.¹⁸ Its beauty is what we would feel as we “look over the morning scene of spring flowers and the evening scene of the autumn moon”. Its impact is like that of cherry-blossoms:

Snowy petals scatter
At the cherry-blossom hunting
On the field of Katano:
Shall I ever see again
Such a beautiful spring dawn?(19)

The image of cherry-blossoms falling like snow neatly combines the purity of beautiful whiteness and the sense of life's mutability, adequately introducing the sentiment of the last two lines. Although here yūgen has dwindled into a quality which characterizes one of the five types of nō drama, Zeami never forgets to emphasize its importance: he adds in a parenthesis that “yūgen is an element common to all five types”. He also states that it will not be necessary to quote many examples “because all the nō plays and folk dances since the Oei years [1394-1427] are of yūgen type”.²⁰

The third type, called “longing”, is defined as the “further deepening of yūgen”.²¹ If the effect of yūgen is something like the cherry-blossoms falling in spring, that of “longing” is like maple leaves turning in autumn. The sentiment is more specific and personal than yūgen; it is particularly associated with love between men and women. Love is beautiful, but does not last long in this transient life; it is always followed by sorrow. The feeling embodied in this type of nō can be illustrated by this poem:

In the autumn wood
Where the lower leaves of maples
All start to fall,
A deer, wet in the evening drizzle,
Lonesomely calls for its mate.(22)

If there is in yūgen something which implies a sentiment of sad resignation, it has become a more immediate feeling here—it is the sorrow of a husband over his lost wife. On the cosmic level the “longing” is a longing for permanence in nature. On the personal level it is a longing for eternity in love. In neither case can man expect his wish to be fulfilled, whereupon sorrow ensues.

The fourth type, “grief”, goes still one step further. It is a sentiment that will lead one to “grieve and shed tears”. It is a sentiment one would feel over his friend's death. “Spring blossoms and autumn leaves are all fallen”, Zeami explains. “Objects in sight are the wind blowing over the high mountain peaks, the tops of thick-growing trees, and the desolate wilderness covered with zebra grass.”²³ If spring and autumn represent the sentiments embodied in yūgen and “longing” respectively, winter is the season for the fourth type of plays. The sentiment may be illustrated by this poem:

Even on a mountain
Insensitive to injury
There grows the nageki, or
The Bush of Sorrow. What wonder
If it grows in this deserted heart!(24)

The sentiment is quite personal: it is the grief of a woman deserted by her lover. In the second and third types the poets vaguely hinted their melancholy moods in a cluster of nature images; here in the fourth type the poetess directly utters her acute pain in words. The straightforward statement of personal suffering replaces the vague suggestion of universal sadness.

The fifth type, “the sublime”, is the one which Zeami ranks the highest among all styles. One can reach this realm only after he has mastered all the other four types. The performer will unite “the orthodox and the unorthodox in one sound and sing in a usual yet unique tone”.²⁵ There is the liberty of a man who has thoroughly learned the restricting rules of art and finally transcended them all. There is neither spring, autumn, nor winter: there is only the dignity of a cedar tree which grows green throughout the four seasons:

Slowly, quietly,
The spear-shaped cedar tree
On Mount Kagu
Came to have an air of austerity,
With its root under the moss.(26)

This is somewhat different beauty from yūgen. Instead of the gay, colorful loveliness of cherry blossoms, it has the silent, quiet dignity of an old cedar tree. If yūgen is the graceful, flowering beauty of youth, “the sublime” is the calm, subdued beauty of old age.

Zeami further clarifies his idea of “the sublime” as he grades the different styles of the nō drama into nine ranks. One who wishes to learn the art of the nō should start with the sixth rank and work upwards from there. When the student finishes the fourth-ranked style and enters the third, his performance will begin to assume the air of “the sublime”.²⁷ This style, the lowest of the highest three ranks, is called the Style of a Calm Flower. Zeami explains:

THE STYLE OF A CALM FLOWER:

“Snow is heaped in a silver bowl.”

When snow is heaped in a silver bowl, the sight is pure in white glimmer, with a true feeling of softness somewhere in it. This may be called the Style of a Calm Flower.²⁸

The actor shows the ease of an artist who is confident of his art after mastering all the required stages of craftsmanship; his performance, as a consequence, is not obtrusive but “calm”, not rigid but “soft”. A silver bowl, a wonder of art, contains snow, a wonder of nature, and both the container and the contained are united in the purity of whiteness.

