The difficulties confronting the would-be critic of No are enormous. Not a single play is dated, and all we can infer about even the most famous works is the date before which they must have been composed, information perhaps gleaned from a diary entry mentioning a performance. Some plays can be dated only by century, and others seem to have been rewritten so often that the establishment of a single date of composition would be impossible. Even when we know that a play with a certain title was performed, say, in the fifteenth century, it is by no means clear that this is the same work currently performed with that title. Dōjōji was formerly attributed to Kan'ami (1333-1384); it has recently been attributed by careful scholars to Nobumitsu (1435-1516); but other authorities are convinced that in its present form it cannot be older than the late sixteenth century. A few texts have been miraculously preserved in Zeami's own hand-writing. Some are of plays no longer performed, but those of plays in the current repertory differ so conspicuously from their present versions as to throw doubt on claims by the schools of Nō that they have preserved unaltered the authentic traditions of the past. The dating of the plays is further complicated by the fact that they were written in an artificial poetic language that only inadvertently reflected current speech; this meant that the differences in language separating, say, Shakespeare and Congreve, do not distinguish a No play of the fourteenth century from one of the sixteenth.

The authorship of the plays is almost as perplexing as the dating. Before 1940 scholars generally accepted the traditional attributions that gave credit to Zeami for about half the plays in the repertory of some 240 works. The application of more rigorous standards drastically reduced the number of plays attributed to Zeami, and some scholars now hesitate to allow him more than a dozen or so. Zeami undoubtedly borrowed and modified works by his father Kan'ami and other early dramatists to suit the audiences of his own time, and these revised plays were further modified after his death. The main outlines of the plays and much of the poetry might remain essentially unchanged, but innumerable variants cropped up in the prose sections. The five schools of No each insist that their own texts are the only authentic ones, and they sometimes have their own traditions about the authorship as well.

Attributions of the plays were formerly based chiefly on various lists prepared in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but these lists are no longer trusted. Too often they credited plays to Zeami, rather than admit that the author was unknown. Today scholars recognize as genuine works by Zeami only those mentioned by name in his critical writings. Zeami quoted extracts from different plays, and we know that he identified by author only works by other men; an extract not followed by the author's name must therefore have been from a play by Zeami himself. However, the insistence on a mention in Zeami's critical works may be imposing too rigorous a criterion. It is possible that he failed to mention all of his plays in his criticism, and some plays may have been written after the critical works relied on for dating. It is difficult otherwise to imagine who else could have written such masterpieces as The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya) or Yuya, works now listed merely as "anonymous" by meticulous scholars.

Attributions on the basis of style have also been attempted. It obviously does not make much sense to speak about a dramatist's style if his works were all revised again and again by later men; nevertheless, critics customarily praise Kan'ami's "strength and simplicity," Zeami's yūgen (or style of mystery and depth), Motomasa's pathos, Miyamasu's realism, or Zenchiku's philosophical loftiness. But surely no one reading Matsukaze, attributed to Kan'ami, would be struck by its "strength and simplicity"; perhaps his original play was so extensively revised by Zeami and others as to remove any personal imprint. The danger of making attributions on the basis of preconceptions as to a dramatist's distinctive manner is obvious, but some critics feel so sure of their grasp of Zeami's style as to be able to declare, for example, that The Shrine in the Fields cannot have been written by Zeami because the last word is a noun (Jkataku, the Burning House) and Zeami always ended his plays with verbs. Certainly the style of a play offers important clues both to the authorship and the date, but as yet it is not possible to do more than suggest with varying degrees of confidence some twenty-five plays that may be by Zeami. Not only do we lack information on the dates of these plays, but we have no way of establishing their relative order. It is as if we were able to decide on the basis of internal and external evidence that both Romeo and Juliet and King Lear were by Shakespeare, but had no idea which work came earlier in his career or if Shakespeare merely revised the work of a predecessor.

