Abstract
Four performance genres preceding the appearance of noh are considered as antecedents: sarugaku (a comic and subversive genre), jushi (a ritual genre), okina sarugaku (a set of ritual pieces presenting elderly men), and ennen (monastic entertainments). These and other genres are described, and their contributions to the later noh tradition are evaluated.
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Notes
- 1.
See Noel Pinnington, “The Early History of the Noh Play: Literacy, Authorship, and Scriptedness,” Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 68, no. 2, 2013, 163–206.
- 2.
See Noel J. Pinnington, “Invented Origins: Muromachi Interpretations of ‘okina sarugaku,’” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 61, no. 3, (1998), 492–518.
- 3.
Well-known scholars who did not reject the theory include Hayashiya Tatsusaburō and Ueki Yukinori. For more on this topic, see the following section in this chapter.
- 4.
The earliest known author of a noh play was a priest of the Tōnomine temple, in the mid-fourteenth century (Pinnington, “Early History,” 184–6).
- 5.
Some scholars distrust the attribution and place the work about 100 years later.
- 6.
Records in the Heian period seem to have used the terms sarugaku (monkey entertainments) and sangaku (random entertainments) as synonyms, depending on whether they were written in Japanese or Sino-Japanese.
- 7.
In Sangaku Sakumon. See discussions in Ōmi Shōji, “Shinsarugakuki Shōkō,” in Nihon Shiseki Ronshū vol. 1, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1969, 433–456, (442–3). For a detailed analysis of earlier court sangaku, see NGK, 1–22.
- 8.
Shinsarugakuki, edited by Ōsone Shōsuke in Yamazaki Tokuhei et al. eds., Kodai Seiji Shakai Shisō (Nihon Koten Shisō Taikei 8), Iwanami Shoten, 1979, 134. I have primarily referred to his notes as well as the discussion of Ōmi Shōji (op. cit.) and the commentary by Kawaguchi in Kawaguchi Hisao ed. Shinsarugakuki (Tōyō Bunko 424) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1983), 3–35. (All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.)
- 9.
Morley, Transformation, Miracles, and Mischief, 25.
- 10.
Kobayashi Yasuharu and Masuko Kazuko eds., Ujishūi Monogatari, (Shinpen Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshū, vol. 50), (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1996), 177–9.
- 11.
According to the diary Chūyūki, guards with these names did perform “sangaku” at the palace in the late eleventh century (see entry for 1093 (Kanji 7).11.23 cited in Suzuki, Nōgakushi nenpyō, 4).
- 12.
Chōshūki, entry for 1133 (Chōshō 2).7.21, cited in Suzuki, Nōgakushi Nenpyō, 5.
- 13.
Gyokuyō 1189 (Bunji 5).12.8. Cited in Hayashiya Tatsusaburô, Chûsei Geinôshi no Kenkyû (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1960), 370. Another well-known use of the word sarugaku occurs in the Heike Monogatari, where a group of conspirators mock the Taira clan on the basis of the homophone “heishi,” meaning both “wine flask” and “Taira clan.” Ichiko Teiji ed. Heike Monogatari 1 (SNKBZ 45), (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1992), 72. For an English translation, see Helen Craig McCullough, trans., The Tale of the Heike (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1988), 47.
- 14.
Gyokuyō, entry for 1178 (Jishō 2).11.28, cited in Ueki Yukinori, “‘Nō’ Keiseizen no Sarugaku – Kosarugaku Nō no Saikentō,” Geinōshi Kenkyū 21 (April 1968) 1–16, 3.
- 15.
NGK, 130–132.
- 16.
Kichijō was a Buddhist deity derived from the Hindu goddess Srī Mahādevī.
- 17.
See Geinōshi Kenkyūkai eds., Nihon Geinōshi. Dainikan: Kodai, Chūsei (Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppan Kyoku, 1982) (referred to hereafter as Nihon Geinōshi 2), 37–39.
- 18.
Hōjōji was founded in the early eleventh century by Fujiwara Michinaga, and passed down as a private temple in his family. The imperial temples were Emperor Enyū’s Enyūji, Emperor Go-Sanjō’s Ensōji, the so-called six Rokushōji (Emperor Shirakawa’s Hosshōji, Emperor Toba’s Saishōji, Emperor Horikawa’s Sonshōji, Empress Taikenmon’in’s Enshōji, Emperor Sutoku’s Hōshoji, and Emperor Konoe’s Enshōji, and Go-Shirakawa’s Rengeōin). Yamaji Kōzō, Okina no Za: Geinōmintachi no Chūsei (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1990), 148.
- 19.
Nihon Geinōshi 2, 39–43.
- 20.
According to the records of Yakushiji, called Jushi Sahō Kyūki, cited in NGK 115–116, and in Nihon Geinōshi 2, 42–43.
- 21.
An example of this usage is found in the diary of Taira Nobunori where he describes a shushōe at the Enshōji temple in 1169: “Went to Enshōji. When the officiating priests had invoked the heavenly and earthly deities, the hōzushi purified the altar, then flowers were ritually spread … then the monks drew in the donations, after which the dragon and the gods (came on) with ranjō music, then there was Bishamon, then the demon piece with the hōzushi joining in the circumambulation, then the officiating priests took wooden seals and gave them to the hōzushi who distributed them to the noble lords and officials.” Entry for 1169 (Nin’an 4).1.11, in Heihanki, cited in NGK, 112 and Nihon Geinōshi 2, 47.
