The stage arts of nō and kyōgen, together called nōgaku, developed during the 14th century and matured in the early 15th century, thanks to the efforts of playwright/performers Kan’ami Kiyotsugu (1333-84) and his son Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443). Sarugaku, as nō was known during their time, continued to evolve during the 15th and 16th centuries through the work of new playwrights and the theatrical contributions they made. During the Edo period (1603-1868), when nō became the official ceremonial performing art of the shogunal government, the existing repertory and performance conventions were codified. Of some thousand plays created over the centuries since Kan’ami and Zeami’s time, around two hundred and fifty became part of the standard repertory established by the middle of the Edo Period. Only a handful were added in succeeding years. New plays and discarded plays were categorized as “out of the repertory” (bangai). On the other hand, from the mid-Edo Period, some master actors focused on creating variant performances (kogaki) of the already existing repertory. In 1868, with the the Meiji Restoration and the end of the shogunate, nō lost its former samurai elite patronage. New financial backing was sought from a broader public and through the education of amateurs, and new patterns of performance and patronage were set for the century ahead.
In this section:
- The origins of nōgaku
- Early nōgaku
- Early Muromachi nōgaku: the time of the great masters
- Late Muromachi nōgaku: theatricality for a broad public
- The Momoyama Period and the renewal of nōgaku
- Nōgaku under the Tokugawa shoguns
- Nōgaku from the Meiji Period until today
1. The origins of nōgaku
In his treatise called Fūshi-kaden, Zeami traces the origins of nō back to the 7th century when, he explains, Hada no Kōkatsu was commissioned to create sixty-six entertainments called sarugaku. Zeami then explains that the sixty-six pieces were simplified to three, known as Shikisanban – the dances of Okina, Chichi-no-jō, and Sanbasō – and that performances of these pieces brings peace to the land. [1]
The earliest concrete evidence of Shikisanban performances is found in an extant Okina mask dating from the 12th century. Surviving early Okina-related masks (Okina, Sanbasō, Chichi-no-jō, and Enmei-kaja) are preserved today to a large extent in temples and shrines around the old capitals of Kyoto and Nara extending to the north and east to include present-day Fukui, Shiga, and Gifu Prefectures. The performers of Shikisanban were not restricted to sarugaku players but also included dengaku (“field music”) players and shūshi ritual-performing priests. Still, the concentration of old masks in the greater capital area suggests the geographic center that gave birth to nō.
Scholars suggest that the term sarugaku evolved from sangaku, circus-like acrobatics, juggling, and instrumental music imported from the Asian mainland in the 7th to 8th centuries, and again in the early 13th century. Early 14th-century depictions of the sarugaku players show them performing Shikisanban, while their rival dengaku players are shown clacking the binzasara (a type of rattle made of a long string of wooden bars) or throwing knives and performing antics. [2] During the 14th century, sarugaku and dengaku borrowed from each other and both developed a form of musical danced drama, known respectively as “sarugaku nō” and “dengaku nō”. This type of entertainment mostly comprised improvised skits.
Scholars trace the development of early nō to a combination of various performing arts prevalent during the 13th and 14th centuries, which included the following:
- Masked ritual performances. Shikisanban ritual dances, tsuina rites where demons are chased away and the area purified, gyōdō processions of Buddhist deities, and ennen temple banquet entertainments.
- Narrative performances. Spoken dramas, like shin-sarugaku comic skits, sung narratives such as the Heike monogatari performed by blind biwa hōshi (lute-playing storytellers), and songs elaborated in movement, including the arts of female entertainers like imayō and kusemai. Ennen temple banquet entertainments eventually developed texts that drew on both Chinese and Japanese sources and incorporated quotes from Buddhist sutras and classical poetry.
- Dance-based performances. Bugaku dances performed at imperial court functions and in temples and shrines, various kagura (ritual shintō dances), dengaku group dances to the accompaniment of flute, drums, and binzasara performed at planting and harvest times, shūshi priests purifying the grounds, and ennen temple banquet entertainments.
