THE SHOGUN & NOH'S EARLY YEARS
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| Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu |
During the Muromachi period in Japan, 1374, the third shogun witnessed a performance by Zeami Motokiyo and his father, Kan'ami Kiyotsugo.
Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu would not only become a particular admirer of the young Zeami, but a significant patron of the emerging art form. Under his patronage, Zeami developed the Noh form.
ABOUT THE MUROMACHI PERIOD
"The era when members of the Ashikaga family occupied the position of shogun is known as the Muromachi period, named after the district in Kyoto where their headquarters was [later]located. Although the Ashikaga clan occupied the shogunate for nearly 200 years . . . .
Despite the social and political upheaval, the Muromachi period was economically and artistically innovative. This epoch saw the first steps in the establishment of modern commercial, transportation, and urban developments. Contact with China, which had been resumed in the Kamakura period, once again enriched and transformed Japanese thought and aesthetics. One of the imports that was to have a far-reaching impact was Zen Buddhism. Although known in Japan since the seventh century, Zen was enthusiastically embraced by the military class beginning in the thirteenth century and went on to have a profound effect on all aspects of national life, from government and commerce to the arts and education.
Kyoto, which, as the imperial capital, had never ceased to exert an enormous influence on the country's culture, once again became the seat of political power under the Ashikaga shoguns. The private villas that the Ashikaga shoguns built there served as elegant settings for the pursuit of art and culture. While tea drinking had been brought to Japan from China in earlier centuries, in the fifteenth century, a small coterie of highly cultivated men, influenced by Zen ideals, developed the basic principles of the tea (chanoyu) aesthetic. At its highest level, chanoyu involves an appreciation of garden design, architecture, interior design, calligraphy, painting, flower arranging, the decorative arts, and the preparation and service of food. These same enthusiastic patrons of the tea ceremony also lavished support on renga (linked-verse poetry) and No dance-drama, a subtle, slow-moving stage performance featuring masked and elaborately costumed actors." (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/muro/hd_muro.htm)
A bit more about the competitions:
"The competition between noh troupes was brought onstage as formal performance contests called tachiai ("combined performances"), which were judged by the highest-ranking audience member -- in many cases, the shogun himself. Tachiai were usually included as part of the program at kanjin no, or
subscription performances. Not surprisingly, the winners of such
contests stood a much better chance of attracting the shogun's notice
and receiving his patronage as a result. Although noh tachiai
bear some resemblance to the tragic contests held at the Great Dionysia
festival in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens, in which individual playwrights
vied for victory, tachiai involved competition between
performers, not the playwrights, or different troupes. Moreover, unlike
the Athenian contests, in which selected tragedians had already received
official sponsorship from the polis and were competing more for fame
and glory (kleos) than for patronage per se, no tachiai held out the possibility that a rousing victory might elicit the admiration and long-term support of the shogun.
Tachiai
typically involved the simultaneous or successive performance of a set
piece or pieces by various actors from competing troupes. When
performers took the stage successively, the order of the performances
was determined by the drawing of lots (kuji wo hiku). . . . Even when noh troupes were not competing against one another in official tachiai,
every noh performance was, in a sense, an informal contest against
other troupes competing for the same sources of patronage" (Theatricalities of Power: The Cultural Politics of Noh by Steven T. Brown, 2001, p.11).
"In Fushikaden
(Transmission of flower through forms; 1400-1418), Zeami makes it clear
that although the goal of every performing art should be "to calm the
hearts of a wide variety of people and move the feeling of high and low
alike," . . . the success of noh in the Muromachi period depended upon
the favorable response of the nobility (kinin). Zeami's conception of the nobility included members of the military elite (buke), such as the shogun and his high-ranking officers, as well as the court aristocrats (kuge).
Zeami advised the noh actor to regard the attendance o the nobility as
the foundation of one's performance -- going so far as to recommend
starting a performance before its appointed time, if members of the
nobility should happen to arrive early." (Theatricalities of Power: The Cultural Politics of Noh by Steven T. Brown, 2001, p.11-12)
Thus,
"even at subscription performances, where multiple classes inhabited
the same theater, the spacial distribution of the audience suggests" the
shogun and his inner circle were the focus of performance. "Although
the best box in the kanjin theater was set aside for the gods (kami),
who were situated immediately opposite the stage in galleries reserved
for nobility. .. the shogun and his closest advisors sat to the left of
the god's box, whereas the shogun's principal wife and family sat to the
right".