A style one step higher than the Style of a Calm Flower and which ranks the second among the nine styles is called the Style of an Infinitely Deep Flower. Zeami says:

THE STYLE OF AN INFINITELY DEEP FLOWER:

“Snow has covered thousands of mountains all in white.
Why is it that one solitary peak remains unwhitened?”

A man of old once remarked: “Snow does not disappear from Mount Fuji because it is so high.” A Chinese disagreed and said: “Snow does not disappear from Mount Fuji because it is so deep.” What is exceedingly high is deep. Height has a limit. Depth is not to be measured. Therefore, the mysterious scene of one peak not being white among thousands of snow-covered mountains may represent the Style of an Infinitely Deep Flower.²⁹

Elsewhere in the same essay Zeami comments: “The Style of an Infinitely Deep Flower is the ultimate form of yūgen. It is a style which reveals the middle ground where being and non-being meet”. A performer who has the Style of a Calm Flower is still in the world of being, the world of ordinary reality, even though his art may have the purest beauty of snow in a silver bowl. An actor who has advanced to the Style of an Infinitely Deep Flower goes beyond the limitations of empirical reality; an irrational element, like a black peak towering among snow-covered mountains, may come into the world which his performance creates. His art is beyond our measure; it is like a deep sea whose bottom lies somewhere in the mysterious unknown. The actor may do something which would be in conflict with our common sense, but we are so overpowered by his performance that we forget the irrationality of something being black when it is usually white.

Yet still this style is surpassed by another, a style which ranks highest of all. This supreme style, the perfection of art, is called the Style of a Mysterious Flower. Zeami remarks:

THE STYLE OF A MYSTERIOUS FLOWER:

“In Silla the sun shines brightly at midnight.”

The “mysterious” means something which cannot be explained in words, something which cannot be thought in human mind. It is like the sun shining at midnight, a phenomenon which transcends the expository capacity of speech. The profound art of a rare master in the nō cannot be adequately described by any word of praise. It leads the audience to a state of trance; it is a styleless style which surpasses any scheme of grading. A style which yields such an impression upon the audience may be called the Style of a Mysterious Flower.³⁰

A little later Zeami adds that this style conveys “an imaginative landscape which is beyond verbal description as it lies in the realm of the absolute”. The realm of the absolute, a term taken from Zen Buddhism, implies a sphere where there is neither good nor evil, neither right nor wrong, neither one nor all. The sun shining at midnight, which is a flat contradiction in ordinary reality, is perfectly acceptable in this realm. Silla, the present Korea, is located to the east of China; the sun is already rising there when it is still night in China. What seems to be a flat contradiction to our ordinary senses may be a profound truth when it is viewed from a point which transcends the limitations of time and space. Above our everyday reality there is a higher reality which ordinary human faculties cannot sense. When we face a good work of art we are unwittingly led into such a realm, where we are made to perceive the invisible and hear the inaudible.

Thus the nō drama may be considered as an art which attempts to illuminate internal and external reality reflected in the deepest depth of the mind's eye, a level of reality which cannot be known through ordinary senses. The world of the nō is primarily that of the subconscious. Two things which would be contradictory to one another in the realm of the conscious are made to co-exist in the nō drama, like the sun shining at midnight. It is a remote, shadowy and eerie world where primeval emotions aimlessly flow, a world which has little to do with ethical codes or social conventions. In contrast to the realm of the conscious which is complex and superficial, the world of the nō is simple and profound as it is liberated from the controling power of the ego. It has no place for laughter, because wit and humor are manifestations of intellect. It does not admit the individuality of each man, since it presumes the identity of all men beneath their conscious minds—the “collective unconscious”, as one of our contemporary scholars has pointed out.³¹ No person who appears in the nō is given real characterization.

We may then understand the nō drama as a ritual to bring this “other world” into our own living sphere. The monk, who is the deuteragonist in many a nō play, is the priest for the ritual, the medium who conjures up a dead man's soul from the underworld. The soul who is called up naturally takes over the protagonist's role in the nō. He narrates the story of his life—his soul-life which covers the yonder world as well as the present world, and his story constitutes the core of the play. The audience is expected to believe that the protagonist makes his appearance in the monk's dream; the dream provides a means to bring the two worlds together.

