SOURCE: Ueda, Makoto. “Zeami and the Art of the Nō Drama: Imitation, Yugen, and Sublimity.” In Japanese Aesthetics and Culture: A Reader, edited by Nancy G. Hume, pp. 177-91. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1967, Ueda describes Zeami's concepts of perfect Nō drama, including the role of the actor and the importance of music and religion.]

The aesthetics of Japanese theater reached a peak in its history with the writings of Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443), a great actor, writer, and theorizer of the Nō drama. For one thing, the Nō was a highly refined, sophisticated art form, accepting no immature theory for itself. It had absorbed many heterogeneous elements from the outside, such as Chinese operatic drama and Japanese folk dance, Shinto rituals and Buddhist ceremonies, and popular mimetic shows and aristocratic court music, eventually integrating them all into a single, harmoniously unified art. This composite nature of the Nō placed a heavy burden on its performer, for he had to be a competent actor, singer, and dancer at the same time. Inborn gift, intensive training, and above all a never-failing passion for self-improvement were required of anyone intending to learn this art. “A man's life has an end,” Zeami has said in a typical remark, “but there is no end to the pursuit of the Nō.” Zeami's some twenty essays, written at various times during his long theatrical career, discuss a wide variety of topics concerning the Nō drama, but they are all permeated with his passionate concern for the perfection of his art. That is why, despite all their abstruse vocabulary and idioms, they have a powerful appeal to those who know little about the technical details of the medieval Japanese stage.

The most basic principle in Zeami's art theory seems to lie in the idea of imitation. “Objects to imitate are too many to enumerate here,” Zeami teaches to beginning actors, “but you should study them thoroughly, because imitation is the essence of our art.” Then he adds, “In principle, the aim is to imitate all objects, whatever they may be.” An actor cast in a woman's role (as the Nō permitted no actress to perform on its stage) should carefully study the way in which women speak and behave in daily life. An actor who is to impersonate a high-ranking court lady has a more difficult task, because such a lady is seldom seen out of her palace. In a case like this, the actor should seek accurate information from experts on this subject. “In wearing a coat, in putting on a skirt,—in all such and similar cases,” says Zeami, “do not decide by yourself. Ask the people who know.” If the actor finds a noble courtier in his audience and has a chance to talk with him after the performance, this is a good opportunity to have his imitation scrutinized. “Ask him,” Zeami advises, “what he thought of your performance.”

Zeami goes on to explain what would happen if an actor did not follow the principle of imitation. The case in question occurs most frequently when the actor is too intent on producing some specific emotional impact upon the spectators. He might be over-anxious to create an impression of elegant beauty, for instance, which was very popular at the time. The result, as Zeami points out, is often a complete theatrical failure, for the actor has neglected the principle of imitation. The actor too anxious to produce an elegant effect often acts out his role elegantly, even in cases where the role requires him to be vigorous and forceful. In such a case, the actual effect produced will not be elegant; it will be weak instead. His performance is weak because his imitation involves a degree of falsehood. “In all acts of imitation,” Zeami warns, “if there is a false element, the performance will become rough or weak.” Thus, often an actor trying to create elegant beauty produces a weak effect instead; intending to bring out forcefulness from his performance, he ends up with roughness. “An actor makes such a mistake,” Zeami explains, “because he thinks that a quality like elegance or forcefulness exists independently of the object. Actually, it lies within the object itself.” The beauty of elegance or forcefulness automatically emerges when the actor faithfully imitates an elegant or forceful object. If he successfully imitates a court lady, a beautiful woman, a handsome man, or various kinds of flowers, his performance will naturally become elegant, because the quality of elegance is inherent in those persons and objects. Likewise, a performance will be forceful when the actor faithfully imitates a warrior, a rustic, a demon, a deity, a pine tree, or a cedar tree, all of which have the quality of forcefulness.

Ideally, then, to imitate an object would mean that the actor becomes identical with that thing, that he dissolves himself into nothing so that the qualities inherent in the object would be naturally manifested. Zeami's way of saying this is that the actor “grows into the object.” “In performing an act of imitation, of whatever object it may be,” he says, “the actor should first learn how to grow into the object.” “If he genuinely grows into the object,” he says elsewhere, too, “his performance will be neither rough nor weak.” The actor's self, in other words, should be completely absorbed by the object of his imitation. If this is successfully done, the actor will have no awareness that he is imitating an object outside of himself, for he is at one with it. The term “imitation” will no longer apply here in its ordinary sense. Zeami calls this “a realm of nonimitation.” “In the art of imitation,” he says, “there is a realm called ‘nonimitation.’ When the actor pursues the art to its ultimate and truly grows into the object, he will not be aware of his act of imitation.” Identification is the ultimate form of imitation.