2. Early nōgaku
The mid-14th century saw violent political instability. In 1333, Emperor Go-daigo succeeded in destroying the Kamakura Shogunate in an effort to reassert imperial centrality. Then in 1336, his general Ashikaga Takauji deserted him to set up a new Ashikaga Shogunate in Kyoto and establish an alternative “northern” emperor as his figurehead. The power struggles during this time of rival northern and southern emperors (Nanbokuchō 1336-1392) nurtured social upheavals. Troupes, or guilds (za), of performing artists entered the protection of religious institutions. For instance, the Yamato troupes, the forerunners of the modern day Kanze, Hōshō, Kongō and Konparu stylistic schools were connected to the Kasuga Shrine- Kōfukuji temple complex in Nara. The same social upheavals also stimulated cross influences between performers of differing genres leading to innovation and evolution in the performing arts.
In the Sarugaku dangi (Conversations on sarugaku), Zeami records the names of eminent nō performers in the 14th century, describing them as the “fathers of our art”. These include his father Kan’ami, the dengaku player Itchū and Itchū’s disciple among the Ōmi sarugaku players Inuō (Buddhist name Dōami), and Kiami, “the father of chant”. Kan’ami’s Yūzaki troupe was connected to Kasuga Shrine in Nara; Inuō and Kiami from the Hie troupe were associated with Hiyoshi Shrine in Ōmi (modern-day Shiga Prefecture).
Zeami discusses their styles and critiques performances he saw. From his comments, one can draw up a list of early plays. Generally, early nō plays were characterized by a linear storyline in the present time. There were few characters, and the roles of waki, shite, and tsure were only loosely defined. In the play Kayoi Komachi, for instance, the character Komachi (tsure) dominates the first half of the performance and remains central throughout, while her lover, Shi no Shōshō (shite), enters only half way through the performance. In plays attributed to Kan’ami – like Jinen Koji, Hyakuman, Sotoba Komachi – action (monomane) dominates over dance (mai). Instrumental dances are inserted only where the plot requires them. Language mixes prose and poetry.
One of Kan’ami’s greatest contributions to nō was his adoption of the kusemai, a type of dance-song he learned from a female performer. The strong, accented rhythms added variety to the even beat of the kouta style of singing which was standard at the time. Some kusemai were incorporated wholesale into nō (e.g., in the plays Hakuman and Yamanba) as central scenes consisting of a series of segments (shidai, kuri, sashi, and kuse). For the kuse section of nō, however, the full form of a kusemai was often abbreviated leaving out one or more of the passages preceding the kuse itself.
3. Early Muromachi nōgaku: the time of the great masters
By the last quarter of the 14th century, the Ashikaga shoguns had established relative peace. Under the strong personality of the third shogun, Yoshimitsu（1358-1408, r. 1368-1394), cultural pursuits flourished and the era of two emperors was concluded (1392). Yoshimitsu was a strong patron of the arts, nurturing and rewarding sophisticated accomplishment. He passed the role of patron down to his successors and patronage by the powerful came to spell the success or demise of performers and their troupes.
In 1375, Zeami performed with his father in Kyoto in front of Yoshimitsu. As a result of Yoshimitsu’s admiration, Zeami was thereafter nurtured among the cultural elite, gaining the notice of the renowned poet Nijō Yoshimoto (1320-1388). As a consequence of this exceptional education and of Zeami’s remarkable talents, the plays Zeami composed are often based on classical literature and his use of language is carefully modulated. He is thought to be the originator of the “dream” nō’ (mugen nō), and his increasing emphasis on dance may have been spurred by competition with the excellent Ōmi sarugaku performer, Dōami.
Zeami trained his successors carefully. To ensure a future for his art, he wrote down what he had learned from his father, as well as ideas about performance that he had developed out of his own experience. His writings were composed for specific people to be passed down as secrets.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, many of the nō mask types were created. After the Okina masks, the oldest masks represented supernatural beings, gods, and demons. By Zeami’s time, however, a wide variety of human and “ghost” masks were developed in tandem with the increasing sophistication of nō performance, such as the development of mugen nō plays. Masks of young women made it possible for a mature actor to perform roles that were previously taken by youths. As the full range of roles broadened to include non-living male characters (such as ghosts of warriors, hunters, lovers) as well as sprites, and plant spirits, the demand for new masks broadened. The close relations between actors and mask carvers can be seen in Zeami’s discussion in Sarugaku dangi of the ten famous carvers of his day.
