Traditional Japanese Literature

by Haruo Shirane

  The sixty years of the Northern and Southern Courts was probably the bloodiest period in Japanese history. The depth of its chaos and internal conflict are vividly depicted in the Taiheiki (1340s–1371), a military history that bears the seemingly ironic title Chronicle of Great Peace. Nonetheless, despite the constant bloodshed and upheaval, a new culture emerged. A new form of poetry, renga (classical linked verse), led by Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388), became popular; historical chronicles written in the vernacular appeared; Zen priests wrote their finest kanshi (Chinese) poetry; kyōgen (comic drama) were performed; and nō theater was first established as a high art form by Kan’ami (1333–1384).

  Noteworthy among the historical chronicles of the Nanboku-chō period are The Clear Mirror (Masukagami, 1338–1376), which recounts the history of the Kamakura period, especially the Jōkyū rebellion (1221), which resulted in Emperor GoToba’s exile, and Kitabatake Chikafusa’s Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns (Jinnō shōtōki, 1339, 1343), which, under the influence of Ise Shinto, argues for the legitimacy of the imperial succession from the perspective of the Southern Court. But the outstanding military chronicle is the Taiheiki, a history of the throne and the different samurai houses involved in the turmoil of the Northern and Southern Courts period. The Taiheiki was recited widely, and beginning in the Muromachi period, it had a great impact on popular culture.

  Until the thirteenth century, renga (linked verse) had been monopolized by court aristocrats, but from the end of the Kamakura period (1185–1333), it suddenly spread to samurai, temple-shrines, and commoners across the country. In response to this new market, texts like the Tsukuba Collection (Tsukubashū, 1356), an anthology of renga edited by Nijō Yoshimoto, one of the leading intellectuals and poets of the day, were compiled.

  The Muromachi period—named after the Ashikaga clan that established the bakufu, or military government, in Muromachi, a section of Kyoto—lasted for about 180 years, from 1392, when the two imperial courts were unified, to 1573, when Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) drove out the fifteenth and last Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiaki (1537–1597). The latter half of the Muromachi period is sometimes referred to as the Sengoku (Warring States) period (1467–1573), beginning with the Ōnin war (1467–1477) and ending with the unification of the country under Oda Nobunaga in 1573. The Azuchi–Momoyama period, when Oda Nobunaga and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) held control of the country, began with the fall of the Muromachi shogunate in 1573 and ended with the battle of Sekigahara, which unified the country in 1600 under Tokugawa Ieyasu and ushered in the Tokugawa, or Edo, period.

  During the Northern and Southern Courts period, classical court culture gradually disappeared, replaced by the rise of linked verse (pioneered by Nijō Yoshimoto and others), the flourishing of Chinese poetry by Zen monks, and the emergence of nō drama, kyōgen, and such dance (mai) forms as kowakamai (ballad drama). These dramatic forms prospered in the Muromachi period and were patronized by and became the favorite pastimes of powerful domain lords and shoguns. Otogi-zōshi (the narrative successor to monogatari and setsuwa) and kouta (little songs) were popular as well. Theories of art and drama became highly developed during the Muromachi period, with Zeami’s (1363?–1443?) and Zenchiku’s (1405?–1470?) treatises on nō drama, Shōtetsu’s (1381–1459) treatise on waka, and Sōgi’s (1421–1502) and Shinkei’s (1406–1475) writings on renga. The short Azuchi–Momoyama period represents a transition to the Tokugawa or early modern period, in which sekkyō-bushi (sermon ballads) were popular and jōruri (puppet theater) and kabuki first appeared. In the late medieval period, haikai (popular linked verse) and renga (classical linked verse) found large audiences, and by the seventeenth century, haikai had become the most widely practiced literary genre in Japan. In 1549 the Jesuit order (Societas Jesu, J. Yasokai), which was founded in 1540, sent missionaries to Japan, and they brought with them Western culture and produced a romanized version of Aesop’s Fables.