The implications of the nō drama are necessarily religious rather than ethical, because any issue of human life which it deals with is seen not in terms of human society but in relation to the cosmic law that governs man both in life and in death. Man may be able to control the conscious part of his mind, but the subconscious is beyond his power, it belongs to the all-inclusive universe. Zeami seems to have recognized some great primal force which flows through life and death, through the conscious and the subconscious; it manifests itself in the “true intent” of every object in nature. He says that “one contains many while two are just two”, referring, perhaps, to the same concept.³² An artist should try to represent this invisible energy of the cosmos by means of symbolism. Zeami, in one of his most suggestive passages on art, remarks:

If I may illustrate my purport by the principle of two ways in Buddhism, being and non-being, then the appearance will correspond to being and the vessel to non-being. To take an example, a crystal, although it is a pure, transparent object without color or pattern, produces fire and water. Why is it that two entirely heterogeneous things like fire and water emerge out of one transparent object? A poem says:

Smash a cherry-tree,
And you will find no blossom
In the splinters.
It is in the sky of spring
That cherry-blossoms bloom.

The seed for the flower of art is the artist's soul which has a power to feel. As a crystal produces fire and water or a colorless cherry tree bears blossoms and fruit, so does a superb artist create a variety of works out of his imaginative scenery. Such a man may be called a vessel. Works of art, treating the wind and the moon or flowers and birds, accompanying a festival or a picnic, are many and various. The universe creates thousands of things as the seasons roll on—blossoms and leaves, the snow and the moon, mountains and seas, trees and grass, the animate and the inanimate. The artist should try to attain the Mysterious Flower by letting these numerous things be the materials of his art, by making his soul the vessel of the universe, and by setting the vessel in the vast, windless way of emptiness.³³

Zeami recognizes the existence of two worlds, the world of being and that of non-being. The one is the world we can perceive through our senses, the world of appearance. The other cannot be easily seen because it is hidden beneath the surface; it can be felt only by the sensitive soul of an artist who has a power to feel. The artist creates his work out of his own soul, just as the universe creates thousands of things out of itself; the artist, as well as the universe, is a vessel which contains potential creative energy. The artist's soul is expressed through the things of the universe; here the human and the cosmic, the microcosm and the macrocosm, become at one.

This is, we may say, an animistic mode of perception. In natural science there is a clear distinction between the subjective and the objective, the mind which sees and the object which is seen. An observer with a scientific mind, in his effort to grasp an object outside of himself, carefully examines the object and minutely analyzes it. Such a method will ultimately lead to naturalistic realism in the field of literature. Zeami's idea stands exactly at the opposite pole. His ideal is the union of the subjective and the objective, the observer and the observed, in the sphere of the scientifically impossible. The union is made possible only when one recognizes some super-human soul latent in all the things of the universe. An artist ought to catch this invisible spirit and present it through the things visible.³⁴

This being the ultimate aim of art, the artist must rely on symbolization rather than description in attaining it. A symbol may lead one to an instantaneous perception of what cannot be analyzed or described. Man, for instance, often feels an irrational yet irresistible desire for something that is beyond his power. Instead of a Dr. Faustus or an Iago, the nō writer creates a butterfly of late spring aspiring to the plum-blossoms of early spring (Kochō). A more complex symbol, to take another instance, is a plant called a sacred tree. On the cosmic level it represents permanence in nature, since it is an evergreen tree. On the human level it symbolizes constancy in love, since in a famous episode of The Tale of Genji a branch of a sacred tree is given by a man to a woman as a token of his unchanging love. On the religious level the name explains itself: the sacred tree signifies eternal God who rules both man and the cosmos. All these different levels of meanings are combined, in an imaginative way, within the image of a sacred tree and appeal to the reader in an instant of time. Furthermore, the sacred tree is made not only a poetic symbol which is conveyed to us through the reading of the text or listening to the chant, but also a dramatic symbol that can be actually seen on the stage. The protagonist appears on the stage with a branch of a sacred tree in her hand (No-no-Miya).

The nō writer's method of grasping reality by intuition rather than by reason, and his way of presenting it through symbols rather than through statements, link the nō closely to the fine arts. Some people have noticed the resemblance of the nō to painting and sculpture. Everyone knows that the nō drama actually contains dancing and music. The relation of an ordinary drama to painting and sculpture is not a particularly close one, because the drama, restricted by time and movement, tries to make the most of its dialogue and action; consequently the beauty of an ordinary drama is that of one continuous whole, not of one movement or of one moment which is a part of the whole. But the nō, because of its emphasis on intuition, minimizes the elements of time and movement; one little movement in a lengthy duration of time is made to suggest a great deal. In other words the nō drama, primarily a time art, is made to approach the realm of space arts. Thus a certain painter says: “The nō can be said to be a drama richest in elements of painting … At times it has a tempo so slow that it almost appears to be a succession of several tableaux vivants. Each of the actor's movements constitutes an excellent composition of painting, its elegant form of straight lines never being disturbed by the movements.”³⁵ A certain sculptor remarks:

The nō has the elements of sculpture more than any other histrionic art. I even feel as if the nō were an extension of sculpture … The nō studies how one can move with the minimum of movement … Every movement in the nō is pure, definitive, final. Therefore, even the slightest movement has forcefulness. It is like the waterless substance of human movement, while a movement in our daily lives is always diluted with water.³⁶

The pictorial and sculptural elements of the nō are crystalized in the nō masks. If sculpture and painting (particularly Japanese sumi painting) ultimately attempt to represent the essence of human emotion, the nō masks aim at that too. While the actor's own face is always a personal expression of a universal sentiment, a nō mask embodies the impersonal expression of a personal emotion.

Dancing is a very important element in the nō. Zeami says:

One should know the way in which singing and dancing in the nō are derived from a single spirit. When the spirit remains in the mind, it is called emotion; uttered in words, it is called poetry. When one cannot stop with poetry alone, he goes on to sing it out, waving his hands and stamping his feet in ecstasy.³⁷

The passage draws heavily on the Major Preface of The Book of Songs, a well-known Chinese classic, and it shows the commonly accepted notion of poetry and dancing in Zeami's time. Poetry is an expression of a personal emotion, and when the emotion becomes more intense it takes the form of dancing. Dancing, in its origin, is a spontaneous expression of emotion, a subconscious act, in contrast to our daily behavior which is in the main the result of our conscious thinking and will. It is significant that a dance in the nō drama is always performed by the protagonist—that is, a ghost, a deity, a mentally deranged person. What the protagonist wishes to express reaches the level beyond the conscious; it cannot be stated in logical terms; consequently there is need for symbolism in writing it out, for dancing in acting it out. As the language of poetry is highly stylized and evocative, so the movement of dancing is highly restrained and suggestive. Every action of the dancer has a symbolic meaning, because it is always an expression of some inner feeling. A nō play reaches its climax with a dance, as dancing signifies the most intense form of man's psychical energy. It may even be said that a nō play is built around its climactic dance.

Music is an even more significant element of the nō drama. “Chanting is the soul of the nō”, Zeami says. “It is most essential for the nō actor to master this art.”³⁸ Acting and dancing emerge out of chanting, and not vice versa. For one thing, a nō play itself has a musical structure. Teaching how to compose a nō play, Zeami says:

The writing of the nō consists of three stages. The first stage is to get the material of the nō. The second is to compose the music. The third is to write the text. The writer should first of all study his material carefully. He should then construct the three portions of the musical structure—introduction, development, climax—in such a way that they are well fitted into the five scenes of the play. Finally he should collect proper words and write the text in accordance with the musical structure.³⁹

Music plays an essential role in the making of the nō; it is a primary principle by which the material of art is transformed into a work of art. The nō text is written always in accordance with a musical structure. This implies that each nō play has a musical structure. As a rule a nō play consists of five scenes, and from the standpoint of music the opening scene constitutes the introduction, the three middle scenes the development, and the last scene the climax. Introduction, development and climax are musical terms originally used in China, and would in a very rough way be compared to the three parts of a sonata movement—exposition, development and recapitulation. The introductory part is dominated by a slow, regular-beat rhythm, which appears most clearly in the passage where the itinerant monk sings of his travel. The development part breaks this regular rhythm with the appearance of the protagonist who sings in a different tone and tempo, converses with the monk and then goes on to narrate the story of his life. The climax is characterized by a quick, irregular rhythm as the protagonist, revealing his true identity, re-enacts the scene of his crime and the resulting torments of hell. This, of course, is a general rule and a variation is quite permissible. Yet, whatever liberty the nō writer may take will not break away from the principle of structural coherence through music.

The principle of musical unity within a play is extended to a whole performance which, if orthodox, consists of five plays. The first play is generally a play of “celebration” where the order of the cosmos and of the nation is praised; it has the regular-beat tempo of an orderly life and the slow-moving rhythm of a ritual thanking deities for the peaceful world. The second, third and fourth plays constitute the development: they are usually apparitional plays, and their rhythms range from a fairy's exquisite music to a mad mother's dance of frenzy. The fifth play, called the “hobgoblin play”, has in its climax an irregular, quick-moving rhythm which accompanies a dreadful demon dance. The musical quality in the nō thus gives unity to the different parts of a single play on the one hand, and to a sequence of different plays on the other.