But how could an actor identify himself with something which he is not? By knowing the true intent of that thing, Zeami would answer. He explains this in a passage where he teaches how to act a frenzied person's role:

To impersonate a mentally deranged person is the most interesting of all roles. Since there are so many kinds of mental derangement, an actor competent in this role would be an expert in all other roles as well. That is why this role should be thoroughly studied. In general, a person possessed by various spirits—by, for instance, a deity, a Buddha, a wraith, or a departed soul—could be easily imitated if one knows what it is that has possessed the person. More difficult is to imitate a man who has become frenzied from having lost his parent, child, or spouse. Even a fairly good actor does not make a distinction between different kinds of frenzy but acts then all in the same manner; as a consequence the spectators are not moved. In portraying a man who is deranged because of an obsession, the actor should make the obsession the “true intent,” and the derangement the “flower.” An actor who performs the role with this in mind will never fail to create a glowing climax in his performance.

The “true intent,” then, is that which makes the person what he is. In acting out the role of a man possessed by a deity, for instance, the actor should imitate such actions as characteristic not of any possessed person but of that specific deity, for the deity is what lies in the innermost heart of the man and what controls every one of his actions. Likewise, in imitating a person who has become frenzied the actor should first of all learn the cause of his frenzy, that specific obsession which has driven the man out of his mind. The “true intent” is the inmost nature of the man or the thing. The actor, by learning that inmost nature, can grow into that person or object.

Zeami has emphasized the importance of this throughout his essays on the art of the Nō. As he writes in one of his earliest essays, an actor performing the role of a Buddhist monk should fully express deep devotion to religion because that is what is essential to a monk. As Zeami says in one of his later essays, an actor impersonating a woman should make her heart his and then throw away all his masculine strength; he must feel as if he were born a woman. “One who mimics a woman,” Zeami says, “is not a woman.” Zeami cites a contemporary proverb to describe such an incomplete act of imitation: “It looks similar, but does not look right.” It is an imitation of the outward only; it has failed to catch the true intent.

Imitation, in this special sense, is the most basic principle of Nō acting. But there are some cases in which that principle must be somewhat modified. One typical instance of this is when the actor is cast in the role of a demon. Zeami writes: “By its very nature, imitating a demon involves great difficulty, for the more faithfully the actor imitates the demon, the less entertaining his performance will be. The ‘true intent’ of the demon lies in its horrifying quality. But horror differs from entertainment as black differs from white. Therefore, if there is an actor who entertains the audience by performing a demon's role, he should be considered a truly accomplished artist.” Another such special case is when the actor portrays a man of low social status. Zeami remarks: “The actor can imitate in detail the poetic figure of a woodcutter, a grass mower, a charcoal burner, or a saltwater drawer, but not the people of meaner occupations than those. These unsightly appearances should not be shown to gentleman and ladies of the nobility. They would be too lowly to be of delight to the noble audience. You should fully understand this. Imitation should be carried out to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon what it is that you are imitating.” In imitating an object, the actor must take into consideration what effect his imitation will produce on the spectators. If the imitation is such that it would horrify or offend the spectators, that performance would be said to be theatrically unsuccessful, no matter how faithfully the principle of imitation may have been followed. The actor, therefore, must know the proper degree to which each object should be imitated. What determines the degree is the nature of the affective response that the performance creates. It is beauty, or what Zeami calls the flower.