Studies of Nō as a literary form are still in their infancy, though the history of the Nō theatre and the techniques of performance have been investigated with diligence and sometimes with brilliant results. Japanese critics have generally contented themselves with describing the characteristic style of the poetry as a "brocade" consisting of lovely bits and pieces of old poetry. The extensive bor-rowing from such collections as Kokinshū ("Collection of Poems Old and New," 905) and Wakan Rōei ("Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Reading Aloud," c. 1010) sometimes does indeed suggest a "brocade" of allusions, but the Nō plays clearly possess a distinctive style of their own. Because drama fell outside the range of interest of traditional scholars of Japanese literature it was left to Yeats to point out the patterns of symbols in the plays, a remark that inspired some Japanese scholars for the first time to examine the recurring imagery that is so characteristic a feature of Zeami's style [William Butler Yeats, Certain Noble Plays of Japan].

The evolving style of the Nō plays can also be traced in terms of the degree of conformity to the "standard" models. Zeami himself cited his work Yunti Yawata as a paradigmatic example of Nō, but hardly another play in the repertory conforms exactly to its formulae. It is nonetheless true that plays of Zeami's time tend to follow a set form. With respect to the division into parts, for example, there is little deviation from the established categories: shite, the principal character, the only true "person"; waki, or secondary actor, whose arrival on the scene introduces the story and who asks the questions the audience itself might ask; and tsure, or companion, who may accompany either the shite or waki, but rarely rises above being a shadow. Some of the older works of the repertory (like Shōkun) seem to have been comp osed before the standard roles (shite, waki, and so on) had been evolved, and the present divisions seem arbitrary and unnecessary. Even Zeami's works do not always follow the paradigms of composition: in Lady Han (Hanjo), for example, the kyōgen part is vital to the action and not merely a diversion. But such departures from the standard seem minor when compared to those in preZeami or nost-Zeami plays. In Komachi and the Hundred Nights (Kayoi Komachi), for example, Komachi is the tsure, but far from being a mere "companion" to the shite is his antagonist. Hatsuyuki by Zemp (c. 1474-c. 1520) altogether lacks a waki part. The shite part in The Valley Rite (Taniko) is so minor the character does not utter a word. In other late works the distinction between shite and waki is so vague that the nomenclature differs according to the school.

In terms of the roles, then, one can say that before Zeami the distinctions were probably fluid; with Zeami they attained a "classical" definition; but after Zeami the conventions increasingly tended to break down in face of new demands by the audiences. A similar pattern of development can be described with respect to other aspects of Nō. The art gradually reached maturity late in the fourteenth century, largely thanks to the patronage by the shogun's court. Nō had originally developed as a popular theatre, and its repertory consisted mainly of plays on religious themes presented at Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines throughout the country. But when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu decided in 1374 to extend his patronage to the art, it changed its character. The texts were embellished with quotations from the poetry and prose of the past, no doubt to please members of the shogun's court who had literary pretensions; but this meant that the illiterate commoners who had formerly supported Nō were gradually forgotten by the playwrights who turned their backs on dramatic or didactic themes in favor of aesthetic excellence. Zeami especially delighted in literary display, even when it led to a static dramatic situation. The speech in Komachi and the Hundred Nights in which Komachi describes the fruits and nuts she has gathered, giving a poetic allusion for each, contributes nothing to the action, but it helps create a mood that is associated with Zeami, who added this section to the less ornamented text by Kan'ami.

With Zeami Nō attained its classic form and its highest level of literary distinction. Although Zeami also composed some works in a realistic manner, his plays are known especially for their yūgen, a haunting poetic quality both in the language and in the overall effects. Komachi at Sekidera (Sekidera Komachi) is perhaps the supreme example of yūgen in No. There is almost no plot to the play—some priests take a young disciple to hear from an old woman the secrets of poetry and gradually become aware she is the celebrated poet Komachi—and the shite is virtually immobile during the first hour of the performance, but the poetry and the atmosphere it creates make this play incredibly moving. …

… The patterns of poetry and prose vary from play to play, but they present as a whole a distinctive literary form. The frequent use of quotations is a literary convention, and a text which made few references to the poetry found in the famous anthologies would seem thin and without overtones. No is deeply concerned with Japanese poetic traditions. Not only are many poems embedded in the dialogue, but poetry itself is the subject of such plays as Komachi at Sekidera, and a principal theme of The Reed Cutter (Ashikari). It would not be normal for characters in a European drama to relate the principles of the art of poetry and give examples of favorite works, but this is precisely what we find in these plays. In the No theatre many different arts—poetry, music, dance, and mime—converge, at a level that does justice to all.