Zeami repeatedly emphasizes the importance of a union between music and drama in the nō performance. He says, for example, that one of the secrets of success in the nō performance is the “Opening of the Audience's Ears”:

The “Opening of the Audience's Ears” refers to a certain part of a nō play where two sets of the audience's ears are united in one impact. It is in this part that the ultimate meaning of the play is written out and the ears of the audience's mind are opened, that, at the same time, the words which embody the meaning fit the music which accompanies the words. When the meaning and the music are felt to be united in chanting, everyone in the audience will be deeply moved. Such a manifestation of meaning and music in one unified feeling is called the “Opening of the Audience's Ears”.⁴⁰

Meaning and music are, as Zeami states elsewhere, originally two different things; they are understood and enjoyed through two different sets of ears. Yet when a performance reaches its climactic part the two become one: music becomes expressive of meaning and meaning comes to enhance the beauty of music; philosophical implications and sensory effects are perfectly united. Music is the most sensuous of all arts; the nō writer, who attempts to say something that cannot be said through analytical reason, naturally depends on music in the most important part of his work. He tries to appeal not to intellect alone or to emotion alone, but to the whole body of the person who watches his performance. The combination of poetry, music and dancing greatly increases the dimension of the impact which the drama exerts upon the audience.

Thus the language of the nō drama must be melodious and picturesque. Zeami compares it to the flowing water in a stream: the chanter's voice is the water, and the chanting is the stream. The stream goes through its different phases, now slowly flowing on the plain, now violently rushing in the rapids. The nō writer should “create a garden with all kinds of water-scenes—with a winding stream, with lofty rocks, with beautiful falls”.⁴¹ Chanting ought to be highly evocative, with numerous visual and auditory images. The language of the nō must be melodious: “Phrases should be linked together in such a way that the whole sounds smooth, pleasant, and softly flowing.”⁴² The nō text is highly poetic. In fact Zeami, who advises nō writers to give up all the other pursuits in order to devote themselves entirely to their profession, makes an exception for classical Japanese poetry. The nō writer should carefully study the works of good poets, because “the secret of nō writing lies in the linking of various words and phrases used in classical poetry”.⁴³ The diction of classical Japanese poetry is very refined, colorful and melodious, yet compact because of its short thirty-one syllable form. Density of texture is another of Zeami's principles of composition. “Know the fragrance of words”, he says. “The basic principle of composition is to convey meaning in the briefest words.”⁴⁴

The nō drama, then, is primarily poetry rather than drama; it is poetry acted on the stage. It imitates human actions, but it does so in such a way as to reveal the hidden essence of man and things, the “true intent” which only the sensitivity of the artist can feel. Naturally the nō writer is concerned not so much with social or ethical problems as with the issues of man's deepest self which lies beyond the realm of the conscious. He approaches the issues not through a reasoned analysis or a metaphysical system, but through an instantaneous perception, an emotional understanding, which is possible as he submerges himself in the things that surround him. He sees life through death, being through non-being, permanence through change. Yūgen, Zeami's ideal beauty, can be understood to be such a mode of perception; it is not merely inherent in the things observed but lies in the way the observer looks at things. The fact that Zeami's notion of beauty is intrinsically related to his attitude toward life is also evident in his classification of nō plays: celebration, yūgen, longing, grief, and “the sublime”. Yūgen and “the sublime” are primarily the words to describe aesthetic effects, while celebration, longing and grief imply optimistic or pessimistic views of life. The highest type of drama, “the sublime”, presents an illusion of life as seen from a perspective which transcends life; there is the feeling of calm resignation as the author recognizes a cosmic power that rules man as well as animals and plants. In order to convey such subjective, imaginative truth, the playwright not only makes a profuse use of images and symbols, but incorporates music and dancing into his drama. The language of the nō, consequently, is also highly musical and symbolic.