Commoners were permitted in the open, uncovered area below the stage.
"His
writings focus fairly narrowly on transmitting a body of secret
performance techniques that will enable the Kanze actor to succeed in
the highly competitive capital. [. . . ] a kind of technical knowledge
whose secrecy enables a family to sustain an economic living" (The
Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion by Bernhard Scheid and Mark
Teeuwen, 2013. p. 234).
- the recitation & singing of popular ballads
- Sarugaku (see page here)
&
- Dengaku (see page here)
The early origins of Noh theater were mostly folk-type forms of rustic entertainment; Sarugaku, which was connected to Shinto rituals, Dengaku, a kind of acrobatics with juggling, which later developed into a type of song-and-dance, Chinese-derived dances, and recited and chanted ballads which formed part of the oral tradition of the people.
By the middle of the fourteenth century, these various sources seem to have been combined into a form of theater recognizable to modern audiences as Noh, although just what those early plays were like is hard to say.
There are plays believed by scholars to be by Kanami (1333-1385), but they seem to have been heavily revised by his son Zeami (1363-1443), and no surviving play can be securely dated to before their era.
Zeami is the prime figure in Noh, having written a vast quantity of plays for his troupe to perform, many of which are still regularly performed to this day. He also wrote a very famous treatise in 1423 on the skills and methods necessary for a Noh actor, and that document is still valid study for young actors.
What Zeami, inspired by his father, managed to create, was a theater of the Muromachi period (1336-1573), written in the upper-class language of the fourteenth century, but which looked back to the supposed Golden Age of the Heian Period (794-1185), by basing plays on people, events and even poetry of that era creating texts of astonishing richness and opacity.
The Four Seats of Yamato and Tachiai Noh
At that time both sarugaku and dengaku had formed groups known as the Sarugaku-za and the Dengaku-za.
Each group had a leader who acted as the chief support for the
performances. In Yamato there were four particularly strong groups: Yusaki-za, Sakado-za, Tobi-za and Enmai-za. These four groups became the four oldest noh schools that remain today the Kanze, Kongō, Hōsho and Komparu schools respectively.
It was each group’s desire to rise to be considered
the best in the capital. For that purpose, they gathered to perform in a
kind of arts competition known as tachiai noh. Whoever was the
winner would be deemed the best and this led to a fiercely fought
battle. Whoever was in the top seat would have the most influence on the
development of the art. It can also be thought of as one of the reasons
Zeami wrote his treatises “Fūshi Kaden.”
After the Introduction of Zeami
The founder of the Yuzaki-za, Kanami, adapted a form of storytelling dance from sarugaku called, kusemai. He was the first to introduce this kind of dance into noh. Kanami also created to famous noh Sotoba Komachi and Jinen Koji.
Kanami’s son, Zeami inherited noh
from his father and perfected it. In the Muromachi Period, with the
support of the shōguns’ Ashikaga Yosimitsu and Nijo Motoe, Zeami was
able to develop his own art, borrowing the techniques of his rivals. It
was during this time that Zeami developed his notion of Yugen or “mysterious beauty” which he included in a number of his mugen noh (phantasmal noh) including the masterpiece Izutsu which is one of over 50 noh that are attributed to Zeami’s hand. Even now the same poetry and prose that he wrote are still being performed.
Following the death of Zeami, his nephew, Onami and the son in law of Komparu Zenchiku,
took over as head of the troupe and continued developing the art even
as the Onin Wars destroyed the capital. As all this was happening, noh
still played a very active role in the lives of the military commanders.
Among them, Toyotomi Hideyoshi one of the great unifiers of Japan, took a great interest in noh and studied with a Komparu Tayū and commissioned noh with themes about himself to be created.
