Japanese Literature

Itsumori By

Zeami motokiyo

Language & Form

Play. Japanese Noh drama:

• A highly stylized, abstract, and philosophical type of Japanese play influenced by Zen Buddhism and Shinto religious rituals.

• The word "Noh" means "talent" or "skill."

• Noh plays are very austere poetic dramas involving music, song, dance, and wooden masks.

• The tone of the performances is grave, in keeping with the tragic character of the represented situations.

• A central principle of the Noh drama is "yügen" ("mystery," "depth," "darkness," "beauty," "elegance"), the intimation of a concealed truth, what Zeami Motokiyo defines as "the art of the flower of mystery."

• Noh plays often involve ghosts or ghostly characters and emphasize, through symbolism and stylized gestures, the formal, abstract, and spiritual aspects of human action and emotion and their consequences.

• Noh plays feature a "Shite" (main figure, hero, the "doer"), "Waki" (a secondary protagonist/antagonist), and the "Tsure" (companions of the hero).

• A pine tree painted on the wall is a feature of all Noh stages.

Zeami Motokiyo (1364-1443)

Zeami Motokiyo (1364-1443)

• Also called Kanze Motokiyo• He was a aesthetician , actor,

playwright and a drama theorist. • Son of the itinerant actor Kanami, at the age of 

eleven Zeami attracted the attention of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who became his first major patron. 

• Zeami received his education by his father who was also an actor.

• Later Zeami's fortunes fluctuated with changing political circumstances; 

• The father-son team established the Noh theater.

• He later adapted his style to a mixture of pantomime and vocal acrobatics that entertained the japanese for hundreds of years.

• At the age of seventy, he was banished to a remote island for two years.

•  As playwright, Zeami wrote works of astonishing poetic resonance, incorporating myth, legend, and literary allusion into densely interwoven imagery.

Zeami Motokiyo (1364-1443)

• As drama critic, Zeami produced both practical instruction for actors and highly theoretical work which elevates the art of the No theater to the level of court poetry and linked verse..

• In addition to writing brilliant plays and his major theoretical work, he wrote practical instructions for actors to establish the Noh theatre as a serious art form.

Itsumori by

Zeami Motokiyo

Setting:Place:• Suma-ku, KobeTime:• End of 12th Century

Characters:• Shite Mower/Atsumori

• Waki Renshō/Rensei

• KyogenMower’s companion

Plot• Heike story begins at the end of the battle at Ichi-no-

tani on Suma bay, Naozane, from the rival Genji clan, catches sight of an apparently high ranking warrior of the Heike alone on the shore. 

• They have a short battle and Naozane takes down his opponent and removes his helmet. 

• The soldier is a boy of about 17, similar to the age of his own son.

•  At first Naozone wants to spare the life of the boy, but realizes that other warriors will soon be coming and will kill him regardless. 

Plot• So with tears in his eyes he follows through and 

cuts the boy’s head off. • He later tears a piece of Atsumori’s garment to 

wrap his dead, and finds a flute.•  The flute is a symbol of courtly elegance which 

was hidden under the boy's body armor. • Later, he regrets and is disheartened by the calling 

that has lead him to commit such a brutal act. The incident had a great deal to do with Naozone's later decision to become a Buddhist monk.

Plot• After killing the exceptionally young warrior, Taira no 

Atsumori, in the battle at Ichi-no-tani, Kumagai no Jirō Naozane, a warrior of the Genji clan, renounced the world and took the priestly name Rensei (Renshō), as he was overwhelmed by the tragedy and realized the uncertainty of life. 

• When Rensei (Renshō) visits the Ichi-no-tani battlefield to pray for the repose of Atsumori's soul and looks back on the day, grass cutters appear, to the music of a flute.

•  When Rensei (Renshō) speaks to them, one of them tells him the story associated with the flute.

Plot• To the suspicious Rensei (Renshō), the man responds that 

he has a connection with Atsumori and asks Rensei (Renshō) to repeat the prayer to Amitabha Buddha ten times for the sake of Atsumori.

•  When Rensei (Renshō) recites the sutra connected with Amitabha Tathagata, the man implies that he is the ghost of Atsumori and disappears.

• In the night, the ghost of Atsumori, who looks as he was on his last day, appears before Rensei (Renshō), who prays for the peace of Atsumori's soul. Atsumori is delighted as Rensei (Renshō), who prays for salvation through mourning. Rensei was a foe but is a true friend now. 

Plot• Atsumori then starts to confess. First, in the kuse he 

describes the Heike clan's escape from Kyoto in the autumn of 1183, their forlorn lives in Suma Bay, and the decline of the entire clan.

•  He then dances while recalling the party in the Ichi-no-tani camp in the last night of his life. He shows the past battle scene in which Atsumori came to the beach at Ichi-no-tani to embark on a boat, but Kumagai called after him to challenge him to single combat.

•  Atsumori leaves asking Rensei (Renshō), whom he feels like not an enemy but a close friend, to pray for his soul.

Noh play• In the Noh play "Atsumori" Zeami revisits the encounter 

a Suma Bay between Naozone, who is now a monk named Rensho, and the ghost of Atsumori, disguised as a grass cutter.

•  In the first act Atsumori's ghost shows a love of music by playing the flute. The flute then opens the conversation between the monk and the ghost, that leads to a song recalling the names of famous players. 

• The scene is back at the Bay of Suma. It is a highly poetic landscape with strong a aristocratic culture. This suggests an analogy of the two characters because both fled the capital for this remote shore due to adverse situations. 

Noh play• The second act recalls the banquet Atsumori enjoyed 

with his family the night before his death. Atsumori's ghost reenacts the singing, flute playing, and dancing that took place.

• The play's structure would fall under ghost drama but has been altered, and does not strictly follow Zeami's established style. This is because the relationship between the two was a tragedy for both Atsumori and Naozone, who was forced to kill the boy against his will. 

• Also, as Atsumori needs to be saved from hell, Naozone is desperate to be delivered from his anguish. 

Main issues• Emphasis on pacifist, Buddhist values• Drama as religious ritual of atonement, meditation 

leading to enlightenment• Role of the arts in supporting and framing the religious 

ritual, poetry, flute playing, choral singing• Play of human transformations and reconciliations:

changes of warrior into priest, enemy into friend• Symbolic character of the flute-playing reapers at the 

opening of the play• Theme of the fall of the mighty/proud in the defeat of 

the Taira at Ichi-noTani• Theme of the transience and fleeting quality of earthly 

power and wealth

Contexts• Play based on traditional narratives about the

war between the Genji/Minamoto and Heike/Taira clans (1180-1185).

• Buddhism, religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), a sage who was active in India sometime between the 6th and the 4th c. BC.

• Buddhism emphasizes the idea of karma (the consequences of one's actions), the extinguishing of passion/desire, peaceful coexistence with all living things, and enlightenment (nirvana).

Contexts• Zen Buddhism is a Chinese and Japanese

version of Buddhism emphasizing meditation and self-contemplation as means of attaining satori (enlightenment).

• Shinto: a traditional religion of Japan emphasizing the worship of nature spirits and of the ancestors

Short life:

“We flowered one day;but

birth in the human realm

quickly ends, like a spark from a flint."