Zeami’s son Motomasa (1394?-1432?) became the head of the Kanze troupe in 1429. He composed several plays with strong human interest and poetic sensitivity, but died mysteriously in 1432, preceding his father. This was only the beginning of setbacks under the fifth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshinori (1394-1441, r. 1429-1441), who favored the dynamic performances of Zeami’s nephew Motoshige, later known as On’ami (1398-1467). In 1433 Yoshinori underwrote and attended a gala benefit performance, the Tadasu Kawara Kanjin Sarugaku, featuring Motoshige. Then, In 1434, for unverified reasons, Zeami was exiled to the island of Sado. The assassination of Yoshinori during a performance by On’ami in 1441 led to a general amnesty and to Zeami’s return to Kyoto. It also led to a weakened government, as Yoshinori’s successors were small children. Growing power in the hands of local daimyo encouraged power struggles culminating in the Ōnin War (1467-77), during which much of Kyoto burned down. Actors along with artisans and numerous others fled the city.
Zeami’s son-in-law Komparu Zenchiku (1405-1470) lived in Nara with ties to the Kasuga-Kōfukuji complex. Somewhat removed from the growing unrest in Kyoto, Zenchiku composed nō and wrote several highly philosophic works. A number of Zeami’s treatises are addressed to Zenchiku, and scholars see Zenchiku as inheriting Zeami’s style and aesthetics, though coloring them with a strongly philosophic interest and religious understanding fostered by close relations with influential priests like Shōtetsu and Ikkyū.
Venues for performance during the early Muromachi period were often religious sites, like the Kasuga-Kōfukuji shrine-temple complex in Nara, to which the Yamato sarugaku performers remained attached for centuries. Other venues included residences of the shogun and of other feudal lords, and open-air benefit performances (kanjin nō) on temporary stages for a paying public. The Tadasu kawara kanjin sarugaku zu, (Sketch of the Benefit Performance by the Riverside at Tadasu Woods; Kanze school archives) is a diagram depicting the stage and seating of a benefit performance held in 1464. Under the drawing of the stage, it lists the plays performed and identifies the dignitaries, including the shogun Yoshimasa (r. 1449-1473), in the front seats.
4. Late Muromachi nōgaku: theatricality for a broad public
The Ōnin War ushered in a century of civil war, with outlying daimyo gathering increasing power while Kyoto remained the coveted cultural center. The city was salvaged by its citizens. Merchants and artisans rose in wealth and importance, adding a new audience for the performing arts still favored by the military class. Nō plays written during this time of “warring states” catered to demands for easy enjoyment and theatricality. A majority of the plays written by Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu (1435-1516), his son Nagatoshi (1488-1531), Komparu Zenpō (1474-1520), and Miyamasu (dates unknown) are typically described today as furyū nō. Furyū nō plays are characterized by being plot-driven, with large casts of characters, extensive dialogue, striking dramatic devices, and taking place in the narrative present (genzai nō). These plays enlivened the traditional repertory, which continued to be performed along with new pieces composed in the style of the great masters.
During this time, the Kanze troupe lost its monopoly on performing for the shogun, and the other Yamato sarugaku troupes (Hōshō, Kongō, Konparu) rose in importance participating in palace performances in 1493, 1497, and later. While Ōmi sarugaku and dengaku lost ground, amateur nō groups (tesarugaku) and regional troupes appeared. While some genres prevalent in the fourteenth century, like the kusemai, imayō, and shirabyōshi died out, narrative dramas like kōwakamai and jōruri gained popularity.
5. The Momoyama Period and the renewal of nōgaku
Over the second half of the 16th century, the country re-unified under a succession of three military leaders: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). All three were patrons of nō. In particular, Hideyoshi’s cultural ambitions led him to study nō performance under a Komparu troupe actor. He himself performed in front of Emperor Go-yōzei.
He even ordered new compositions of nō plays about himself. By subsidizing the yearly events at Kasuga Shrine and Kōfukuji in Nara that included nō performances, Hideyoshi bolstered the importance of the four Yamato troupes serving Kasuga-Kōfukuji, and thereby set the precedent for their enduring importance. Performers from tesarugaku and other regional troupes either joined one of the four Yamato troupes or fell by the wayside.
With the greater freedoms and fluid class structure of the Momoyama period, literary and cultural pursuits flourished. Pictorial and documentary evidence attest to frequent performances not only in the palace, but also for the general public along the seasonally-dry riverbank in Kyoto. Audiences came from every social level. Feeding into the popularity of the performing arts was a growing book production related to nō. Nō stories formed the basis for picture books (Nara ehon). The publication of utaibon (nō chant books) not only served the growing amateur practitioners (like Hideyoshi) but also spurred a purely literary appreciation of the nō texts. Several actors as well as proficient amateurs like Shimotsuma Sōshin (d. 1616), wrote down detailed descriptions of performance practice and staging. Some books, like the Hachijō Kadenshō, which quotes a portion of Zeami’s Fūshi kaden, and the Koetsu edition utaibon were published in moveable type and generally available.
