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Introduction
- University of Hawai'i Press
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93 Introduction The essays in Part II consider certain aspects of the adaptations that have occurred over the centuries in the art of nò-kyògen. In his essay, Nagao Kazuo interprets the long history of nò as a series of “misunderstandings ” or “misconceptions” (gokai) whereby performers attempted to recover an unknown (and unknowable) past. Misunderstanding of the past is inevitable because looking backward in time to the past, it is impossible to recapture the fullness of that earlier era. Some misconceptions result in changes for the good, and some lead to undesirable results. Tom Hare’s essay takes up Zeami’s conception of the process of artistic transmission. In his presentation, Dòmoto Masaki suggests that nò was drastically altered when it changed from a dialogue drama to a music-dance drama early in its development. In conference discussions , participants considered at length the process whereby performing arts preserve their current nature while simultaneously they adapt to changing circumstances. Zeami addressed the fundamental issue of all performing arts, their impermanence, when he wrote about hana, the beauty of the flower that quickly fades. Dòmoto Masaki and other participants summarized current Japanese scholarship regarding the formation of nò and kyògen, first as amalgamated and then as independent arts, to provide background for a discussion of present-day changes. It is probable that nò grew out of early ritual or ceremonial dances, including Òkina, which was danced by old men at festivals at Nara, Yuzaki, and other important religious centers, while kyògen developed to make sport of these incantations and to provide entertainment for people who thronged to the performances . Another genre of the medieval period, fûryû, was the catalyst that brought together various dance and dramatic elements. The texts of fûryû show a dramatic structure strikingly similar to nò: two people 94 Adaptation to Contemporary Audiences meet, they decide to travel to an important site, and on arrival at that site a deity (kami) appears before them. The aristocrats who enacted fûryû spectacles on shrine and temple stages were amateurs, referred to as “sarugaku people” (sarugaku shû), while others who performed juggling , acrobatics, or feats of strength were known as “sideshow people” (rikishû). The latter performances seem to have developed into kyògen while professional sarugaku performers adopted the fûryû play structure almost intact in their later nò plays. Records describe nò performances in which an unmasked kyògen actor played the shite character’s wife, an ugly woman (waru onna), in contrast to the beautiful, masked woman played by a nò performer. By the time of Kan’ami Kiyotsugu (1333– 1384), Zeami’s father, inheritors of the tradition of early aristocratic sarugaku and the commoner performers of kyògen servant roles had joined together to form composite troupes capable of doing both nò and kyògen on the same program. Records are fragmentary and the historical process is not at all clear, but this is one major theory of the early relationship between nò and kyògen. Everyone is aware that the term sarugaku, occurring in records over many centuries, is vague in meaning. Certainly performances called by that name varied greatly over time. We don’t even know if Zeami’s treatise New Sarugaku (Shin sarugaku) refers to new types of plays within sarugaku, or to a new performing style for sarugaku. Further , dramatic pieces called nò were a part of the repertories of dengaku , ceremonial agricultural songs and dances, and of sangaku, variety entertainment. So at least three styles of medieval performance —sarugaku, dengaku, and sangaku—included dramatic scenes. It is well known from historical records and from Zeami’s writings that Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was partial to the dengaku actor Noami and to dengaku nò plays prior to his epochal meeting with Zeami. In brief, the term nò probably indicated a plotted, dramatic performance within the repertory of any style of performance of the medieval period. That is, the word meant what geki, drama, means in contemporary Japanese language. Over time, the assignment of roles, stage blocking, and dynamics of performance have all been altered, often drastically. The seated kuse, or iguse, which has already been mentioned, is an example of one change that occurred in stages, over a least a century. In Kan’ami’s and Zeami’s time, the shite actor danced and sang the kuse, the longest song in a play. In time, the chorus joined the shite in the singing, and, by the beginning of the...