The Nō theatre makes maximum demands on the audience. The texts are difficult and the relatively scant mimetic elements contribute more to establishing the inner tensions of the characters than to clarifying the words or actions. Some plays indeed are so exceedingly slow-moving as to lull a sizable part of the audience to sleep. But precisely because it takes this risk No succeeds in its unique domain.

Komachi at Sekidera belongs to the third category. It was probably written by Zeami, though some authorities hesitate to make the attribution. The play is considered to be the loftiest and most difficult of the entire No repertory. In the past century only a few great actors at the close of their careers have ventured to perform it. It enjoys its high reputation because it celebrates, with the most exquisite simplicity, the bittersweet delight of being alive. Childhood, maturity, extreme old age, the pleasure and pain of life, are immediately communicated. The play conveys a timeless moment in the brief interval between birth and death. Its subject is poetry. Much of the great poetry in Nō lies somewhat outside the main Japanese poetic traditions, but Komachi at Sekidera is at once a superb Nō play and a splendid expression of the sources of Japanese poetry. The shite role is considered so difficult because there is little an actor can add to the text unless he is supremely gifted. During the first hour of the performance Komachi hardly stirs.

The setting is wonderfully appropriate. The time is the festival of Tanabata, the seventh night of the seventh month: the one night of the year when the Cowherd star can cross the River of Heaven to join the Weaver-girl star. On earth all are celebrating the lovers' brief reunion. Even at Sekidera, a place of quiet renunciation, the priests and child acolytes are about to observe the festival. But while talking about poetry with the aged woman who lives in a hut nearby, the abbot of the temple discovers she is none other than Ono no Komachi.

Komachi, a woman of great beauty and literary gifts, lived at the Heian court during the ninth century. She became a legend in later times, with many apocryphal stories surrounding the few known biographical facts. Five No plays about Komachi are in the present repertory; Komachi and the Hundred Nights presents another aspect of the Komachi legend, and Sotoba Komachi (translated in Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature) ranks nearly on a level with Komachi at Sekidera.

The structure of the play is classic, and remarkable for its economy and simplicity. Nothing jars, nothing is wasted. The moment when Komachi admits her identity to the Abbot is particularly touching because so unaffected.

Sekidera ("The Barrier Temple") still exists at Ōtsu, a city east of Kyoto; its modern name is Chōanji.

Komachi at Sekidera is in the repertory of all schools of Nō.

The Brocade Tree belongs to the fourth category, and is by Zeami. The Shūchūshō, a late twelfth-century work, quotes the following verse:

My brocade trees
Number a full thousand;
Now I shall see within
Her chamber forbidden to other men.

It goes on to explain nishikigi, "brocade trees," as follows: "When an Ebisu man in the interior of Michinoku wishes to propose to a girl, he does not write her a letter. Instead, he decorates a stick about a foot long with different colors, and sets it in the ground before the girl's gate. If the girl wishes to meet him, she immediately takes it into her house. If she is slow to do so, her suitor plants more. By the time he has planted a thousand, the girl sees that he really is sincere, so she takes them in and the two meet. If she does not take them in, her suitor gives up. The poem just quoted is by a man whose thousand brocade trees have brought him success." The Ebisu were a "barbarian," probably non-Japanese, people. Michinoku is the area at the northern end of Honshu.

On hosonuno, the "narrow cloth of Kefu," the same source quotes the poem,

The narrow kefu cloth of Michinoku
Is so very narrow
That it will not meet across my breasts;
Just so is my unrequited love!

The Mumyōshō, also of the late twelfth century, says, "Narrow kefu cloth is a cloth made in Michinoku. It is woven of feathers. Since this material is scarce, a narrow loom is used and only short lengths of cloth are made." In the play, kefu is used as a place name. No such village exists, however. Kefu is simply the name of the cloth.

Some Japanese critics admit that the happy tone of the ending of The Brocade Tree comes as rather a surprise, but they do not feel that this detracts from the play's quality. Good though it is, however, the play is not often performed.

