Due to the increasing interest in Japanese theater in recent years, Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443) is now a well-known figure in the West as a great writer of the Nō drama; yet few people know that he is the author of some twenty essays which mark one of the highest peaks in the development of Japanese aesthetics. He was a most gifted performer of the Nō whose fame overwhe lmed the contemporary court circles already early in his career, but he was also a very self-conscious artist who constantly endeavored to explore and expand the meaning of his art. Those essays, written over a period of thirty years, consistently reveal his never-failing passion for the improvement of his art; "a man's life has an ending," he says, "but there is no ending in the pursuit of the Nō." Although the essays were written primarily to provide proper guidance for professional Nō actors, they contain a number of interesting comments on the nature of art in general, as Zeami's keen insight breaks through the conventional particulars of Japanese theater and reaches the level of the universal. Roughly speaking, Zeami's concept of art centers upon three basic principles: imitation, yūgen, and sublimity.

Among these three the principle of imitation is the most elementary one. Anyone who wishes to learn the art of the Nō must start with this principle. "Objects to be imitated are too many to be enumerated here," Zeami says. "Yet they have to be thoroughly studied since imitation is the foremost principle in our art." Then he adds: "The basic rule is to imitate things as they are, whatever they may be." A Nō actor should carefully observe the manners and speech of princes, statesmen, courtiers, and warriors; he might ask such people, when they are in his audience, whether his performance has been an acceptable imitation of what they actually say and do. Zeami especially advises an actor not to become too intent on producing the effect of forcefulness or elegance on the stage. When an actor consciously tries to show forcefulness in his acting, his performance will appear not forceful but coarse; when he deliberately attempts to make his acting elegant, his performance will look not elegant but weak. For, as Zeami remarks:

Forcefulness or elegance does not exist by itself. It lies in the proper imitation of an object. It should be known that weakness or coarseness arises when the actor does not follow the principle of imitation.

Any act of imitation which distorts nature for the sake of artistic effectiveness will result in coarseness or weakness; it is artifice, and not art. An aesthetic effect like forcefulness or elegance is potential in natural objects themselves. "Therefore," Zeami says, "if an actor gives himself up to this principle and truly becomes one with the object of his imitation, his performance will be neither coarse nor weak."

Basically, then, Zeami's idea of imitation is to imitate natural objects as they are, without distorting them or imposing any artifice upon them. However, when an actor proceeds to a higher stage of training, he should not be satisfied with the mere imitation of outward appearance. In the last-quoted sentence Zeami advocates the identification of the imitator with the thing he imitates; this is not an imitation in its ordinary sense, because an imitation usually requires the imitator's objective awareness of the thing he is imitating. In fact Zeami says: "In the art of imitation there is a stage called non-imitation. If the actor proceeds to the ultimate stage of imitation and entirely enters the thing he is imitating, he will no longer possess a will to imitate." In the highest stage of imitation the actor becomes unconscious of his art; the imitator is united with the imitated. The dualism of man and nature is gone; man and a natural object are the same in their ultimate essence. An artist should nullify his own individual self to express this essence; or, from another point of view, a natural object should be represented in its essence through the transparent soul of the artist. Zeami calls this essence the "primary meaning." A Nō performer, in his early stage of training, should try to imitate the patterns of clothes or manners of speech as they are in actual life; but as his training goes on to a more advanced stage he need not be too concerned with the appearance of things but should strive to represent the "primary meaning." In point of fact it is impossible to realistically imitate a demon from Hell, because there is no such thing in our ordinary life. Still, a demon could be convincingly represented if the artist successfully creates the feeling of its "primary meaning." "Nobody has ever seen a demon from Hell," Zeami says. "It is more important, therefore, to act the role in an impressive manner than to attempt to imitate the demon."

What Zeami exactly means by the "primary meaning" is not easy to define, but we may have a general 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 due to various obsessions, such as one would suffer at the parting with one's parent, at the loss of one's child, or at the death of one's wife. Even a fairly good actor does not distinguish these particulars one from another, but portrays all frenzied men in a similar manner; the audience, consequently, is not impressed. A person is frenzied on account of his obsession; therefore, if the actor makes the obsession the primary meaning of his portraiture, and the frenzy the effective expression of it, then his acting will certainly impress the audience and create a breath-taking climax. An actor who moves the audience to tears by such means is a performer of true greatness.

