Kanze Zeami (1364–1444,) also identified as Zeami Motokiyo, was a Japanese actor, playwright, and theoretician. His works on the art of the Noh (Nō) theater are celebrated just as much as his dramas are.
Zeami is one of the founders and the primary codifiers of Japan’s traditional Noh, the world’s oldest and continuous professional theater. Over his long career as an actor and a theorist of Noh, Zeami developed 30 to 40 masterpieces of Noh drama, the best of which are Izutsu (The Well-Curb) and Aoi no Ue (The Lady Aoi.)
Zeami was the oldest son of Kannami, a renowned actor who is recognized along with his son as the founder of Noh. In 1400, Zeami wrote the first of his dissertations on Noh, Fushikaden (Style and the Flower.) It articulates the aesthetic of the theater, the training required for an actor, the types of Noh dramas and its characters, and the philosophical beliefs at the heart of Noh.
Fushikaden and the treatises that followed between 1400 and 1433, Kadensho (1400, On Transmitting the Flower,) Shikadosho (1420, On the Way of the Highest Flower,) and Nosakusho (1423, On the Composition of Noh,) were not meant for a wide audience, but instead as tutorials for Zeami’s fellow professionals.
Zeami’s treatises offer a possible insight into Zeami’s development as an actor and a playwright and the evolution of his thinking about his art form.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Zeami Motokiyo
Life is a lying dream, he only wakes who casts the World aside.
—Zeami Motokiyo
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
D. T. Suzuki Japanese Buddhist Philosopher
Masanobu Fukuoka Japanese Buddhist Polymath
Masaru Ibuka Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer
Shunryu Suzuki Buddhist Monk, Author
Yoshida Kenko Japanese Poet
Hokusai Japanese Artist, Wood Engraver
Taiichi Ohno Japanese Manufacturing Engineer
Haruki Murakami Japanese Novelist
Matsuo Basho Japanese Poet
Murasaki Shikibu Japanese Diarist, Novelist