  THE PATRONAGE OF THE ASHIKAGA

  The Muromachi bakufu came of age with the third shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (r. 1368–1394), who unified the Northern and Southern imperial courts. Yoshimitsu was also a great patron of the arts and is especially remembered for the retreat that he built at Kitayama, north of the capital, and for the construction of the Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion). The cultural efflorescence under Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and his son Ashikaga Yoshimochi, the fourth shogun (r. 1394–1423), is referred to as Kitayama culture. In the Muromachi period, both nō and kyōgen matured into major genres, particularly under the leadership of Zeami, whose patron was Yoshimitsu. Another notable period of cultural activity was the so-called Higashiyama period, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, primarily during the rule of Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–1490, r. 1449–1473), the eighth shogun. In 1483 he built a retreat at Higashiyama (the Ginkaku-ji, or Silver Pavilion), where he led an elegant life and supported nō drama, tea ceremony, flower arrangement, renga, and landscape gardening. Higashiyama culture, as it is called, is noted for its fusion of warrior, aristocratic, and Zen elements, particularly the notions of wabi and sabi, which found beauty and depth in minimalist, seemingly impoverished, material.

  The origins of nō drama were the sarugaku (literally, “monkey/comic art”) schools associated with shrines and temples (such as the Kasuga Shrine) in Ōmi and Yamato Provinces. The actors belonged to groups attached to private estate owners (ryōshu) and large temples and shrines in the Kinai region (Yamato, Yamashiro, Kawachi, Izumi, and Settsu Provinces). A number of nō plays are based on engi-mono, stories about the origins of local gods. During the Northern and Southern Courts period, when nō and kyōgen matured, Kan’ami (1333–1384) and Zeami were being patronized by the Ashikaga shogunal family, which stood at the apex of power. At that point, nō and kyōgen broke away from their earlier dependence on temples and shrines and from their function as religious performances supporting the private estate system. Of particular interest here is that in their mature phase, nō and kyōgen, which had developed in the provinces as commoner entertainment, now were the province of the Muromachi military government, situated in the capital, which was actively absorbing the court culture. At this time, nō reflected Heian court culture and aesthetics and developed the aesthetics of yūgen (mystery and depth), which included evocations of the classical past. Characteristic of this phase of nō was the woman play (katsura mono), including plays about characters from The Tales of Ise and The Tale of Genji. Despite first taking shape in the provinces and outside the central spheres of power, nō now was helping enforce the authority of the center, of the Muromachi bakufu, and of the revival of imperial court culture.

  ZEN AND SAMURAI CULTURE

  From the latter half of the thirteenth century and peaking in the fourteenth century, Song and Yuan Zen culture was imported into the world of the shrines and temples in both Kamakura and Kyoto. Zen Buddhism influenced such art forms as dry stone gardens (karesansui), monochromatic ink-painting, Chinese poetry (kanshi), and tea ceremony. Using the Chinese cultural forms that the Zen institutions had imported, the temples and shrines created a new culture distinct from that established by the Heian court aristocrats.

  Likewise, samurai culture used Zen culture to transform itself. Until the thirteenth century—despite the outstanding samurai waka poets like Minamoto Sanetomo (1192–1219); the third Kamakura shogun (r. 1203–1219), who produced the Poetry Collection of the Minister from Kamakura (Kinkaishū), in a neo-Man’yōshū style; and the bakufu rituals imitating those of the Kyoto nobility—they all remained within the framework of aristocratic culture. Then, beginning in the latter half of the thirteenth century, when the bakufu had as much authority as the imperial court, the samurai slowly began to produce their own culture, particularly through the medium of Zen. The bakufu invited Zen intellectual leaders to Kamakura, and under its patronage the Zen priests imported texts and utensils from Song and Yuan China. After the Northern and Southern Courts period, this Zen-inspired samurai culture developed rap
idly, creating a distinctive culture that was more than merely an imitation of Zen culture.

  THE RISE OF PROVINCIAL CULTURE

  One of the main characteristics of the late medieval period is that the various genres that had originated in Heian court culture—the imperial anthologies of Japanese poetry (chokusenshū), the vernacular court tales (monogatari), and women’s court diaries (nikki)—and that had continued to flourish in the Kamakura period, almost completely died out. The editing and collecting of setsuwa (anecdotes), which were popular in the late Heian and Kamakura periods, also ended with the compilation of the Records of Three Countries (Sangoku denki), in the first half of the fifteenth century.

