Zeamis Reply to Plato: On

the Art of Sarugaku

Susan V. H. Castro, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Japan Studies Association, San Diego, January 9, 2015

Abstract
Mae Smethursts work has largely aimed to articulate Noh (n) theater in Western terms
from their very roots, for example through Aristotles On Tragedy. Her detailed
examination of the shared structure of the content of these superficially quite divergent
arts demonstrates how two initially foreign arts can be made mutually intelligible and
effective through the underlying universals they share. In this spirit, I aim to articulate how
Zeami answers Platos challenge to artistic performance, as expressed in Ion and The
Republic. In Ion, Plato argues that rhapsody is not an art because it requires no mastery.
Rhapsodes are mere vehicles of the divine. In The Republic, Plato argues that tragedy
ought to be banned as a public menace because the mimicry in which tragedians excel is
far removed from truth. These two specific challenges to poetic performing arts, i.e. to
their claim to be arts or to have any value, determine criteria by which we may judge any
putative art, including sarugaku. Though Zeami clearly did not address his Fushikaden to
Plato, he nevertheless answers Platos challenge. I outline in this paper how he does so,
by explaining mastery, mimicry (monomane), and the workings of the divine in sarugaku.
The way in which Zeamis work satisfies these three criteria of art illustrates how
universal norms of art articulated in the West take a distinctive yet recognizable shape in
the East.
Smethurst, Mae J. (2013) Dramatic Action in Greek Tragedy and Noh: Reading with and beyond Aristotle. New York:
Lexington Books.

Philosophy of Art: Basic Questions

What is art?
What are the arts?
Is this art?
What are the correct criteria by which to
judge art?
Are these criteria universal, culturally
relative, individually relative?
3

Mae Smethurst
Question: What are the criteria and
mechanisms of art shared by Greek
tragedy and Japanese sarugaku or
ngaku (Noh)?
Method: Compare content of the scripts.
Smethurst, Mae J. (2013) Dramatic Action in Greek Tragedy
and Noh: Reading with and beyond Aristotle. New York:
Lexington Books.
Smethurst, Mae J.(1989) The Artistry of Aeschylus and
Zeami: A Comparative Study of Greek Tragedy and Noh.
Princeton: Princeton Legacy Library.
4

Zeami v. Aristotles Poetics

Megumi Sata. (1989) Aristotle's Poetics and
Zeami's Teachings on Style and the Flower.
Asian Theatre Journal 6(1):4 7-56.
Ley, Graham. (2000) Aristotle's Poetics,
Bharatamuni's Natyasastra,
and Zeami's Treatises: Theory as Discourse.
Asian Theatre Journal, 17(2): 191-214.

Todays Project
Question: What are the criteria and
mechanisms of art shared by Greek
rhapsody, tragedy, and Japanese
sarugaku/Noh?

Method: Focus on performance

Plato Ion, Republic X
Zeami Fshikaden (aka Kadensho)
6

Platos Challenge to the Performing Arts

To be supportable as a performing art, a

practice must satisfy three criteria:

Mastery Mimicry Metaphysics

Tragedy and rhapsody fail:
Rhapsody is not an art. (Ion)
Imitative poetry [tragedy, drama] ought to be
banned as a danger to the public. (Republic X)

Noh? [It will be useful to anticipate Zeami by keeping

Japanese metaphysics in mind - Zen, Confucianism,
and Shinto - as we consider Plato.]
7

Todays Thesis
Zeamis reply to Plato: Mastery of mimicry is
possible if you get the metaphysics right.
The kind of mastery required is a self-mastery
involving a transformative dissolution of
personality to become the Form of what is
imitated.[Zen]
Mimicry is suggestive or evocative rather than
realistic, operating through a resonance
between the performance and audience.
[Zen/Confucian]
A fluid, continuous ontology is required.[Shinto?]
8

Ancient Greece:
Plato ()
(c. 425 c. 347 BCE)
Ion (c. 380 BCE)
Republic (c. 360 BCE)

Rhapsody - Mastery
Rhapsodes perform poetry written by others.
They must beautifully present the poets
thought to the audience. [Beauty/ygen is not the problem.]
They must know/understand what the poet
means.
So an expert rhapsode should be an expert
on the subjects of which the poet treats.
[Notice this doesnt really follow.]