Ezra Pound's version of The Brocade Tree, based on an unpublished translation by Ernest Fenollosa, is too far from the original to qualify as a translation. … The Brocade Tree is performed by all schools of Nō.

Semimaru, a work of the fourth category, was written by Zeami. The story of Semimaru, the blind biwa player—the biwa is a kind of lute—appears as early as the twelfth-century collection of tales, Konjaku Monogatari, but apparently has no historical basis. The Konjaku Monogatari version relates that Semimaru lived near the barrier of Osaka, between Kyoto and Lake Biwa. Once he had been in the service of a courtier, a famous biwa master, and learned to play by listening to his master. Minamoto Hakuga, the son of a prince, heard of Semimaru's skill and wished to bring him to the Capital. Semimaru, however, refused. So eager was he to hear Semimaru's biwa that Hakuga journeyed to Mt. Ōsaka, a wild and distant place in those days, though today a half-hour journey from Kyoto.

By the time of the writing of the Heike Monogatari, a century later, Semimaru had become known as the fourth son of the Emperor Daigo (r. 897-930). Like the Semimaru of the Konjaku Monogatari, he lived by a barrier, but it was the one at Shinomiya Kawara. A man named Hakuga no Sammi was so anxious to hear him play that he visited Semimaru's hut every day, rain or shine, for three years without fail.

Zeami borrowed from various versions of the legend of Semimaru as known in his day, but especially from the Heike Monogatari. No previous version of the story, however, mentions Princess Sakagami, who was apparently Zeami's creation. Semimaru is one of the rare plays in which the tsure (Semimaru) is nearly as important as the shite (Sakagami); another such play is Komachi and the Hundred Nights.

Semimaru is perhaps the most tragic play of the entire No repertory. Unlike The Sought-for Grave, in which Unai returns to earth to tell of her endless torments in hell, the tragedy of Semimaru takes place in this world, and involves two human beings who are nearly as real and immediate to us as characters in Western drama.

During the height of the fanatical nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s Semimaru was banned from the stage for its alleged disrespect to the Imperial Family, but today it is performed by all schools of No.

The Deserted Crone, a play belonging to the third category, seems unmistakably a work by Zeami. Sanari Kentarō, the editor of the great collection of Nō plays Yōkyoku Taikan, summed up the play aptly: "An old woman has been abandoned deep in the mountains. Dressed in white robes, she dances a quiet dance in a landscape brightly lit by the moon. She utters hardly a word of complaint but, resigned to the world, confines herself to expounding the Buddhist teaching of nonattachment. … This play surely must be close to the apex of Zeami's yūgen."

The source of the legend of the "deserted crone" may be found in an anonymous poem in the Kokinshū (no. 878):

No solace for my heart at Sarashina
When I see the moon
Shining down on Mount Obasute.

The tenth-century poem-tale Yamato Monogatari, which gives the same poem, explains that it was written by a man who, at the urging of his wife, had carried his aged aunt into the mountains on a moonlit night and abandoned her there. The next day he regretted his action and brought her back home. The mountain became known as Obasute-yama, the Mountain of the Deserted Crone. However, Fujiwara Toshiyori is reported in the thirteenth-century book of criticism Mumyōshō to have said that the poem was composed by the old woman herself, as she gazed at the moon from the place where she was abandoned. Zeami followed the latter version.

Evidence in other sources indicates that at certain times and places old people were indeed taken out into the wilderness and left there, probably in order to conserve the limited food supply of a village. A small body of literature exists on this theme, going down to our time.

The moon is prominently mentioned in many Nō plays, often as a symbol of Buddhist enlightenment, but no other play is as filled with moonlight as The Deserted Crone. Sarashina, the site of Mount Obasute, was famous for moon-viewing, and the action of the play takes place on the night when the moon is at its brightest, the "famous moon" of the eighth month. The entire fabric of the play is filled with the atmosphere of a longing melancholy under the "pure full disc of light." The moon descends, and as the play concludes the spirit of the old woman remains behind in the thin glow of dawn, a cold and lonely wraith unable to break away from mortal attachments to the world.

