Zeami
From notebook
Bushido
世阿弥元清
『風姿花伝』（花伝書）
1978 岩波文庫・1979 講談社文庫 他
岩波文庫（野上豊一郎・西尾実 校訂）
講談社文庫（川瀬一馬 校注）
Zeami emphrasized a students active and repeated attempts to imitate the master's performance, without being given any verbal explanation. At the same time, however, he indicated that emulation isnot the end state of mastery. The student should be able to do what his master does (or did) without any consciousness of imitation (Ikuta, 1987)
Suzuki method of violin teaching and other instruments of Western music, as well as in various genres of Japanese traditional music (Umemoto, 1985 in Berry, Poortinga, Pandey, 1997)
p352
John W. Berry, Ype H. Poortinga, Janak Pandey (1997) Handbook of Cross-cultural Psychology: Basic processes and human development
http://books.google.com/books?id=LMu07rycDu0C&pg=PA78&dq=zeami&hl=en&ei=ZqH2TeCuEsHjrAeI8dWaCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=zeami&f=false
Theater East and West: perspectives toward a total theater By Leonard Cabell Pronko
"At first he [the apprentice actor] should be allowed to act as he pleases in what he happens to take up naturally and follow his own inclinations. He should not be instructed in minute detail or told that this or that is good or bad. If he is taught too strictly he will lose heart and also become unitersted in the Noh and forthwith cease to make any progress in performance" note 16 p79
excercise, study, meditation body, mind spirit p81
Rene Sieffert sees this concordance between actor and audience as the central idea of ZeamI's philosophy. p82
The karma of words: Buddhism and the literary arts in medieval Japan By William R. LaFleur
花は心、種は技成るべし
稽古と能のパフォーマンス⇒座禅と悟り
修証一等 修行は悟りのための手段ではなく、修行と悟りは不可分で一体のものだということ
幽玄 と 強き「この別目をよくよくみるに幽玄と強きと、＊真似る対象と＊別地にあるものと心得る上に迷う也」１２８ Adequate consideration of these distinctions shows that our going astray is due to a belief that grade (=yuugen) and strength (=tsuyoki) have an existence separate *from the objects of our miming* [*The underlined* words are those interpolated into the text by the translators (Shidehara and Whitehouse)]
As for what has been called hana or flower in these secret teachings, it is important to understand first of all why the flower that blooms in nature has been used here as a simile for many things. Since every variety of tree and plant comes into bloom in its own time in one of the fours seasons, we prize the timeliness and rarity of the blooming of each. SO too in Noh: our minds take as "Interesting" that which we experience as a rare thing. Now what we call *hana* or "flowering," that we call "Intersting," and what we call flowers eventually are scattered: none stays in bloom. And it is preciesely because it blooms and perishes that a flower holds our interest as something rare. SO also in Noh: to know the flowering is first of all to know that nothing abides. The rare things exists because it does not stagnate but moves on from one style to another. 129
Generally a good chapter but more on Noh itself then Zeami's method.
Zeami, "Zeami Juuroku Bushuu, Kwadensho" trans. Michitarou Shidehara and Wilfrid Whitehouse, p.199. See also Motokiyo Zeami "The Secret of Noh Plays: Zeami's Kadensho, p. 74 for another interpolation: "seperate from the subject."
McKINNON, R.N. 'Zeami on the art of training' in Harvard Journal of. Asiatic Studies, vol 16, 1953.
Riken no Ken. Zeami's Theory of Acting and Theatrical Appreciation Michiko Yusa Monumenta Nipponica Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 331-345 (article consists of 15 pages) http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/yusa/docs/riken.pdf
Toru Tani (2008) The Ego, the Other and the Primal Fact, http://www.springerlink.com/content/e1338538h1026p25/fulltext.pdf I formulate the problem in the following manner: how is intersubjectivity possible, if it is even possible at all? The only possible answer is: on the basis of the lived body. Megumi Sakabe (1936), a contemporary Japanese philosopher, recently dealt with an important concept from Motokiyo Zeami, the famous Noh theorist of the fifteenth century: ‘‘Riken no Ken’’—seeing oneself through the eyes of the Other. A Noh actor must see himself dancing not only in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of the audience. The concept of ‘‘Riken no Ken’’ was adopted by Claude Le´vi-Strauss’ as ‘‘le regard e´loigne´.’’ Sakabe says: ‘‘It is normal for the lived body to go beyond itself. A lived body that does not go beyond itself is no lived body.’’
Michael F. MARRA "Italian Fireflies into the Darkness of History" http://utcp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/publications/pdf/UTCPBooklet_11_061-079.pdf In the “Kagami-no-Ma,” the actor puts on the mask; he sees in the mirror his own face or his own mask; at the same time, he is seen by his mask in the mirror and, finally, he sees himself transmogrified in some deity or demon. Afterward, he walks onto the stage as an actor who has changed into a deity or demon or, which is to say the same thing, as a deity or demon who has taken the bodily form of this actor. To say it differently, the actor enters the stage as a self transmogrified into an other, or, as an other transmogrified into the self. Here we witness the typical manifestation of the structure of “Omote” as I described it a while ago. What is important to notice now is the fact that the structure of “Omote” is evidently the structure of the mask, as we have seen, but, at the same time, it is also the structure of the face. The reason is that the face also is what is seen by the other, what sees itself, and what sees itself as an other.27 However, to try to insert this insight into an alleged “local” tradition, as Sakabe does by invoking the name of the medieval playwright Zeami (1364-1443),28 defeats the possibility of applying Sakabe’s model to a reduction of conflict and violence. It would certainly be hard to deny that Zeami worked with the Buddhist notion of a soft subject when he was warning the actor that he was a link in a chain and not a separate character on stage. However, to use this insight in order to set up the strong structure of tradition undermines Sakabe’s own efforts to build a softer philosophy.