But rhapsodes arent master diviners or

physicians or charioteers
10

Rhapsody - Mastery
1. Ion is a master only of rhapsody, only of Homer.
2. Does Homer speak of any subjects that differ from those of
all the other poets? tales of war, and of how people deal
with each other in society good people and bad, ordinary
folks and craftsmen... what happens in heaven and in hell
[and] of the births of gods and heroes?

3. Each subject has a proper master (practitioner),

e.g. diviners for divination, charioteers for
charioting, who is also the master critic/judge.
4. There is an art of poetry as a whole; the whole
of any art requires the same discipline/mastery
throughout.
5. Ion is master of nothing.
11

Rhapsody: Masteryto Metaphysics

Ions rebuttal (It is not Homers subjects that matter):
I pay close attention to Homer and only Homer.

Socrates (Platos) Reply:

Q: Why are you gripped by Homer and only Homer?

A: (Metaphysical) Theory of divine magnetism

A magnetic stone (Muse) not only moves iron rings (poets), it puts
power in the rings so they can pull a long chain of iron pieces
(rhapsodes to audience). The power in each depends on the stone.

Being gripped by divine inspiration is not mastery.

12

Rhapsody - Mastery

Being gripped by divine inspiration is not

mastery, but it looks like mastery.

Rhapsody is not itself a subject.

Rhapsodes merely appear to be master
diviners, charioteers, generals, etc.
[This false appearance will be critical to the problem of
mimicry in Republic, but in Ion its divine.]

Their magnetism is not their own.

13

Lessons from Ion

Mastery requires disciplined intellectual and
practical grasp of a whole subject.
Theoretical understanding/insight
Critical ability to judge
Practical ability to do it expertly
Breadth and depth/wholeness of subject
Ownership of the power
Discipline/control of the subject
Zeami generally agrees with Plato, at least
superficially, so far.

14

Lessons from Ion

The metaphor for mastery is grasping or
control of what is external, especially
anothers will, e.g. general controls his
troops; master/slave, charioteer/horse.
Subjects are discrete, predetermined.
Self is determinate, bounded, autonomous.
These assumptions are contrary to Buddhist
teachings, and possibly the source of the
problem.

15

From Mastery to Mimicry

Rhapsodes emote when they recite and they
speak as their characters. (This is their aesthetic
mechanism.)

But rhapsodes dont enact, or pretend.

Tragedy is an imitative form of poetry.
(Tragedians mimic or imitate people, monsters, even gods.)

Rhapsody is not an art, but it is perhaps

spared the falsity of tragedy.
Consult Platos Republic, book X
(concerns the grounds of censorship)

16

The Metaphysics of Imitation

in Platos Theory of Forms
The three couches in Republic X
1. [W]e have three sorts of couches, of which one
exists in nature, and this we shall attributeto the
workmanship of godThe second is made by the
carpenter the third is the production of the painter.
2. Each Form is necessarily unique or singular.
[identity of indiscernables sort of argument]
3. Knowing this [2],and wishing to be the real
maker of the really existing couch, and not a
certain indefinite couch-maker [a maker of many
possible particular, couches], god created a single
such couch in nature.
17

Painters to Poets
Each Form includes numerous particular things
to which we apply the same name, e.g. couch.
Every couch is produced according to the same
idea, in imitation of a Form.
A couch is thus an image of the original Form.
No craftsman constructs the idea only a god
could - craftsmen produce only images.
Painters produce fictional objects (i.e. an image
of one perspective of the outer appearance of an
image of a form) twice removed from reality.
Where do poetry and its performance stand?
18

What of poetry? Republic X

Homer undertakes to treat of war, and the
conduct of campaigns, and the governance of
cities, and the education of human beings.
What evidence do we have that Homer knows
his subjects?
If Homer is only once removed from virtue, i.e. if Homer is
indeed a master general or legislator, there should be some war
won or some city constitution improved thanks to Homer, or at
least some exemplary disciple to prove his knowledge of
subjects. Otherwise he must be admitted a mere imitator.

If Homer himself is no master of subjects,

Homeric performers must even further disguise
the truth.
19

From Magnetism to Fantasy

Poets produce fictional objects that are at least
twice removed from reality.
Imitative poetry performances are even further
removed from knowledge of reality or truth.
Notice this is reminiscent of the magnetic theory
(cf. Ion), but not only is the power attenuated at
each remove, the truth is corrupted, distorted,
perverted, or obscured at each remove.
Imitative poets are furthest removed from truth,
knowledge, and the divine, but we grant them tacit
authority on all subjects (dangerous!).
20

Whats wrong with imitation?