The "primary meaning" of a person, then, is the inmost nature that constitutes the core of his personality. In a frenzied man mental derangement is merely an 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 symptoms of madness. The actor who wishes to portray such a man will try to represent the obsession, not merely to copy the features of any madman; he will imitate the characteristics of a frenzied man in such a way that the primary cause of his insanity may be revealed to the audience. A true artist, Zeami implies, pierces through the surface of everyday reality and reaches the hidden truth of things. Only when this is successfully done the characters in the drama will be given life; the supernatural will become natural. Only then the effectiveness, or beauty, of a performance will be fully achieved.

Zeami's idea of beauty is thus closely related to his way of looking at life. Yūgen, his ideal beauty, is not only an aesthetic principle but a mode of perception. Zeami remarks:

An actor should never divert himself from the principle of yūgen, irrespective of whatever kind of imitation he is engaged in. 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 with a spray of blossoms. Although they differ in social status and in outward appearance, they are equally beautiful blossoms insofar as we feel the impact of their beauty. The lovely blossoms are the beauty of human form. The beauty of form is created by the soul.

Yūgen is not a superficial surface beauty; it is a beauty that lies deep in the heart of things. Therefore, even an imitation of something which is not beautiful on the outside may be made beautiful if the inner beauty finds its way out. A withered old man, ugly in appearance, can be made to have a certain beauty: Zeami describes the beauty as "the blossoms blooming on a dead tree." A dreadful demon of Hell can be made beautiful too: Zeami describes the beauty as "the blossoms blooming on a crag." What creates real beauty is the "soul." Zeami uses the term in many different ways, but basically it seems to imply the "soul of art"—a spirit in pursuit of ideal beauty. To learn the "soul" of playwriting, one should study classical poetry; to learn the "soul" of mimicry, one would better start with the imitation of elegant persons. An actor should firmly get hold of what makes a person or a thing beautiful, and should attempt to express that essence of beauty in his performance. Zeami explains this process of artistic transformation with an anatomical metaphor—the bone, the flesh, and the skin. The bone is a spirit which tries to discover and express ideal beauty; it is "pre-art," as it were, and a genius may attain an amazing success even at a very early stage of his training. The flesh stands for that part of art which can be learned by training. The skin signifies artistic effectiveness; it is the visible part of art. A human body consists of the bone, the flesh, and the skin, although our eyes can see nothing but the skin. Similarly, the beauty of the Nō is derived from artistic inspiration, conventionalized form, and externalized action, although the audience may see only the last of the three. Zeami emphasizes the importance of the invisible part of artistic creation as essential in producing visible beauty.

Yūgen, then, is the inner beauty of an object outwardly expressed by means of art. It is the manifestation of the "primary meaning" which lies in the mysterious depth of things. In this sense it is identical with truth—the truth caught by the artist's "soul." External reality is only illusory; there is a higher reality lying somewhere beyond the reach of our ordinary senses. The artist, in pursuit of beauty, momentarily penetrates the surface reality and gets hold of hidden truth. Zeami particularly yearns for the romantic world of The Tale of Genji wherein life and art, truth and beauty, are one and the same. Characters in this Japanese classic, such as Lady Aoi, Lady Yūgao, and Lady Ukifune, will be the most precious gems if they are made into the protagonists of Nō plays, because these ladies, making beauty the basic principle of their life, have the most refined aesthetic sensibility. Thus the imitation of a court lady, as Zeami teaches, is the basis of all the other imitations. When this type of beauty is caught on its highest level, it will give the impression of "a white bird with a flower in its beak." The famous metaphor suggests Zeami's romantic concern with pure and graceful beauty, with a creation of unearthly beauty by means of art.