The type of beauty that was most welcomed in the Nō can be easily imagined. It was yūgen, that elegant, delicate, graceful beauty which was the ideal of linked verse and of medieval Japanese culture at large. Zeami has an apt image to suggest the beauty: “a swan with a flower in its bill.” The Nō actor should imitate his object in proportion to the degree to which it has the yūgen quality. Flowers and birds, the breeze and the moon, noble courtiers and graceful ladies, for instance, have plenty of yūgen in them; the actor, therefore, may imitate these to the fullest extent on the stage. But people of lower status and occupations have less of that beauty; accordingly the actor should take less from what they are in actual life; he should get less from the outside and create more from the inside, from what Zeami calls the spirit. One might assume that this spirit is roughly equivalent to the same term as used by Yoshimoto in linked verse; it is a spirit in pursuit of elegant beauty. The Nō actor can imitate a graceful court lady without reservation, for she has that spirit in herself. But he will have to supply it from himself when he imitates a peasant, for instance, who has little of it. Therefore, when an expert actor is on the stage the beauty of yūgen is always there; this is so no matter how many different roles he may perform. Zeami has an apt simile: “This would be like looking at court ladies of high and low ranks, men and women, monks and rustics, even beggars and outcasts, all adorned with a spray of blossoms.” Then comes Zeami's explanation: “This spray of blossoms is the beauty of form. What creates a good form is the spirit.” When an actor who has this spirit performs a demon's role, even the horrifying demon comes to assume some strange beauty; Zeami describes it as “blossoms on a crag.” Even a withered old man can be made beautiful by an actor who has this spirit; Zeami describes the beauty as “blossoms on a dead tree.” Kannami, Zeami's father and a celebrated Nō actor, had this spirit: his performance in his old age is compared to an aged tree that has very few branches and leaves but still retains its most beautiful blossoms.

Yūgen, then is the beauty not merely of appearance but of the spirit; it is inner beauty manifesting itself outwards. The emphasis on inner beauty, as against the beauty of the outward appearance, is inevitable so long as the imitation in the Nō is of the inward spirit, of the true intent. It is the beauty of the innermost nature of things, the beauty of hidden truth. If the term yūgen is etymologically analyzed, it will be found that yū means deep, dim, or difficult to see, and that gen, originally describing the dark, profound, tranquil color of the universe, refers to the Taoist concept of truth. Zeami's idea of yūgen seems to combine its conventional meaning of elegant beauty with its original meaning of profound, mysterious truth of the universe. Zeami perceived mysterious beauty in cosmic truth; beauty was the color of truth, so to speak.

If yūgen contains cosmic truth underneath, it must necessarily have pessimistic implications, for the truth of the universe always points towards the sad destiny of man. When man is set against the great cosmic power, the vision is always a sad, melancholy one; it is all the more so when conceived in medieval Japanese terms. Thus yūgen, in its broader sense, has the implication of universal sadness. Zeami has examples to explain this. After pointing out that elegant court ladies in classical times, such as Lady Aoi, Lady Yūgao, and Lady Ukifune of The Tale of Genji, make excellent heroines in the Nō drama, he goes on to say: “There are even better materials which produce the jewel among jewels in this respect. These rare examples are seen in such cases as Lady Aoi haunted by Lady Rokujō's spirit, Lady Yūgao taken away by a ghost, or Lady Ukifune possessed by a supernatural being, all of which provide the seed for superb yūgen flowers.” Noble court ladies are gracefully beautiful in themselves, but they would be even more lovely when they suffer under some strange power beyond their control, under some mysterious force hidden in the universe. Aoi, Yūgao, and Ukifune have to suffer (and die in the first two instances) from causes for which they are not responsible. That is the sad fate of mankind. Even the most beautiful and accomplished person cannot escape from the sufferings common to all men. Yūgen is the beauty of seeing such an ideal person go through an intense suffering as a result of being human. Thus one definition of yūgen, attributed to Zeami, reads: “elegance, calm, profundity, mixed with the feeling of mutability.”

Of the two principal elements of yūgen, elegant beauty and sadness of human life, Zeami emphasized the first in his early essays but steadily shifted the emphasis to the second as he grew older. The difference in emphasis is most clearly seen when he classifies Nō singings in terms of their emotive effects. Of the five categories he sets up, elegant singing comes second. Its beauty is described as that of “looking at both a morning and an evening scene of blossoms and the moon in one view.” In another metaphor, it is compared to a cherry tree. In a third comparison, it is likened to the effect of this poem:

                    Shall I ever see again
Such a beautiful blossom hunting
                    On the field of Katano,(1)
Where white flakes fall
Like the snow at spring dawn?

One is reminded of the image of “a swan with a flower in its bill.” Cherry blossoms, beautiful in pure white, are dimly seen in the serene darkness of the spring dawn. They are elegantly, exquisitely beautiful. Moreover, those lovely petals are falling as quietly as snow—and as if to symbolize the mutability of life.