Recent and Modern Noh
Noh continued under the protection and patronage of the Tokugawa Shōgunate. The second Shōgun Tokugawa Hidetada made it a law that noh and kyōgen would be the official art forms of the shōgunate and that the four sarugaku troupes from Yamato and the newly formed Kita
troupe would be recognized as the official licensed performance
troupes. From this, noh’s standing in society was fixed and it continued
to grow in popularity with both the elite and the commoners. To this
day, it continues to refine itself, however the creative genius from the
artists of the middle ages has been lost.
Following the fall of the Tokugawa Shōgunate, noh
too was in crisis. The following Meiji Period (1868-1912) saw the birth
of a new government and industrial system in Japan as well as a return
of entertainment for ordinary citizens. Noh too went through a kind of
transformation with the development of the iemoto system, the merging of noh and kyōgen into nohgaku, and the building of indoor noh stages. Recently, with the development of people practicing utai (vocal) and shimai (short dance) noh is poised to spread.
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| Noh performer (credit: John W. Bennett) |
An Introduction to Noh
Every culture in the world has its own theater. In Japan one of the
most ancient forms of theater is Noh. The Noh theater found its form
in the fourteenth century and continues in much the same form, with many
of the same plays, in present day Japan. A Noh play portrays one all-encompassing
emotion dominating the main character, the shite (she-tay). Whether
jealousy, rage, or sorrow, all music, gesture, dance, and recitation
are used to build the emotion to its final climax at the close of the
play. Often the plays depict the return of a historical personage, in
spirit— or "ghostly"— form, to the site of a significant event in his or her life. A warrior
might return to the battle field, or young woman to the scene of a love
affair. According to Buddhism of the fourteenth century, a person could
not find spiritual release even after death if he still possessed a strong
emotion or desire. To exorcise this emotion, the warrior might appear
in his armor and recreate the battle in a dance. The dance would reveal
his humiliation at suffering defeat.Noh plays are extremely intense. In order to express something so abstract as an emotion, words are often inadequate. As the play progresses, then, dance and poetry are used to express the tortured heart. Other elements which contribute to an intensification of the mood are the bare simplicity of the stage which allows no distraction from the main character, and the gorgeous costumes of the main character himself. The stylized movements also help to focus the energy on the emotion rather than on the individual personalities. In Noh as in classical ballet, every movement is choreographed and often symbolic. There is no individual interpretation.
Aside from the main character there are one or sometimes two secondary parts, the waki. Usually they are priests attired in long dark robes. Like the audience, the secondary character is really there only to observe the tragedy enacted by the main character. Usually a play opens with the priest or other secondary character's entrance. He describes the scene which he wants the audience to imagine. The scenes are all actual spots in Japan. The main character may then enter disguised as a local person. The local person reveals to the secondary character the significance of the site. He then exits. He returns dressed as his true self with a mask and embroidered robes. From the time of his return to the stage, the secondary character generally remains seated to one side.
Masks are very important in the Noh and are worn only by the main character. The mask helps to raise the action out of the ordinary, to freeze it in time. For the Noh actor the mask of a particular character has almost a magic power. Before putting it on he will look at it until he feels the emotion absorbed within himself. When he puts on the mask, his individuality recedes and he is nothing but the emotion to be depicted.
A chorus sits to the side of the stage. The chorus often echoes the words of the characters, but it may also speak for them. Thus in a dialogue between the main character and secondary characters, the chorus may say the lines of either of them. This is of course according to the script and not improvised. Nothing on the Noh stage is improvised. The use of the chorus to recite the actors' lines make it seem as though the lines belong to no one: The actors are there but the emotion is not under anyone's control. It floats between actors and chorus and is further picked up by a sudden drum beat or drawn out by the flute.
There are usually four musicians who sit to the rear of the stage. Three play Japanese drums and one plays a flute made from bamboo. The drums give a very hollow thud while the flute has an eerie whistling sound. This eerie whisper is what draws the first actor out onto the stage and creates the other-worldly feeling necessary to Noh.
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1000ce_noh.htm
Noh prints by Tsukioka Kogyo (月岡耕漁):
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?people=146511&peoA=146511-2-59
http://www.nohtrainingproject.org/
