They came to party: an examination of the social status of the medieval noh theatre

Abstract

The Japanese noh theatre started out as a popular art form which originated among the lower classes of society. The noh master Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443?) refined it so that it conformed with the aesthetic preferences of the élite members of the audience. Within a century of Zeami’s death, many members of the audience had crossed the boundary between spectator and performer, and had begun ardently to learn to perform noh. By this time, the performers were able to participate in defining the noh theatre, rather than being constrained by the aesthetic preferences of their patrons as in the earlier times. This paper argues that evidence of the changing social discourse about the noh theatre can be found in historical documents written by both the audience members and noh practitioners. These historical documents, ranging from noh treatises to diary entries, demonstrate how the noh theatre was perceived and related to by both the performers and the audience since Zeami’s time. When the genre had successfully established itself as an officially sanctioned theatrical form during the late Muromachi period, noh practitioners were able to create a category of noh plays that were markedly different from the earlier ones.