Next comes a type called love singing. It is as gentle and beautiful as elegant singing, but it has an added element—pathos. The pathos is that of longing for someone dear missing. The following poem has been cited by Zeami as producing a comparable effect:

                    Tinted leaves begin to fall
From one side of the forest
                    As it rains in the evening
And drenches a deer
Lonesomely calling for its mate.

Now the season has changed from spring to autumn, and nature from cherry blossoms to maple leaves. With approaching winter in the background, a deer is lonesomely calling for its missing mate in the cold rain. The image certainly suggests a degree of pathos.

Sadness increases even more in the next type of singing, called sorrowful singing. The season is now winter, and all trees are bare. “Flowery spring and tinted autumn are both over,” writes Zeami. “Nipped by frost and buried in snow, trees in winter stand with bare branches, as if mournfully recalling the men and things that have passed away.” The poem which exemplifies the mood is:

                    Even on a mountain
Devoid of feelings, there grow
                    The Trees of Sorrow.(2)
How much more so
In the heart of a deserted lover!

What has been expressed only indirectly in elegant and love singings now becomes more intense, so much so that it turns into a direct outcry of sorrow. The nature of sorrow, however, remains unchanged; it is the sadness over the impermanence of things in this world. The year must sooner or later come to cold winter, and love must eventually end in grief.

Thus we see elegant beauty gradually yielding its place to sadness of life as we move from the second to the third and then to the fourth type of Nō singing as categorized by Zeami. Sadness, indeed, is the dominating mood in the fourth type. Zeami, however, did not stop here: he had the fifth and final type called “sublime” singing, and he rated it above all others. “Sublime singing is the result of consummate artistry,” Zeami observes. “This rank can be attained only after the singer learns the ultimate of all other singings, transcends both the good and evil of music, and arrives at the kind of singing that is like others and yet is not.” Zeami's metaphor for sublime singing is a cedar tree, and the following poem is cited for illustration:

                    With the years that have passed by
It has grown austere and holy
                    On Mount Kagu:(3)
The cedar tree, upright like a spear,
Already has a layer of moss at the root

Impermanence, which imprisons all men and things in this world, has now been transcended. The cedar, being an evergreen tree, symbolizes permanence in nature. Being a holy tree in Shintoism, it also stands for a man who has attained divine immortality. Sadness is no longer there, because death has been overcome. There is neither the graceful beauty of elegant singing nor the cold beauty of sorrowful singing; the beauty here is that of austerity, deep, tranquil, and awesome. And that is the effect produced by sublime singing.

The meaning of Zeami's sublimity will be further clarified when it is seen in the context of an elaborate scheme he devised in order to define and evaluate the emotional impact of various Nō performances. Zeami has classified all theatrical effects into nine categories and given each a name and a rank. These are, from the lower to the higher, (1) Roughness and Aberrance, (2) Strength and Roughness, (3) Strength and Delicacy, (4) Shallowness and Loveliness, (5) Broadness and Minuteness, (6) a Right Flower, (7) a Calm Flower, (8) a Profound Flower, and (9) a Mysterious Flower. The element of yūgen is latent in all styles except the first three. The quality of sublimity lies only in the final three styles.

The Style of Roughness and Aberrance is the lowest of all styles. As the name shows, this style has no delicacy and it has deviated from the orthodox manners of Nō performance. Zeami compares the style to a flying squirrel. In the Confucian tradition, a flying squirrel is an animal with five talents—climbing, swimming, digging, flying, and running—but they are all commonplace talents. Likewise, when a Nō actor of mediocre talents performs a play, he will produce a crude, uninspiring effect even though he follows the technical details of the theater. The performance will be rough and unrefined, far below the desired standard.

The Style of Strength and Roughness is a little better, because it is at any rate forceful. Zeami quotes an old saying to describe it: “A three-day-old tiger cub already has a temper fiery enough to devour an ox.” Again the Nō performance of this category has no grace or refinement, but it has a vital force that moves the audience.

The Style of Strength and Delicacy supersedes the two previous styles, obviously because of its added element of delicacy. Zeami's way of suggesting the effect of this style is: “As the metal hammer moves, the precious sword emits a cold gleam.” The element of strength is symbolized in the heavy metal hammer held in the muscular hand of a swordsmith. But that strength is used, not to devour an ox, but to create a delicate work of art, a precious sword. The sword, in fact, is emitting a serene gleam from its blade. A Nō performance belonging to this category will have a similar emotive effect.