The oldest permanent nō stages (at Nishi Honganji in Kyoto and Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture) also date from this period. The architecture of these roofed outdoor structures was repeated in slight variation for stages built in castles and on religious grounds. The use of masks and costumes also began to be codified in this period. To a large extent, the types of nō costumes, as we known them today, retain the weaves and general styles of the Momoyama Period. Masks, which had grown in sophistication and differentiation in tandem with the development of nō in the 14th and 15th centuries, were now carved by specialists who turned to modeling their work on the best old masks. This in turn contributed to the standardization of masks. Soon mask production became an inherited family occupation.
6. Nōgaku under the Tokugawa shoguns
The first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu (1542-1616, r. 1603-1605), held nō performances in his Edo castle, and already in 1608, all four troupes performed there. Nō became the official ceremonial performance art for celebrating the peace and prosperity of the nation. The actors became public servants, on par with samurai, and received stipends, but they were also under strict regulations. Mistakes in performance were punished. The troupes had to submit lists of their repertory, holdings, and practices. Collections like the Record of Actors of the Four Schools (Yoza yakusha mokuroku, 1646 and 1653) record possessions, anecdotes, and observations. Successive shoguns were nō aficionados. Quite a number of daimyo also took up studying nō. They supported their teachers and held performances in their provincial castles, building stages and assembling collections of masks, costumes, and props.
Knowledge of nō became integral to elite education. Books illustrating nō stories, like the Utai no ehon (Picture Book of Nō Chant) were published. Imagery taken from nō plays appeared on clothing decoration, lacquer and ceramic designs. Dolls representing nō figures became elite household items. By the end of the Edo Period, short sections from nō songs were even used to teach reading in local temple schools.
The codification of nō performance that grew out of its ceremonial function made it increasingly slow. The canon of nō plays hardly changed after the early Edo Period, despite the creation of numerous new plays. Performance practice became set and emphasis shifted from what was done to how it was performed, with attention devoted increasingly to the elaboration of details. Performance time lengthened accordingly. Still, some actors, notably Kanze Motoakira (1722-1774), devised new, interpretive performance practices that eventually became accepted as variants (kogaki). From the mid-Edo period, the invention of variants sparked creativity. Motoakira’s attempt at breathing new life into nō by reviving old plays and writing his own (published in 1765), however, met with disapproval from other actors.
As a ceremonial art of the ruling class, nō performances for commoners were restricted either to “citizens’ nō” (machiiri nō), when the shogun invited city dwellers to view a performance, or to benefit performances (kanjin nō). The latter could only be held under government license, typically once in the lifetime of the head of a school. A temporary outdoor stage was erected, admission was charged, and full-day programs were elaborately staged. In addition, religious centers continued to stage nō. The Kasuga-Kōfukuji festivals still called on the Yamato sarugaku troupes to perform at the yearly events, although not all troupes participated every year. In some rural areas, like Kurokawa in Yamagata, the villagers themselves staged nō as part of their yearly events.
7. Nōgaku from the Meiji Period until today
The year 1868 marks the end of the shogunate governments and the return of the political system with the emperor as sole head of state. Society was in flux, and people who had received stipends from the shogunate had to search out new means of livelihood. This included nō performers. Quite a number turned to alternative professions. From early on, however, the Meiji emperor, whose own parents had been fond of nō, enjoyed nō performances. A year after the restoration, in 1869, the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh was honored with a nō performance. Other high-level performances took place with the imperial presence, and in 1878 the Empress Dowager Eishō added a nō stage to her Aoyama palace. Two years earlier, in 1876, the emperor also enjoyed nō at the home of his minister, Iwakura Tomomi, recently returned from Europe. Having noted the cultural role of opera in Europe, Iwakura hoped that nō could fulfill an important cultural role in the new Meiji world.