The Deserted Crone is performed by all schools except Komparu.

Lady Han, a play of the fourth category, is one of Zeami's most romantic works. In several No plays the shite goes mad with grief over the loss of her child, but Hanago is one of only two shite in plays of the current repertory who goes mad because of love. Even rarer is the completely happy ending.

No source for Lady Han has been found. Hanago's nickname, Hanjo or Lady Han, refers to Han Shōyo (Pan Chiehyü in Chinese), a poetess of the Early Han dynasty. The lady was a favorite of the Emperor Ch'eng Ti (e. 36-32 B.C.), but was eventually replaced in his affections by an even more celebrated beauty. The discarded favorite wrote a poem comparing herself to a fan in autumn. The round, white fan also resembles the moon, a typical sight of autumn. Zeami alludes to this poem again and again in the course of the play. Other allusions to Chinese poems in the collection Wakan Rōei Shū ("Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems for Recitation Aloud") and to Po Chü-i's famous Everlasting Lament sustain the Chinese mood of the imagery.

Lady Han begins with a long kyōgen passage. This unusual expository device was given special dramatic value by Zeami. The waki part is unusual too: Instead of being a priest or a courtier, the waki is Hango's lover, Yoshida. Any suggestion of romantic love was generally avoided on the Nōo stage, and the part of one of the lovers would be taken by a child in order to remove erotic overtones, but Yoshida is a full romantic character. Some scholars, however, have suggested that the part of Yoshida may originally have been played by a child, and that the waki role was assigned to a traveler or some other character not now in the text, but this remains conjectural.

The play is considered to be about a madwoman, a standard variety of fourth-category plays, but Hanago's madness does not express itself in lunatic behavior. She is obsessed with her memories of the lover who failed to return, so much so that she fails to recognize him when at last she sees him again. Her madness seems to express itself also in an exaggerated form of a typical literary device of No, the accidental associations of words. Saying the words itsu made, "until when," carries her to itsumadegusa, the name of a plant; then to the dew that settles on the plant; then to the time it takes for the dew to evaporate; then (from the shortness of that time) to her main theme, her love and its brevity; then to mention of famous lovers of the past; and finally to what appears to be an attempt to check herself in her rambling, the question as to how we know today what words the lovers of the past exchanged in private. Certainly such chains of associations are not unique to plays describing "madness," but they contribute in Lady Han to its atmosphere of distraught love.

Lady Han is performed by all schools of No.

The Reed Cutter belongs to the fourth category of plays. It is generally attributed to Zeami, though he may have adapted an older work. The source of the story is the Shūishū, an imperial collection of poetry compiled in the late tenth century. Two poems with their prose preface supplied the outlines of the story: "When a certain woman went to Naniwa for a purification ceremony, she met on the way a man who had formerly been her lover. He was now a reed cutter, and presented a most peculiar appearance. Somewhat disconcerted, she remarked that they had not met for a long time. The man replied,

As I cut reeds without you
I knew I had been wrong;
Life here by Naniwa Bay
Has grown so melancholy.

She answered,

You did no wrong.
'Fare thee well,' we said,
As our parting words:
Why should life by Naniwa Bay
Have grown so melancholy?"

A much fuller account is given in the tenth-century poem-tale Yamato Monogatari. A wellborn couple has fallen on hard times. The husband urges the wife to seek employment in the Capital, promising he will join her if his own fortunes improve. The wife succeeds in finding a position in a nobleman's household, and the nobleman eventually marries her when his wife dies. But she continues to worry about her former husband, and goes to Naniwa to look for him. Their old house has vanished, but she finds the husband, attired like a peddler and selling reeds. When she offers to buy his reeds the man recognizes her and, ashamed to be seen in his humble appearance, runs off and hides in a hut. The lady sends a servant after him, but he refuses to come out. Instead he and his wife exchange the poems translated above. She also gives the man her outer cloak before she returns to the Capital alone.

The play modifies the Yamato Monogatari story, especially in its ending. It is unusually long, and abounds in plays on words and allusions to old texts. It is notable also for its sympathetic treatment of marital love.

The Reed Cutter is performed by all schools of Nō.