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Zeami, noh actor and playwright
An actor and playwright who, with his father 観阿弥, created noh theater in the form it has today, under the patronage of the shogun 足利義満. He wrote many of the plays still performed and the first Japanese treatises on acting.
His best-known work, 風姿花伝, is a handbook on acting and aesthetics, and two of its ideas passed into everyday Japanese.
Common expressions
- 初心忘るべからず: never forget one's beginner's spirit — now a general motto for staying humble and keen at every stage of a career
- 秘すれば花: "what is hidden is the flower" — the idea that art moves people most when it keeps something back
- 花: in Zeami's usage, the fresh charm an actor shows on stage
- 幽玄: subtle, mysterious beauty, the ideal he pursued
Cultural note
The 観世流, the largest noh school today, descends from his family.