The Style of Roughness and Aberrance, the Style of Strength and Roughness, and the Style of Strength and Delicacy are the lowest three, because they lack the quality of yūgen. A beginning student in the Nō, therefore, should avoid those styles; he should begin with the fourth style, Shallowness and Loveliness, and work upward from there. After attaining the ninth and highest style, he can then come down and perform in the lowest three styles. Those three styles can be made interesting only when played by a most competent performer, an actor who fully knows what yūgen is.

So the beginner's style, Shallowness and Loveliness, has a bit of yūgen—Loveliness implies yūgen, although it is yet of a shallow kind. To explain the style Zeami cites the very opening line of the Lao Tzu: “The Way of ways is not an ordinary way.” As it seems, Zeami is giving a warning to his beginning students, as Lao Tzu is doing the same to his. There are various ways in the art of the Nō, but they all begin with and return to the Way, yūgen, just as in Taoism all ways derive from and lead to the Way, Tao. “Advance along the ways, and learn what the Way is like,” Zeami advises. “Loveliness could manifest itself even at an early stage of apprenticeship.” A Nō performance in this style may show the actor's artistic immaturity as yet, but it will nevertheless have a bit of loveliness if the actor has begun to understand what yūgen is.

The performer's art widens and deepens in the next higher rank, the Style of Broadness and Minuteness. As the name shows, the actor now has both depth and versatility. Zeami tries to illustrate it through a Zen saying: “The heart of mountains, clouds, seas, and the moon are all told.” The student has mastered the art of imitation and knows the true intent of all things in the universe; accordingly, when he performs a role on the stage, he can tell through his performance all about the heart of the object he is impersonating. Of course yūgen is there: mountains, clouds, seas, and the moon are elegant objects, and even when he portrays something not elegant in itself, he will make it look so out of his artistry.

The highest of the middle three ranks is called the Style of a Right Flower. The term “flower,” which indicates an impressive theatrical effect, appears here for the first time. The actor has attained the flower because he has been making progress along the right road. Zeami illustrates the Right Flower by a colorful line: “The spring haze brightens in the setting sun. All mountains in sight are gleaming in crimson.” This is natural beauty at its most colorful. The effect is somewhat like the beauty of myriad cherry blossoms in full bloom on the field of Katano, as described in a poem quoted by Zeami elsewhere. Yūgen has now blossomed into a most lovely flower.

In Zeami's view, however, a performance producing such dazzling beauty is not quite the ultimate of the Nō, for there are still three more ranks remaining at the top of the scheme. These would be the ones that fall in the category of the sublime singing, although Zeami nowhere says so in plain terms. Common to the highest three ranks is the quality of quiet, subdued beauty, which is, as we recall, the main characteristic of sublimity.

The Style of a Calm Flower occupies the lowest of the top three ranks. The essence of this style is explained by a citation from Zen: “Snow is piled in a silver bowl.” If the Style of a Right Flower is the ultimate of the colorful, this style is the ultimate of colorless beauty, the beauty of pure whiteness as symbolized by snow and the silver bowl. Furthermore, the snow, that wonder of nature, is contained in the silver bowl, that wonder of artistry. Art is a vessel containing the purest beauty of nature; art and nature are harmoniously united in the beauty of whiteness.

One rank higher than the Style of the Calm Flower is the Style of a Profound Flower. To describe this style Zeami again relies on a Zen saying: “Snow has covered thousands of mountains. Why is it that a solitary mountain towers unwhitened among them?” Again the setting is of a natural beauty and of pure whiteness, this time on a large scale. But there is an irrational element in that beautiful picture: a black peak towering among snow-covered mountains. The other world has now begun to invade the world of the ordinary senses. Natural beauty is not enough; there must be the beauty of the supernatural, a strange kind of beauty perceptible to only those supreme artists who are endowed with extraordinary sensitivity. A No actor able to perform the Style of a Profound Flower leads his spectators to a state of trance, in which they can appreciate the beauty of the strange and wondrous.

