Seami Motokiyo

Seami (or Zeami) Motokiyo (1363- 1443) and his father Kan’ami (1333-1384) popularized Noh during the Kitayama bunka (north mountain culture under Ashikaga Yoshimitsu). Under Seami, Noh reached its maturity.

As a youth, Seami performed before Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Yoshimitsu was so impressed that he introduced Seami to the court and provided Seami with an education, while allowing him to continue to act. After Kan’ami died, Seami took over the family troupe in 1385.

Noh are dramatic performances with dance, music, and poetry. Noh combines chanting, mime, and slow dance poses with music and elaborate costumes and masks. Noh is often compared to Greek drama. The subject of the plays comes from history, legend, and magic and is highly influenced by Buddhism. For instance, there is a famous play, Atsumori by Seami, based on an episode in The Tale of the Heike. For more information on Noh see Noh, nō, no.

Seami’s plays incorporated classical and modern themes and both Japanese and Chinese traditions, with many Zen Buddhist themes. He wrote between 30 and 50 plays. Currently, most of the plays that are performed were written by him. He also wrote many treatises on Noh, discussing the philosophy of the performance. In his writings Seami likened proper acting in Noh, which he called yūgen, to a watching a flower unfolding its petals – the precise moment of complete opening is something unusual and unexpected and elegant.

Noh became so popular that shoguns and warlords performed with professional actors.

After Ashikaga Yoshimitsu died, his successor, Ashikaga Yoshimochi, withdrew support for Seami and his troupe. But Seami was successful in getting wealthy merchants to patronize him. A change in shoguns did not help matters. Ashikaga Yoshinori became hostile to Seami. Yoshinori liked Seami’s nephew and after Seami refused to name the nephew as future troupe leader, Yoshinori exiled Seami.

Ashikaga Yoshinori was notorious for his oppressive measures and abusing his powers. When Akamatsu Mitsusuke learned that Yoshinori planned to give a young male favorite three of his provinces, he had Yoshinori assassinated during a Noh performance at his residence. After Yoshinori died, Seami returned to Kyoto. Little is known about his last years.

Almost a century later, Sen no Rikyū, Japan’s greatest tea master, fully developed the tea ceremony as an art form. Sen no Rikyū emphasized the aesthetic ideals of wabi-sabi. Wabi being the ideals of solitude, tranquility, simplicity, and serenity; sabi being the ideals of age, wear, and rusticity. The tea ceremony stressed deliberate and ritualized movement, tranquility and focusing on each moment. Thus, both Noh, as developed by Seami, and the tea ceremony became similar in the ritual, restraint, and harmony, with Buddhist ideals to find a profound truth beyond words.