SOURCE: Ueda, Makoto. “Zeami and the Art of the Nō Drama: Imitation, Yugen, and Sublimity.” In Japanese Aesthetics and Culture: A Reader, edited by Nancy G. Hume, pp. 177-91. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

In the following essay, originally published in 1967, Ueda describes Zeami's concepts of perfect Nō drama, including the role of the actor and the importance of music and religion.

The aesthetics of Japanese theater reached a peak in its history with the writings of Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443), a great actor, writer, and theorizer of the Nō drama. For one thing, the Nō was a highly refined, sophisticated art form, accepting no immature theory for itself. It had absorbed many heterogeneous elements from the outside, such as Chinese operatic drama and Japanese folk dance, Shinto rituals and Buddhist ceremonies, and popular mimetic shows and aristocratic court music, eventually integrating them all into a single...