Beauty of the supernatural exists only in part in the Style of a Profound Flower. It thoroughly pervades the Style of a Mysterious Flower, the highest of all nine ranks. Zeami, while conceding that this style is beyond description, attempts to illustrate it by another Zen epigram: “In Silla the sun shines brightly at midnight.” The statement is apparently a flat contradiction. But it may not be a contradiction to those who can transcend the limitations of time and space. Silla, part of present Korea, is located to the east of China; the sun shines brightly there when it is still night in China. A person in China would be able to see the bright sun at midnight, if only he could overcome the limitation of space and see the sky of Korea. We see contradictions in the universe only because we are confined within space and time. Once we transcend our limited senses, what we have hitherto seen as contradictions may not be contradictions. A superb Nō actor, through the Style of a Mysterious Flower, makes us visualize such a transcendental world, a world of higher reality lying beyond our ordinary senses. It is a realm of permanence, of immortal souls. As its sight we are struck with the feeling of austerity. Such is the impact of a sublime performance.

According to Zeami's idea, then, the Nō is a symbolic drama. The idea seems to be valid when applied to actual Nō plays remaining today. The protagonist of the Nō is usually some strange being from the other world: a deity, a spirit, the departed soul of a man, and the like. The core of the play consists of an account of life narrated by such a protagonist, a transcendental being who has been to the other world as well as to our world. We cannot directly see him or hear him talk; we can do that only through a medium, the deuteragonist of the play, who, aptly, is a Buddhist monk. The protagonist appears in the monk's dream, and we, together with the monk, come to know what the world of dreams is like. That world, of course, is expressed in terms of the things of this world, for this is the only way we can perceive it. In short, the things that appear in the play are symbols. The artist is a manipulator of symbols.

The view that art is magic thus lies in the center of Zeami's aesthetics. This is not a unique view in itself, but Zeami has expressed it in such a beautifully metaphorical language. The following is one of those passages in which Zeami explains the nature of art and the artist:

If we explain this by comparing it to the notion of Being and Non-Being in Buddhism, Being corresponds to the appearance and Non-Being to the vessel. It is a Non-Being which engenders Being. This is like a crystal, which is transparent and devoid of color or design, yet produces fire and water out of itself. Why is it that two heterogeneous matters like fire and water emerge from a single transparent object? There is a poem saying:

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

The seed of the flower that blossoms out in all works of art lies in the artist's soul. Just as a transparent crystal produces fire and water, or a colorless cherry tree bears blossoms and fruit, a superb artist creates a moving work of art out of a landscape within his soul. It is such a person that can be called a vessel. Works of art are many and various, some singing of the moon and the breeze on the occasion of a festival, others admiring the blossoms and the birds at an outdoor excursion. The universe is a vessel containing all things—flowers and leaves, the snow and the moon, mountains and seas, trees and grass, the animate and the inanimate—according to the season of the year. Make those numerous things the material of your art, let your soul be the vessel of the universe, and set it in the spacious, tranquil ways of the void. You will then be able to attain the ultimate of art, the Mysterious Flower.

Running through the passage is a contrast between two sets of reality, ordinary and higher, as symbolized by a series of different images. Ordinary reality is perceptible through our senses, like cherry blossoms, fire and water; it is appearance, or Being. But ordinary reality is in truth a manifestation of higher reality, the reality whose essence is hidden and remains unnoticed in ordinary human life. In its colorlessness and intangibility, higher reality may be compared to a crystal or a cherry tree without blossoms. The artist, endowed with extra sensitivity, can see a glimpse of it and come to conceive a strange landscape within his soul. When he expresses the landscape by means of art, there emerges a moving work. The work of art is the expression of a microcosm formed inside the artist's soul. In the sense that each artist contains this microcosm within himself, he can be said to be a vessel. It is for this reason that he is creative, that he can create everything out of nothing. Thus the artist can be compared to the universe, which produces thousands of things out of itself. The mysteries of the universe are the mysteries of art, which eventually bloom into the Mysterious Flower.

