Traces in the Way: Michi and the Writings of Komparu Zenchiku (review)

Traces in the Way: Michi and the Writings of Komparu Zenchiku focuses on a group of commentaries written by Konparu Zenchiku (1405–1470?), a Japanese sarugaku noh playwright and head of the Konparu troupe, which was patronized by the powerful Kōfukuji-Kasuga temple-shrine complex in Nara. Zenchiku was also the son-in-law of Kanze Zeami (1363–1443), who (along with his father Kannami) is generally considered the creator of the theatrical form we think of as noh today. Under Zeami's leadership, the Kanze troupe managed to monopolize shogunate patronage in the capital, effectively shutting out the other troupes, including the Konparu. Zeami's success came back to haunt him late in life, however, when the notoriously unstable shogun Yoshinori interceded directly in a crisis of succession within the Kanze troupe. After the death of Zeami's son Motomasa, Zeami refused to countenance Yoshinori's choice of Zeami's nephew Onnami for leadership of the Kanze troupe, a decision that may have led to Zeami's banishment. It is possible that in his old age Zeami saw Zenchiku, the finest actor and playwright of his generation, as his true artistic successor, despite Zenchiku's position as the head of a rival troupe. For this reason Zenchiku's commentaries have been the focus of much scholarly attention, and yet these commentaries have proved remarkably resistant to interpretation. In Traces in the Way, Noel Pinnington manages to do what no scholar, Japanese or Western, has managed to do before: he actually makes sense of Zenchiku's most frustratingly obscure texts, including the Go on (Five Voice) "typological" texts, the commentaries on the Rokurin ichiro (Six Circles, One Dewdrop) diagrams, and the unfinished Meishukushū (Collection of Writings Illuminating the Indwelling Deity).

Pinnington goes after the meaning in these works using a two-pronged attack: first, he situates Zenchiku's and Zeami's commentaries in their historical context (particularly the patronage networks in which the two playwrights were active), illuminating their ideological underpinnings and their respective social uses; here he follows Pierre Bourdieu. Second, he makes no assumptions about what Zenchiku might have "intended" by these writings, but instead explicates the forms of their rhetorical argument and interpretive methodology, as well as underlying premises about written versus oral traditions, in this case following Michel Foucault and Walter Ong. Pinnington's approach is amply validated by the results: in example after example obscure phrases and concepts that previous scholars have failed to elucidate are now convincingly explained.

Such a thoroughgoing reevaluation would have been contribution enough, but as a bonus, Pinnington throws in a full-throttle critique of Konishi Jin'ichi's famous five-part definition of the medieval notion of michi (the "path" of an aesthetic or religious tradition). Using Konishi's definition of michi as an organizing principle of the book is simply brilliant. It places the problem of Zenchiku's writings, which might otherwise appear to be a somewhat narrow topic, within a substantive reevaluation of one of the most influential concepts in medieval Japanese literary studies of the last thirty years.

Briefly put, Konishi argues that the ideal of michi encompasses five characteristics: (1) specialization—the exclusive practice of one artistic tradition and wholehearted dedication to it; (2) transmission—that ideally an artistic tradition should be transmitted unchanged from master to disciple within a mutually beneficial and harmonious succession process; (3) an ethos of conformity—that the disciple does not deviate from his teacher's model; (4) universality—that when one reaches the highest stage of mastery in an artistic tradition, one understands universal truths applicable to any art; and (5) authority—that when one masters any one artistic tradition one naturally garners authority and the respect of all other artists. Konishi understands these defining characteristics to have developed chronologically and incrementally from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. Thus, for Konishi, the fully formed ideal of michi only came to...