To Zeami the nō must have meant something just as serious as religion. In fact the basic ideas which underlie his notion of art are close to those of Japanese Buddhism. It was art that gave him a way to come in contact with invisible reality; it was the way to attain true happiness. We certainly admire Zeami for his most sincere devotion to art rather than sneer at him for his superstition when he tells us that one night in 1412 a Shinto deity appeared in his dream and asked him to perform ten nō plays for dedication.⁴⁵ Yet we also feel that he was after all one of our fellow men when he tells us he too had some moments of doubt, grief and suffering. A passage which he wrote at the age of seventy seems to imply his realization that art is not religion after all; he wonders whether his strong attachment to art does not constitute a drawback from the attainment of Nirvana.⁴⁶ Zeami's ideas on art, embodied in his essays, deserve our high admiration because they reveal him to be a great artist and artisan. Yet at the same time they make an immediate appeal to our hearts as the record of a man who suffered the conditions of human life as we all do, who turned to art looking for a way toward salvation, and who, with all his devotion, still remained short of an enlightened state.

Notes

1. Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443), actor, playwright and theorist, is assumed to be the author of the majority of the plays in the present nō repertoire. His essays on the art of the nō were not made public until 1909. Important among them are Fūshi kaden (The Flower of the Form, 1400-02?), Shikadō (The Way to the Highest Flower, 1420?), Nōsaku-sho (The Book on the Writing of the Nō, 1423?), Hana no kagami (The Mirror of the Flower, 1424?), Kui (The Nine Ranks, 1427?), Sarugaku dangi (Discourse on the Nō Drama, 1430?), and Zeshi shichijū igo kuden (Teachings of Zeami after Seventy Years of Age, 1433?).

2. Hana no kagami, in Asaji Nose, Zeami jūrokubu-shū hyōshaku (Zeami's Sixteen Treatises: Texts and Commentaries. Abbreviated as ZJH hereafter), I, 423.

3. Fūshi kaden, ZJH, I, 35.

4. Ibid., 190-197.

5. Ibid., 227.

6. Sarugaku dangi, ZJH, II, 351.

7. Fūshi kaden, ZJH, I, 48.

8. Cf. Yoshie Okazaki, “Nō no hongi setsu” (On the True Intent of the nō), Geijutsuron no tankyū, 73-93.

9. Kamo no Chōmei, “Mumyōshō” (Nameless Selections), Nihon kagaku taikei, III, 312.

10. Hana no kagami, ZJH, I, 362.

11. Shikadō, ZJH, I, 459-467.

12. Ibid., 478.

13. Nōsaku-sho, ZJH, I, 614.

14. Ongyoku goi, in Kazuma Kawase, Tōchū Zeami nijūsanbu-shū (Zeami's Twenty-Three Treatises, with Notes), 83

15. Hana no kagami, ZJH, I, 396.

16. Ongyoku goi, Tōchū Zeami nijūsanbu-shū, 82.

17. Goongyoku jōjō, ZJH, II, 152.

18. Ongyoku goi, Tōchū Zeami nijūsanbu-shū, 82.

19. Goongyoku jōjō, ZJH, II, 152.

20. Ibid., 158.

21. Ongyoku goi, Tōchū Zeami nijūsanbu-shū, 83.

22. Goongyoku jōjō, ZJH, II, 152.

23. Ongyoku goi, Tōchū Zeami nijūsanbu-shū, 84.

24. Goongyoku jōjō, ZJH, II, 153.

25. Ibid., 140.

26. Ibid., 153.

27. Cf. ZJH, I, 553-554.

28. Kui, ZJH, I, 547.

29. Ibid., 547.

30. Ibid., 547.

31. Cf. Yoshitaka Takahashi, “Nō no bigakuteki kōsatsu” (An Aesthetic Study of the nō), Bungaku, XXV (1957), 1028-35.

32. Fūkyoku-shū, ZJH, II, 121.

33. Yūgaku shūdō fūken, ZJH, I, 536.

34. Cf. Yoshishige Abe, “Nōgaku to kokuminsei” (The nō and National Traits), Nōgaku zassō, 65-81.

35. Ikuma Arishima, “Nō no kaiga bi” (Pictorial Beauty of the nō), Nōgaku zensho, VI, 79.

36. Kōtarō Takamura, “Nō no chōkoku bi” (Sculptural Beauty of the nō), Nōgaku zensho, VI, 83-85.

37. Ongyoku goi, Tōchū Zeami nijūsanbu-shū, 81.

38. Sarugaku dangi, ZJH, II, 385.

39. Nōsaku-sho, ZJH, I, 590.

40. Ibid., 643.

41. Fushizuke-sho, ZJH, II, 89-90.

42. Ongyoku kowadashi kuden, ZJH, II, 8.

43. Fushizuke-sho, ZJH, II, 86.

44. Sarugaku dangi, ZJH, II, 478.

45. Ibid., 583-584.

46. Zeshi shichijū igo kuden, ZJH, II, 667.