Yet it is in the very essence of yūgen that this elegant beauty is entwined with a tone of sadness. If yūgen is also 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 ladies must suffer the tortures of living, that even the loveliest blossoms must fade away. Immediately after stressing the importance of graceful beauty in Nō performance, Zeami goes on:

But there are even more precious materials for producing the visible 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 cursed by Lady Rokujō's spirit, Lady Yū gao carried away by a ghost, or Lady Ukifune charmed by an unknown being.

Yūgen, then, lies not simply in the refined 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, or by the unknown force of the universe. Such a suffering naturally leads to sad resignation. A court lady, lacking the masculine courage to heroically fight out her fate, gives herself up to religion when she comes to realize that suffering is the condition of being alive in this world. Yūgen, in its final analysis, may be conceived as a combined quality of elegant beauty and sad resignation—the elegant beauty which is the result of man's quest for an ideal life through art and artifice, and the sad resignation which comes from man's recognition of his powerlessness before the great cosmic power ruling over this world. Thus Zeami defines yūgen as "elegance, calm, profundity, mixed with the feeling of mutability."

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, serene, subdued beauty more and more. Already in one of his early essays there is a suggestion of this when he expresses his preference of a withering flower to a fully blooming one. Later he becomes more explicit: he says that a superb actor, when he comes to an important scene, will "perform chanting, dancing, and mimetic action in an inconspicuous manner, yet in such a way that the audience is somehow deeply moved by the subdued simplicity of the atmosphere." Elegant beauty has given way to the beauty of a calm, serene mind of a man who has perceived the sad truth of life and has finally transcended the sadness through religious resignation. In fact the latter phase of yūgen is so much emphasized in his later essays that Zeami uses a different term for it—"sublimity."

Zeami explains the nature of "sublimity" in two of his essays where he classifies plays and performances into five different types. Here the effect of yūgen is illustrated by a classical Japanese poem:

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

The image of cherry-blossoms like snow neatly combines the purity of beautiful whiteness with the sense of life's mutability, adequately introducing the sentiment of the last two lines. "Sublimity," however, is a somewhat different beauty from this. Its mood is comparable to that of this poem:

Slowly, quietly,
The spear-shaped cedar-tree
On Mt. Kagu
Came to assume an air of austerity,
With its roots under the moss.

Instead of the gay, colorful loveliness of cherry-blossoms, "sublimity" has the silent, quiet dignity of an old cedar-tree. If yū gen is the calm, subdued beauty of youth, "sublimity" is the calm, subdued beauty of old age. Yūgen implies a sad awareness of life's change and mutability; "sublimity" transcends such and other sentiments of ordinary life, it implies permanence in nature, like an old cedar-tree standing among non-evergreen plants, or eternity in the cosmos, like the immortal Shinto god residing in Mt. Kagu.

Zeami further clarifies his idea of "sublimity" as he grades the different styles of Nō performances into nine ranks. The quality of "sublimity," as he seems to suggest, lies in the highest three ranks: "the Style of Calm Flower," "the Style of Infinitely Deep Flower," and "the Style of Mysterious Flower." "The Style of Calm Flower," the lowest of the three, yields an effect which may be illustrated by an old Zen saying: "Snow is piled in a silver bowl." The style shows the ease and calm of an artist who is confident of his art after mastering all the required stages of training. 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. This is a superb beauty, yet still it is surpassed by the beauty of a higher style, called "the Style of Infinitely Deep Flower." Zeami explains this style again by metaphor: "Snow has covered thousands of mountains all in white. Why is it that one solitary peak remains unwhitened?" And he adds later: "The Style of 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 Calm Flower is still in the world of being, the world of empirical reality, even though his art may show the purest beauty of snow in a silver bowl. An actor who has advanced to the Style of Infinitely Deep Flower goes beyond the limitations of ordinary reality; an irrational element, like a black peak towering among snow-covered mountains, may enter 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.

Yet there is still a higher rank, "the Style of Mysterious Flower," the highest of all nine ranks. Zeami explains:

The Style of 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 of 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 No 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 Mysterious Flower.

A little later Zeami adds that this style covers "an imaginative landscape which is beyond verbal description as it lies in the realm of the absolute." The realm of the absolute, a term 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 ordinary human faculties cannot sense. A perfect work of art can lead us into this realm in a trance, where we are made to perceive the invisible and hear the inaudible.

