1Zeamis 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

2Abstract

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.

3Philosophy 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?

4Mae 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.

5Zeami 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.

6Todays 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)

7Platos 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.]

8Todays 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?]

99

Ancient Greece: Plato ()

(c. 425 c. 347 BCE)

Ion (c. 380 BCE)Republic (c. 360 BCE)

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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

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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.

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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 magnetismA 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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 realmaker 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.

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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?

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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.

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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!).

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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.

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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)]

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Medieval Japan: Zeami Motokiyo ()

(c. 1363 c. 1443 CE)

Fshikaden (; c. 1400 CE) Transmission of the Style and Flower

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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

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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.

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Cultivating the Flower of Noh

Flowering of childhood (age 7-13, 13-18)

1. Ritual forms only chanting, dance2. 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 lost6. Masterful exercise of skilled restraint (hi sureba hana)

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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?

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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 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.

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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.

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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 extendsself into other [quasi-rational]: Reconciles dualities Resolves dichotomies (cf. contradictions) Generates unity and harmony (cf. reason)

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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).

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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. 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.

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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.

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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 self-mastery 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.

4747

Thank you

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): 30-66.

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.