Intellectual poison: maims the reasoning of
those hearers who do not possess an antidote in
the knowledge of its real nature.
How? From the right distance, a good painting
can deceive children.
Poets and tragedians deceive us through a false
claim to mastery of the whole human domain.
silly fellow has apparently fallen in with a mimic whom he
has been deceived into thinking omniscient, because he was
himself incapable of discriminating between knowledge and
lack of knowledge, and imitation.
21

Whats wrong with imitation?

Imitative arts are an intellectual poison that maims the
reasoning of those who do not possess an antidote.
a) Those who know better (e.g. legislators, physicians,
etc.), find no value in such performance because they
have no illusions - its falsity is apparent to them.
b) Those who dont know better take themselves to be
educated, but are in fact deceived and corrupted,
perpetuating a vicious cycle of ignorance and
deception.

Zeami claims that Noh should interest people of poor

judgment, move the sensibilities of high and low
equally, in order to promote peace and longevity.
[Confucian purpose (Mathews 2013)]
22

Whats wrong with imitation?

Imitative arts are an intellectual poison that maims the
reasoning of those who do not possess an antidote.
Drama exercises the non-rational parts of the soul to
generate illusion.
Illusion involves contradiction false knowledge.
Reason abhors contradiction; loves harmony.
The rational part of the soul is the part that disillusions us
and unifies our soul.
The transports of imitation (fantasy) excite and feed and
strengthen the worthless part of the soul, thus destroying
the rational part.

The rational part of the soul is what elevates us above

animals. Zeami: we are elevated by more than the
discursive, cognitive, inferential, factual.
23

Whats wrong with imitation? Republic X

Tragedy and drama are generated by the worst
examples of humanity, i.e. the worst influences.

The irritable character [commoners; drama queens] furnishes a great variety

of materials for imitation, whereas the prudent and calm character [rational
person] is so constantly uniform and unchanging that it is not easily imitated
and when imitated is not easily understood, especially by a general
gathering of all sorts of person collected in a theater.

...the conduct of other people must necessarily influence

our own.
[If you] admit the highly-seasoned Muse of lyric or epic
poetry, [animal] pleasure or pain will have sovereign
power in your city instead of law and reason [civility].
Zeami: our affects divide us and cause conflict, thus require
reconciliation too.
24

Some challenges to meet

1. Actors have a responsibility to master their
subjects.
What subjects?
What does mastery involve?

2. Performances must not deceive.

How can truth be conveyed through pretense?
Which truths?
How could one perform a singular, divine, real Form?

3. Mastery must throughout promote rational

harmony, heal conflict and contradiction.
What is the power of performance? How does it work?
Can it be rational?
How does it unify people or promote civility?
25

Medieval Japan:
Zeami Motokiyo ( )
(c. 1363 c. 1443 CE)
Fshikaden (; c. 1400 CE)

Transmission of the Style and Flower

26

Fushikaden
Ch1: Concerning Practice and Age
Ch2: Role-Playing

Ch3: Questions and Answers

(mostly concerning atmosphere, timing, engaging the audience)

Ch4: Matters concerning the Gods

(includes the public/civic purpose of Noh)

Ch5: Praising the Deepest Principles

Ch6: Cultivating the Flower

Ch7: Additional Oral Traditions

27

Stages
1. At about age 7 children have a natural, inborn presence. Those who have a talent for dance,
movement, chanting or chanting may be taught and allowed to practice these ritual forms. They
may observe and be encouraged to remember and practice the ritual forms, but they are not ready
to consider content or meaning, to attempt roles, to take on discipline, or to be critiqued.
2. At age 12-13 children have the grace, elegance, and carrying voice to flower, but this is only a
flower of the moment, a flower of childhood. Teenagers are not ready for commitment or discipline
but they may engage with the content of Noh and work on roles. They should focus on developing
good technique in what comes easily, i.e. certainty in movement, enunciation, correct forms of
dance.
3. At age 17-18 the actor has lost the flower of childhood, so his acting methods must change in order
to rebloom. Now is the time to make a commitment, to train and dedicate sustained effort to
developing genuine skill in the art.
4. At age 24-25, a dedicated actor may achieve the singular but transitory flower of one in his prime.
This flower is novel but still amateur, a beginners flowering of skill. Like the flower of childhood, the
flower of ones prime impresses the audience through blessings of voice, physical appearance, and
stamina rather than true mastery. To reach the flower of a master, absolute determination, detailed
investigation, much practice and great effort are required.
5. At age 34-35 the actor may have achieved the true flower of a master -skill, subtlety, fine detail.
6. At age 44-45, the actor loses the superficial flower of appearance, leaving only the true flower. Now
the actor must begin to exercise discretion in choosing suitable roles and developing restraint,
paring down performances to their purest form.
7. At age 50+ the master performs only the easy roles with restraint and understatement. The senior
master does very little, but everything he does is charged with such hues, steeped in significance,
and deeply impressive. Now it is not the fine detail of what he does that impresses, but the
simplicity and omission of everything extraneous that impresses.
28