To Zeami, then, art means something which attempts to illuminate what lies in the deepest depth of human mind, what cannot be known through ordinary senses. It is concerned with the realm of the unconscious, with that part of human mind which cannot be reached through intellect, which belongs to the all-pervasive universe. Zeami seems to have believed in some great primal force that flows through life and death, through the conscious and the unconscious—a force which manifests itself in the "primary meaning" of every object in nature. He says that "one contains many while two are just two," referring to the same concept. 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 that has a power to feel. As a crystal body 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 compared to 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, snow and the moon, mountains and seas, trees and grass, the animate and the inanimate. An artist should try to attain the stage of 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.

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 easily be 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. An 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 gets its expression through the things of the universe; here the human and the cosmic, the microcosm and macrocosm, become one.

Zeami's concept of art, we may conclude, is based on an animistic mode of perception; it presumes a great collective mind running through all the things in the cosmos. Art imitates nature, but it does so in such a way as to reveal the hidden essence of man and things, the "primary meaning" which the sensitivity of the artist alone can feel. Naturally the artist will be 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. Inevitably he will approach the issues not through a reasoned analysis or a systematized metaphysics, but through an instantaneous perception, an emotional understanding, which is possible only when he annihilates himself into 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 as such a mode of perception; it is not merely inherent in the things observed but lies in the way the observer looks at things. "Sublimity," an emotional im-pact produced by a supreme work of art, roots in the calm and serenity of mind which the artist attains as he becomes aware of man's mortality, as he recognizes eternity in myriads of changing things in nature.

Here Zeami's aesthetics approaches religion. Medieval Buddhism, particularly the Shingon sect, maintained that eternal truth, while it transcended the natural world, could be understood only through the things of the natural world. The priests expressed their ideas through images and symbols; they were, in a sense, artists who trans-formed the abstract into the concrete by means of symbolism. Kūkai (774-835), the founder of the Shingon school, openly stated that the essential truths of the esoteric teaching could not be set forth without the means of art, that "art is what reveals to us the state of perfection." The aesthetic qualities of Buddhism were further strengthened as the medieval age advanced and new sects such as Zen and Jōdo grew influential. The "artistic religion" almost became a "religious art." The Nō drama was born and developed within this tradition, and Zeami's concept of art, apart from the question of direct influence, got its nourishment from the tradition. His insistence on the imitation of "primary meaning" rather than outward appearance reflects the Buddhist negation of visible reality as temporary and illusory. His concept of yūgen as "elegance, calm, profundity, mixed with the feeling of mutability" has an obvious Buddhist tinge. His "sublimity" seems parallel to simple and austere beauty, the highest aim of life as Zen Buddhism conceives it. The Buddhist dialectic permeates his whole aesthetics: in numerous ways he urges an artist to transcend being through non-being, to look at reality through super-reality. In fact the Nō itself, as we have it today, is a religious drama: in its final analysis it presents man's original sin and the scheme of salvation by means of symbolic poetry and ritualistic stage-action.

The synthesis of aesthetics and Buddhist philosophy was nothing new. In medieval Japan Buddhism was the very center of life; it was the way in which man moulded chaos into order. Medieval Japanese poetics, which culminated in Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241), was no exception, and it preceded Zeami's aesthetics by several centuries. The origins of Zeami's ideas on art are easily found in the writings of Teika and his followers: yūgen in aware ("sensitivity to the sadness of things"), "sublimity" in "chilliness," the imitation of "primary meaning" in the idea of "complete submersion of the self in the thing." If one comes to the question of origins, one will note that a number of ideas external to the Nō have gone into Zeami's aesthetics—Shintoism, Confucianism, Chinese poetics, calligraphy, in addition to Buddhism and Japanese poetics. Zeami amalgamated them all into his own theory, with the help of the poets and artists who preceded him. The medieval age was the era of synthesis, as against our modern time which is the age of individualism and specialization. Zeami's concept on the Nō shows his remarkable genius as an artist and theorist, but it is, from another point of view, the most beautiful, mature, and sophisticated expression of medieval Japanese aesthetics.