  Perhaps one of the most salient characteristics of the Muromachi culture was its focus on commoner life and values in the provinces. In the late Heian period, setsuwa collections such as the Tales of Times Now Past (Konjaku monogatari shū, ca. 1120) provided a window onto life in the provinces, but the values remained largely those of the capital and the aristocracy. But in the late medieval period, the perspectives of the provinces and of the commoners formed a counterbalance to those of the capital and aristocrats.

  At the beginning of the medieval period, the establishment of the bakufu, the seat of the military government, in the east in Kamakura, far from the capital, had a great impact on medieval culture. Although cultural activity continued to be centered in Kyoto, a new community of intellectuals gathered in Kamakura, making it a separate cultural center. The spread of culture outside the capital increased dramatically during the Warring States period (1467–1573). The Ōnin war (1467–1477), which arose over an inheritance issue involving the Ashikaga shogun and which pitted daimyō (military lords) from the west against those in the east, took place mainly in Kyoto and destroyed the city, leading aristocrats and cultural figures to flee to the provinces.

  The rise of a new culture was closely related to the development of roads and travel, the reasons for which are various. Many people wanted to escape the ravages of war, and the aristocracy, particularly after being driven out of the capital during the Ōnin war, sought the patronage of wealthy provincial lords. Buddhist and Shinto followers frequently went on pilgrimages to shrines and temples, the most famous of which was the pilgrimage to Ise Shrine. Various religious groups—such as monks from Mount Kōya (Kōya hijiri), monks soliciting donations for temple building (kanjin hijiri), and nuns (bikuni)—also traveled, as did biwa hōshi (lute-playing minstrels), etoki (picture storytellers), nō actors, kyōgen players, and puppeteers (tekugutsu). Renga masters, who often were half layperson and half priest, also traveled to compose with different groups throughout the country, to give lessons on the Japanese classics, and to inspire their own poetry.

  The culture of the capital was thus carried to the provinces while the culture of the provinces was brought to the capital, giving new life to both. This interaction of oral and written, aristocratic and commoner, led, particularly in the late medieval period, to the juxtaposition of the elegant, refined sensibility (ushin) and the common or popular (mushin), the serious and the comic, the elite and the popular—what in the Tokugawa period was called ga (high) and zoku (low). This dialectic is evident in the relationship of nō to kyōgen, and of renga (classical linked verse) to haikai (popular linked verse). Sometimes a commoner genre (such as sarugaku, a form of mime) evolved into an elite genre like nō, shedding its comic, vulgar, or commoner roots. Sometimes, however, a genre continued to cultivate its own popular base (as with kyōgen and haikai).

  NŌ DRAMA

  Nō drama consists of dance, song, and dialogue and is traditionally performed by an all-male cast. Sometime in the late Kamakura period (1192–1333), sarugaku (literally, “monkey/comic art”), a performance art that includes comic mime and skits, evolved into nō drama. Sarugaku troupes served at temples, and it is believed that their roles in religious rituals have been preserved in the oldest and most ritualistic piece in the current nō repertoire, Okina (literally, Old Man), in which the dances of deities celebrate and purify a world at peace.

  By the mid-fourteenth century, nō had gained wide popularity and was performed not only by sarugaku but also by dengaku troupes. Dengaku had originally been a type of musical accompaniment to the planting of rice, but its troupes came to specialize in acrobatics and dance as well. In the late fourteenth century, a period of intense competition (among troupes and between sarugaku and dengaku), the Kanze troupe, a sarugaku troupe from Yamato Province (now Nara Prefecture), led first by Kan’ami (1333–1384) and later by his son Zeami (1363?–1443?), shaped the genre into what is seen on today’s stage.

  Kan’ami attracted audiences with his rare talent as a performer and a playwright. Among his innovations was the introduction of the kusemai, a popular genre combining song and dance, in which the dancing performer rhythmically chants a long narrative. By incorporating the rhythms of kusemai singing into his troupe’s performances, Kan’ami transformed the hitherto rather monotonous nō chanting into a more dramatic form, one that became very popular and was soon emulated by other sarugaku and dengaku troupes.

