Drawings, paintings, and prints of nō figures date back to Zeami’s time. They became prevalent in the 16th to 17th centuries and continued to enjoy a growing audience up to the early 20th century. Nō depictions served various purposes: actors’ notes, records of important events, luxury connoisseur gifts, room decorations, and educational tools. Today, books, portfolios, handscrolls, screens, and playing cards that illustrate nō and kyōgen over their long history provide invaluable historical information on staging, costuming, and props used in former times, and depictions illustrating nō texts as literature provide a historical view of the evolving ways nō stories were imagined.
Depictions can be categorized in various ways: chronological, artistic, sociological, by play, or by performance school. Here we have divided them according to the purpose of production: who made them, for whom, and why? The primary purpose of their production relates directly to questions of artistic liberty and thus to their reliably as historical resources.
In this section
- Illustrations by performers for performers
- Illustration of nō stories
- Pictorial records of events and festivals
- Scenic views incorporating nō and kyōgen
- Pictorial compendiums (nō e-kagami, etc.)
- Performers’ portraits
Illustrations by performers for performers
Actors and musicians wishing to pass on their art sometimes produced instructive illustrations for their successors. The oldest example is found in Zeami’s notes to his son-in-law, Komparu Zenchiku, where he supplements his discussion of the basic elements of nō style in Figure Drawings of the Two Arts and the Three Modes (二曲三体人形図, 1421) with drawings. Both hand-drawn and printed transmissions were produced in the Edo period (1603-1868). A large subgroup includes drawings of stages and properties detailing their construction and use. During the Edo period, specialists in building props were called tsukurimono shi, and they, too, wrote down their secret instructions.
Illustrations of nō stories
As literacy spread during the late 15th to early 17th centuries, illustrated books and scrolls written primarily in a syllabic alphabet (kana) became popular. Among these “Nara Picture Books” (Nara ehon) offered tales based on nō stories, such as Sumidagawa zōshi, Matsukaze Murasame, and Miidera.
In addition, illustrated nō chant books appeared in the late 16th century. During the Edo Period, printed books like Utai no ehon (Illustrated Nō Plays 謡曲画誌) included woodcuts depicting scenes from nō narratives followed by text summarizing the story or describing the scene. The depictions in these illustrations are often emotive story settings, only sometimes referencing a nō stage or a performance context.
Other nō illustrations can be found in scrolls and booklets related to festival activities, such as the numerous depictions of the Onmatsuri at Kasuga Shrine and the firelight nō at Kōfukuji. They detail preparation activities and items, as well as sketches of the proceedings at shrine and temple festivals.
It was a great honor to be allowed the right to hold a subscription or benefit nō (kanjin nō). Detailed visual records were kept for quite a number of these kanjin nō, beginning with the Tadasu kawara kanjin sarugaku performed in the 15th century and ending with the Kōka kanjin nō of 1848. The drawings sought not only to memorialize a specific occasion but also to record for the future such details as offstage activities, architectural details, and provisions for the audience.
Pictorial records of events and festivals
Important performances, either one-time events or recurring festivals, were often recorded visually. For example, a pair of screens entitled “Viewing nō” (Kobe City Museum) memorialize Emperor Yōzei’s visit to view nō at Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Juraku Palace grounds. The rendering focuses more on the audience than on the faithful depiction of the performance.
Scenic views incorporating nō and kyōgen
Large folding screens illustrating cityscapes, such as Rakuchū rakugaizu byōbu (Scenes in and out of Kyoto) and the Edozu byōbu (Edo Scenes), bring to life the attractions of the city and often depict performing arts. Importance is placed on the fact of the performance rather than on which play is performed. A similar generalization surrounds the depictions of nō in pilgrimage mandala (Sankei mandara), where they are shown as ritual activities. Famous examples include the pilgrimage mandala of Ise Shrine and of Taga Shrine. Although great artistic liberty is often taken with the accuracy of staging specifics and the identification of plays, scenes incorporating nō provide invaluable information about the historical and social context in which nō was performed and appreciated in medieval and early modern times.
Pictorial compendiums (nō e-kagami, etc)
Scrolls and boxed sheets of stage scenes were given as gifts for appreciation and reference. The Tokugawa shogun is known to have presented such to his daimyo subjects, an indication of the importance placed on nō connoisseurship during the Edo period.
Early examples of collections of iconic scenes of nō and kyōgen, with careful detail given to costuming and stage properties, date to the beginning of the 17th century. As in the Ko nōkyōgen no zu (Old Depictions of Nō and Kyōgen 古能狂言の図), they often include drawings of the stage and the audience. Over time, one finds more illustrations of the plays abstracted from their settings, as in the scroll Nikuhitsu nōgaku zu (Painted Illustrations of Nō) shown below.
The numerous nō print collections by Tsukioka Kōgyo (1869-1927), such as Nōgaku zue (Pictures of the Nō 能楽図絵), Nōgaku hyakuban (One Hundred Nō Plays 能楽百番), and Kyōgen gojūban (Fifty Kyōgen Plays 狂言五十番), follow the Edo precedents but add Kōgyo’s interpretive touch. They sometimes present a full stage scene, sometimes a closeup of the action, and sometimes an imagistic interpretation. As woodblock prints, they could be printed in large editions, and their sales, both in Japan and abroad, helped promote nō after the Meiji restoration when it had lost its shogunal patronage.
Performers’ portraits
Japan has a long tradition of portrait painting, where typically a formally-dressed figure sits in the lower center of a hanging scroll with an inscription in the upper portion. Some paintings lack inscriptions, others include an indication of setting. Many were commissioned for specific occasions by people known to the subject. The oldest extant full portrait painting of a nō performer is of the 16th-century kotsuzumi player Miyamasu Yazaemon, painted by Kubota Museyasu 窪田統泰 with an inscription by Eiho Eiyū 英甫永雄. Records indicate that 15th-century portraits were made of Zōami and On’ami. A portrait of Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu (1435-1516) is lost, but the inscription above the portrait was recorded in a poetry anthology and provides important biographical data.
Contributor: Monica Bethe