Zeami Motokiyo

Zeami Motokiyo (世阿弥 元清, Zeami Motokiyo ^? 1363-1443), also called Kanze Motokiyo (観世 元清 , Kanze Motokiyo^?), was a Japanese actor and playwright.

In addition to writing a large number of plays, Zeami wrote manuals of theater theory, published in 1910, and established nō theater as a serious art form. His books are not only instructions, but also aesthetic treatises based on the spiritual culture of Japan. The most famous are "The Book of Flower and Style Transmission", Füshi kaden (風姿花伝), written in 1423 and the set of treatises "The secret traditions of nō", which were found in 1909 and published in 1960.

Biography

Zeami was educated by his father, Kan'ami, who was also an actor and through this father-son union the nō theater was established. When Kan'ami's company was shown to Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the shōgun of Japan, he asked Zeami that the court have an education in the arts. The shōgun took the boy as his mistress, in the shudo (衆道) tradition, in 1374.

After Zeami succeeded his father, he continued to perform and adapt his own style to what nō is today. A mix of pantomime and vocal acrobatics, it is this style that has fascinated the Japanese for hundreds of years.

Scholars attribute nearly 50 works to Zeami, including the masterpieces Izutsu and Takasago, the latter containing the phrase senshūraku, the "pleasures of a thousand autumns," familiar to sumo adepts as the name of the day before a professional tournament ("Izutsu" and "Takasago" are also the names of the heya in sumo).