  In 1374, Kan’ami’s growing popularity finally inspired the seventeen-year-old Yoshimitsu (1358–1408, r. 1368–1394), the third Ashikaga shogun, to attend a performance by Kan’ami’s troupe in Imagumano (in eastern Kyoto). From that time on, the young shogun became a fervent patron of Kan’ami’s troupe. Yoshimitsu also was charmed by a beautiful boy actor, the twelve-year-old Zeami. Zeami soon began serving the shogun as his favorite page, mixing with court nobles and attending linked-poetry (renga) parties and other cultural events. After Kan’ami’s death, however, Yoshimitsu’s patronage shifted from Zeami, now a mature nō performer and the head of his own troupe, to Inuō (also known as Dōami, d. 1413), a performer in a sarugaku troupe from Ōmi Province (now Shiga Prefecture). Inuō had gained a reputation for his “heavenly maiden dance” (tennyo-no-mai), an elegant dance that was said to epitomize yūgen, a term signifying profound and refined beauty and the dominant aesthetic among upper social circles.

  In order to maintain the shogun’s favor, Zeami had to keep producing new plays and reforming his troupe’s performing style in accordance with shifting aesthetic trends. Zeami’s plays, of which he wrote nearly forty (or more than fifty, if his revisions of existing plays are included), are marked by exquisite phrasing and frequent allusions to Japanese classical texts. In addition, Zeami incorporated Inuō’s elegant dance into his own plays, even though his troupe had originally specialized in wild demon plays and realistic mimicry. In an effort to adjust his troupe’s performances to the principle of yūgen, Zeami created plays with elegant dances and refined versification, which poetically represented aristocratic characters often drawn from Heian monogatari. In his twenty or so theoretical treatises on nō, he also emphasized the importance of using yūgen in every aspect of nō.

  Another of Zeami’s innovations was the mugen-nō (dream play or phantasmal play), which typically consists of two acts. In the first, a traveler (often a traveling monk) meets a ghost, a plant spirit, or a deity, who, in the guise of a local commoner, recalls a famous episode that took place at that location, and in the second act, the ghost, spirit, or deity reappears in its original form in the monk’s dream. The ghost usually recalls a crucial incident in its former life, an incident that is now causing attachment and obstructing its path to buddhahood. By reenacting that incident, the ghost seeks to gain enlightenment through the monk’s prayers. The focus of these plays thus is less on the interaction between the characters than on the protagonist’s emotional state.

  Ashikaga Yoshinori (Yoshimitsu’s son), who became the sixth Ashikaga shogun in 1429, favored Zeami’s nephew On’ami, eventually placing him at the head of the Kanze troupe. With the loss of the shogun’s patronage, Zeami’s second son took the tonsure and left the theater. His elder son Motomasa, the author of Sumida River (Sumidagawa) and Zeami’s last hope, died in 1432, in his early thirties. In 1435 Zeami was exiled to Sado, a remote
island in northeastern Japan. The year of his death is not certain, nor is it known whether he died on Sado or was pardoned and permitted to return to Kyoto.

  After his death, Zeami’s plays were recognized as central to the repertoire and were followed especially faithfully by Zeami’s son-in-law Zenchiku (1405?–1470?), the author of Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya). In the late Muromachi period, following the Ōnin war (1467–1477), audiences began to exhibit a taste for different types of nō, spurring the creation of more spectacular plays, such as those depicting dramatic events occurring in the present (for example, Ataka) and often featuring realistic battle scenes.

  Nō became especially popular among the warrior class. When Tokugawa Ieyasu founded his shogunate in Edo in 1603, he bestowed his official patronage on four sarugaku troupes: Kanze, Hōshō, Konparu, and Kongō, all from Yamato (later the Kita troupe was added). As a result, only those performers affiliated with these four (or five) troupes were officially allowed to perform nō. It also became customary among provincial lords (daimyō), following the shogun’s lead, to employ performers of official nō troupes, who performed on ceremonial occasions. One of the direct outcomes of this ceremonialization of nō was a lengthening of performance times, as a result of which the plays came to be performed with much more rigorous precision. The intention was not to bring nō into line with changing trends but to preserve and refine the established plays and performance styles.

  Although around 2,000 nō plays still exist, the current repertoire consists of only about 240 plays, most of which were written between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. And even today, many of the most frequently performed plays are those written by Zeami.