Cultivating the Flower of Noh

Flowering of childhood

(age 7-13, 13-18)

1. Ritual forms only chanting, dance

2. Begin learning content and meaning of the forms,
learning roles, developing technique

Flowering of adulthood

(age 18-25, 25-35)

3. Flower of childhood lost; Commitment to disciplined
training [undergrad; apprenticeship]
4. Intense, detailed study and practice [graduate studies;
journeyman]

True Flowering of Noh

(age 35-45, 50+)

5. Masterful exercise of skill; Flower of adulthood lost
6. Masterful exercise of skilled restraint (hi sureba hana)
29

Cultivating the Flower of Noh

Notice:
The first two flowers are not yet mastery of Noh.
Mastery takes a lifetime of discipline and
practice its difficult to cultivate successfully.
Current questions:
Whats this flower?
What is the subject that an actor must study so
intensely? Of what is the actor a master?

30

The Flower; flowering; the bloom of mastery

Q: What is this flower or hana ? (see Ch7)

The bloom of youth
Flowering into adulthood
The Flower of the Master

A: Metaphor/symbol for what we recognize,

what interests or impresses us.
Singular; unique (cf. Forms)
Deeply real but not fully revealed (cf. Forms)
Associated with the divine (cf. magnetism)
31

Mastery as Flower
When mastery blooms we are interested and
impressed, as we are when contemplating a flower
or when suddenly struck [impressed] by its beauty
or significance.
Mastery is a course, method, Way, or michi of the
blooming of skill, peaking with the fruition of ones
discipline and practice and then wilting
away.(Pinnington 2006)
Each flower is complex, beautiful, unique,
transientand yet they are all the real, eternal
Flower.
32

Mastery as Flower
Platos exemplars were the military general,
slavemaster, etc. who command and control others

Except divination.
Noh has roots in kamigakari (divine shamanistic
possession) in kagura (Ortolani 1984). Zeami could
concede that the true flower of Noh is a form of
divine magnetism. But he doesnt.
Is there is room here for a kind of mastery in poetic
performance?
Need to channel the forms without distortion or
appeal to divine madness.
Still need a subject.
33

Noh Mastery of Monomane

from comic to divine monkey play (Ortolani 1984)

The subject is mimicry:

The flower involved in true Noh mastery is the
flower of imitating something in its entirety, or of
making an impression of the whole on the
audience.(Ch2)
Great actors interest us in something beyond
themselves.[Imagine Tom Cruise as Atsumori]
Imitation of the entire thing the real thing - is
not accomplished by imitation of every detail of
its superficial appearance.
34

Noh Mastery of Monomane

Formality is depersonalizing (Lamarque 1989):

The mask and costume obscure the distinctive face

and physical attributes of the actor, making him
unidentifiable.
The words and tone of the chant are precisely the
same for any actor no ad libbing allowed.
The position of the body and dance moves, kata,
are precisely the same for any actor.
The transformations of the character in the play
make the personality of the character fluid.
Names/point of view are often absent or obscured.
Today: The actor meditates in silence while the
costumers painstakingly sew him into the clothes.
35

Noh Mastery of Monomane

True impression arises from a depersonalizing
inner transformation.
we make the fundamental our Way(ch 6)
simply entrust the performance to role-playing: if
you enter the role completely and use no unreal
fabrication, the performance should be neither rough
nor weak (ch 6)
at a certain level, role-playing is no longer a matter
of imitation. When you have made an exhaustive
study of role-playing, and have truly entered into and
become the subject of the role, your mind will no
longer think, I will imitate this. (ch 7)
36

Progression of Mastery
The successful course to the true flower is the
path of

Body
(focus on physical movement, voice in childhood)

Mind
(focus on meaning, significance in adulthood)

No-Mind
(true Noh requires pure intention without self
awareness)
37

What things does the actor study?