- 22.
The records supporting these statements are listed in summary form in Suzuki, Nōgakushi Nenpyō, 6–9, and are discussed in NGK 152–158 and Nihon Geinōshi 2 46–53. The actor who received an estate income was Jushi Aiōmaru; the account is from Gyokuyō 1194 (Kenkyū 5).1.28.
- 23.
Developing eventually into the well-known spring festival day in Japan, Setsubun, on which a father dresses up as a demon and runs around the house, while his wife and children throw beans at him to chase him out, shouting: “Out with demons, in with good luck.”
- 24.
Yamaji Kôzô, Okina no Za, 151–2.
- 25.
Secret pieces were those that a dancer could not perform without special qualification.
- 26.
Others being untranslatable (see NGK, 144).
- 27.
Tori kō, or tori kabuto, headgear used in court dances.
- 28.
Kobayashi and Masako eds, Ujishūi Monogatari, 188–191.
- 29.
See Hayashiya Tatsusaburō, Chūsei Geinōshi no Kenkyū (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1960), 343–350 and Pinnington, Traces in the Way, 13–15.
- 30.
Rinji Sai Nikki in Nagashima Fukutarō, ed. “Kasuga rinjisai geinō kiroku,” in Dengaku, Sarugaku, Yamaji Kōzō ed., vol. 2 of Nihon Shomin Bunka Shiryō Shūsei (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobō, 1974), 5–20, 9–16. For identification of the actors, see Yamaji Kōzō, Okina no Za, 146.
- 31.
For the later record and discussion, see additional note 36, in Omote Akira and Itô Masayoshi eds., Konparu Kodensho Shûsei (Tokyo: Wanya Shoten, 1969) [hereafter KKS] 589–590.
- 32.
See Hattori Yukio, “Shukushin ron – geinôshin shinkô no kongen ni aru mono, jô,” Bungaku (October 1974) 64–79.
- 33.
In Fūshikaden, in Omote Akira and Katô Shûichi, eds., Zeami Zenchiku (NST 24) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1974) [hereafter ZZ] 38. For translations of Fūshikaden, see Hare, Zeami, Performance Notes, 2008, 24–76, and Rimer and Yamazaki, On the Art of Nō Drama, 1984, 3–63.
- 34.
This kind of interpretation is supported by a later passage from Zeami, where he applies the dynamic to entertainments put on during the Yuima-e festival at Kōfukuji, which he says are similarly designed to “mollify non-Buddhists and pacify evil influences” (Fūshikaden, ZZ, 40).
- 35.
Ben no Naishi Nikki, 1251 (Kenchō 3).1.12, cited in Yamaji, Okina no Za, 156.
- 36.
The halls are called Jōgyōdō, dedicated to the practice of continuous chanting of the nenbutsu formula to the Buddha Amida.
- 37.
For an overview of the evidence for the ushirodo theory and its links to Matarajin, see Yamaji Kōzō, Okina no Za, 152–166.
- 38.
Four such explanations are explored in Pinnington, “Invented Origins,” 499–514.
- 39.
Particularly Hayashiya Tatsusaburō, in Chūsei Geinōshi no Kenkyū, 372–389, and later, Ueki Yukinori, in “Ennen Furyū to sono Keisei,” Geinōshi Kenkyū, vol. 11, October 1965, 1–19.
- 40.
The opening words of his first work are “This art of sarugaku ennen…” (Fūshikaden, ZZ, 14).
- 41.
Particularly at Hōryūji, see the references in Kagenki, 1308 (Enkei 1).8.23 onwards, cited in Suzuki, Nōgakushi Nenpyō, 12.
- 42.
Pinnington, “Early History,” 184–6.
- 43.
For a recent rebuttal, see Amano Fumio’s chapter in Nihon Geinōshi 2, 233–252. The heat in such controversies derives from earlier in the twentieth century. Traditionally it was believed that noh plays were too sophisticated to have been written by mere actors, and that they must have been composed by Buddhist monks for actors to perform. Nose Asaji and others, however, found in Zeami’s writings clear evidence of plays written by actors in his father’s generation as well as his own, and wanted to claim authorship back for actors. Any suggestion that plays were first written by monks has been strongly resisted.
- 44.
Eiga Monogatari has an account of Fujiwara Michinaga viewing such activities: Yamanaka Yutaka et al. eds., Eiga Monogatari (SNKBZ 32) (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 2008) 345–349.
- 45.
People of all classes, but primarily the lower samurai or servant classes, danced through the streets of the capital day and night banging drums, striking bronze gongs and shaking rattles, making a terrible racket as if they had gone mad. The craze began with the Gion Shrine Ghost Festival and was described by aristocrats of the day, such as Fujiwara Munetada and Ōe Masafusa.
- 46.
Translation by Helen Craig McCullough, trans. and ed., The Taiheiki: A Chronicle of Medieval Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 131–132.
- 47.
See next chapter.
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Pinnington, N.J. (2019). Forerunners of Noh Theatre. In: A New History of Medieval Japanese Theatre. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06140-1_2
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