A turning point for the revival of nō came in 1879 when former U.S. President Grant visited Japan, and on experiencing a nō performance, recommended the importance of preserving such a “solemn” art. By 1881 a newly formed Nō Society (nōgakusha) had built a public nō stage in Shiba Park in Tokyo. Eventually, the five nō schools built their own stages, and enough practitioners came back to the profession or were trained anew to effect a healthy revival. The top nō actor during this period was Umewaka Minoru (1828-1909) of the Kanze school. He convinced Hōshō school actor Hōshō Kurō (1837-1917), who had turned to farming to earn a living during the period of upheaval, to return to nō practice. Financial support shifted from stipends and high-level patronage in the Edo Period to the box office and teaching amateurs. Dissemination of nō culture also resumed. Costume and mask production became viable again, and numerous prints depicting nō plays, such as those by Tsukioka Kōgyo (1869-1927), fostered familiarity with nō among the general public. Nō utaibon were revised and printed and made available to students of nō and others.
The discovery in 1908 and the subsequent publication of Zeami’s treatises, which had previously been secret property handed down only to the heads of the Kanze and Komparu schools, gave rise to a reappraisal of performance aims. In addition, it spurred the academic study of nō. Carefully annotated publications of nō texts accompanied by essays on costumes, masks, and performance practice, as well as translations of nō into Western languages, created the foundation of nō studies today.
Nō flourished from the late Meiji (1890s) into the early Shōwa Period (1930s), due to increased numbers of amateur practitioners and regular theatre-goers. Like other major art forms, nō was used for purposes of militaristic propaganda, and was performed in the newly colonized territories of Taiwan, Manchuria, and the Korean peninsula. With the beginning of the Second World War, however, nō activities mostly came to a halt in Japan and elsewhere as actors were drafted into the army, and bombing destroyed nō theatres.
Training and performances slowly resumed after the war, when shite stylistic schools collaborated in order to accommodate the shortage of stages and a smaller nō audience population. In 1954, a mixed Kanze-Kita group of actors travelled to Venice to perform in what became the first full nō performance by professionals in the Western world (at the Venice International Theatre Festival). Under the gaze of an increasingly international audience, efforts were made to separate nō from the association with nationalism and militarism. Unlike kabuki, a more popular theatre, and thus under more scrutiny, nō was not so heavily affected by American censorship during the occupation years (1945-1952).
In 1950, shite actor Kanze Hisao joined forces with scholars, critics and contemporary theatre practitioners to found the Nō Renaissance Group (Nōgaku runessansu no kai), seeking to provide a new reading of the theories of Zeami. The construction of a new identity for nōgaku was centered on this new reading, which emphasized the responsibility of the actor to the needs of contemporary audiences. The urge to re-establish a relationship with the general public was determined, at least in its initial phase, by economic needs: after the tragic ending of the Second World War, government and private efforts were dedicated to reconstruction and reinvestment. Little money was left for art-related activities. It was not until 1968 that the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs was established, and an official policy for the preservation and innovation of the arts that involved government endorsement and financial support was issued. Nō performances started to be regularly broadcast on television in cultural programs. Performances that had venerable traditions such as takigi-nō (firelight nō) became particularly popular. The 1970s saw the peak of the ‘democratization’ of traditional arts, and the decade was significantly inaugurated with the establishment, in 1972, of the Japan Foundation, in charge of promoting Japanese culture within the country and abroad. As the country began its economic ascent, the “culture of leisure” started to spread within the middle-class population, and many people undertook training in the traditional arts, such as nō or tea ceremony. While such study was rewarded with certificates to mark each new level of attainment, the activity was undertaken largely as status symbol.
However, with the burst of the economic bubble in the late 1980s, the amateur population started to shrink. As a consequence, the economic conditions for the nō establishment have become unstable, posing a serious threat to the future of new generations of professionals. Today, nō may not be the sign of cultural status that it was in the past. Younger people accustomed to fast-paced animation, tv-series and internet comics do not identify with an art form they see as belonging to a previous generation. In order to combat this trend, the Nōgaku Performers’ Association (Nōgaku kyōkai) has started a demonstration program in primary and secondary schools aimed at creating new audiences and strengthening interest in nō. Performers also use YouTube and Facebook pages to advertise their performances.
Notes
1. Tom Hare, tr. Zeami: Performance Notes, Columbia University Press, 2008. 48-52.
2. For early depictions of sarugaku, see Tsurugaoka hōjōe shokunin uta awase 鶴岡放生会職人歌合. For dengaku, see Urajima Myōjin engi 浦島明神縁起.
Contributor: Monica Bethe and Diego Pellecchia