To make mimesis a proper subject, actors must

intensely study what is both worthy of imitation
and possible to imitate.
Archetypes women (heart), warriors (heartless
force), madmen [not stereotypes]

Details of the significance of tone of voice,

subtlety of gesture and stance...
Pivotal moments reversal and recognition,
revelation, transformation, transcendence

These are Zeamis Forms.

38

What things does the actor study?

The Noh aspirant studies

subjects of significance and profundity, and
how to evoke rich experience through
layered symbolism and association rather
than through volume of descriptive detail.

Poetry; not essays

Actors need to become members of the literati,
to study and write poetry and plays.

39

What things does the actor study?

Too much detail and description inhibit the
audience from

making their own associations so that the play

becomes personally significant, and
feeling the symbolic significance of shared cultural
history through iconic characters.

The few details one includes must be true

40

Realistic details must be extremely precise and

accurate to be recognizable.
Poetic details, e.g. those with their own kata, must
be true in form, i.e. the suggestion, symbolism, or
convention must be intuitively or evocatively clear.

Formal Mastery
Mastery in performance is primarily formal rather
than material, i.e. focus on how rather than what.
- How loss feels
- How old men walk
- How anger is expressed through the hands
- How to hold ones head to suggest scenting
- The Noh master masters people, granted, but
not as a commander or controller.

- The true flower of Noh is connection or

cultivation of affective unity [Confucian], not
manipulation or command.
41

Extensive Self-Mastery

Buddhist mastery is self-mastery:

Detachment (cf. controlling or grasping)
Flexibility (cf. static rigidity)
Fully present (cf. lost in fantasy)
Continuous with the universe (cf. independence)
Noh mastery is self-mastery that extends
self into other [quasi-rational]:
Reconciles dualities
Resolves dichotomies (cf. contradictions)
Generates unity and harmony (cf. reason)
42

Extention through Noh

How can self-mastery extend the self to

become what was other?

Faculty: Focused embodied will (not cognitive or

intellectual once mastered)
Mechanisms: Accurate formal identity;
sympathetic interest, impression
Principle: Same form; same thing
Direction(s): Both towards the object of imitation
and towards the audience.
Medium: Atmosphere - emotion, inner spirit, and
mood rather than description, explanation, or
argument (Lamarque 1989).
43

Extending Reality
Horizontal extention is vertical extention.
To extend an image (person) towards another image (person)
should be to reach towards what they have in common, their
shared Form or reality or essence. [transition from the
multiple to one from the many couches to the Form couch]

Extension is realization.

Both Plato and Zeami are dualists in that they distinguish

between this world of appearances and the real world of
Forms or spirits. Extension towards reality is realization.

Real extention requires transformation.

44

Plato thought one could extend oneself while retaining

oneself through command of another.
Zeami thinks one must extend oneself by letting go of
ones boundaries and personality to become more than
oneself.

Metaphysics of Transformation
Without a plausible metaphysics, the extension will be
a delusion.
Options for Plato:
1. Hylomorphism: the material remains the same, but
the form is, flexible, fluid, dynamic. The form
provides continuity through transformation, but
materials may be incommensurably discrete.
2. Continuous ontology: Reject ontological atomism in
favor of material continuity. Both form and matter
are continuous and dynamic, or perhaps there is
no distinction between them, e.g. all selves are
just consciousness.
45

Todays Thesis Revisited

Zeamis reply to Plato: Mastery of mimicry is
possible if you get the metaphysics right.
The kind of mastery required is a Way of selfmastery involving a transformative dissolution of
personality to become the unifying Form of what
is imitated.
Mimicry is suggestive or evocative but true in
form, operating through a resonance between
the performance and audience.
Some fluidity of self and between selves is
required.
46

Fenno, Shelley. The synthesis of ygen and monomane in the N aesthetic of Zeami:
The growth of ygens third dimension.
Lamarque, Peter. (1989) Expression and the Mask: The Dissolution of Personality in
Noh. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 47(2): 157-168.
Mathews, Gary. (2013) Zeamis Confucian Theatre. Asian Theatre Journal 30(1): 3066.

Thank you
Ortolani, Benito. (1984) Shamanism in the Origins of the N Theatre. Asian Theatre
Journal. 1(2): 166-190.
Pinnington, Noel John. (2006) Models of the Way in the Theory of Noh. Japan
Review 18: 29-55.
47