Having such symbolic nature, the Nō conceived by Zeami, inevitably approaches close to music on one hand and to religion on the other. The Nō must rely on the instantaneous emotive power of music inasmuch as it aims not to analyze social problems but to represent ultimate reality lying beyond the realm of the intellect. Music, the most sensuous among the means of communication, is least controlled by reason and is most appealing to the imagination. Thus the Nō play has no dramatic structure in the Western sense; it has little plot and less characterization. Instead it has ample music; all the actor's lines are recited in rhythmical speech, with the accompaniment of orchestral music. Zeami has declared: “Music is the soul of the Nō.” The structure of the Nō is musically conceived: it has jo, ha, and kyū, like traditional Japanese music. The rhythm of the Nō play is suggestive of the great hidden law of the universe; it is, in fact, the universal rhythm of life. “All things in the universe, good or evil, large or small, animate or inanimate, have each the rhythm of jo, ha, and kyū,” Zeami says. “It is observed even in such things as a bird's singing or an insect's chirping.” “Everything has jo, ha, and kyū,” he says elsewhere. “The Nō follows that, too.” In the Nō a segment of life is presented, not as an accumulation of different parts, but as an integral entity animated with a living rhythm. As the universe gives each object of nature a rhythm of life, so does the artist pour life into his work through the rhythm of nature. It follows that the language of Nō must be rhythmical, too; it must be poetry. Zeami, who has advised his students to sacrifice all other pursuits for the sake of the Nō, makes an exception for poetry. A Nō writer is required to be a good poet, too.

The musical quality of the Nō is well described by Zeami through the metaphor of a flowing stream. Water flows slowly and peacefully on a spacious plain. It rushes on, whirling and bubbling, as it comes to the rapids. A landscape gardener imitates all this in making a garden; he creates a beautiful stream, with falls, rapids, curves, deep pools, sunken rocks, and many other things at proper places along its course. The Nō writer should be such a gardener in composing his work, too. He will put forth the “landscape within his soul” by manipulating the varying rhythm of nature. He will use auditory symbols suggestive of intangible reality.

If the Nō intends to present the mysteries of the cosmos by means of visual and auditory symbols, its relationship to religion is obvious, for religion tries to teach the mysterious truths of pre- and after-life through a symbolic or metaphysical system, too. The Nō is a religious drama; it is a ritual. The implications of the Nō are predominately Buddhist; they point toward a Buddhist scheme of salvation. In many Nō plays the protagonist is a sinner, a sinner not because he has committed a crime against society, but because he has suffered from the limitations of humanity, because he was born a human being. Thus he cannot be saved by human means. In his lifetime, however, he was not even aware of his sin; it is only after death that he discovers what life really is and how sinful it is. The awakening, coupled with the prayer of the deuteragonist (who is a monk), redeems him at the end of the play. The spectators, while they watch the protagonist's spiritual metamorphosis enacted on the stage, come to feel their souls purified and elevated. Such is the purging effect of the Nō.

No doubt Zeami believed in the oneness of art and religion. In one of his last essays he quotes a famous Zen saying: “All laws return to the Law. Where does the Law return to? It returns to all laws.” This must have been one of his lifelong mottoes in both art and religion. We have already seen his many quotations from religious texts in describing the ultimate of art, too. Zeami, well disciplined in religious classics in his young days, later entered the priesthood. There is even a record of miracles coming upon him. Did he indeed attain the ultimate of religion, that calm, enlightened state of mind, through art? Sadly, the answer seems to be in the negative. Testifying to it is his mournful confession in the last essays on the Nō, which he wrote when met by the untimely death of Motomasa, his eldest son and a talented actor who had seemed to promise a bright future for the Nō drama after Zeami's time. It reads: “I had bequeathed all the secrets of our art to Motomasa and had been calmly waiting for death's call. Then all of a sudden Motomasa died, ending the line of our art and bringing our theater to a close. My grandsons are yet small, and there is no one else who will inherit our art. When I think of this my aged heart feels so much sinful attachment as to disturb my readiness for death.” As Zeami had always thought, art would eventually lead the artist to the calm, to a serenity of mind. Imitation was a way to penetrate the surface and reach for hidden reality. Yūgen was a way to resign oneself to the sadness of that hidden reality. Sublimity was a way to accept that reality with calm of mind. Yet Zeami had to discover, near the end of his life, that art was not religion after all. Religion, emphasizing the world beyond, preached the abandonment of all things in this life, including art itself. Art, even the impersonal art of the Nō, had to be of this world as long as it was written by human playwrights, performed by human actors, and appreciated by human spectators. Zeami could not attain Nirvana as long as he remained an artist.

Notes

1. Katano, located near present Osaka, was the Imperial Hunting Ground and was famous for its cherry blossoms, too. As hunting is a winter sport, the comparison of cherry blossoms to snowflakes in the poem is especially fitting.

2. Firewood. It is called a Tree of Sorrow because the Japanese word for firewood, nageki, also has the meaning of “sorrow.”

3. Mount Kagu is located near Nara. It was considered a holy mountain, as it was believed to have descended from heaven.