Zeami Motokiyo

Zeami Motokiyo, who lived from about 1363 to about 1443, was a Japanese actor, playwright and aesthetician, the foremost writer of Noh and the artist who brought it to its classical form. Born near Nara, he learned Noh from his father Kan'ami, whose troupe won the patronage of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and he received a classical education at court. He led the family troupe after 1385 and wrote roughly fifty plays, among them Atsumori, Izutsu and Takasago. His twenty-one treatises, beginning with the Fushikaden, are the oldest known works on the philosophy of drama in Japanese literature. They treat the training of the actor, music, movement and how life should be lived, and draw on Zen Buddhism and on Japanese and Chinese poetry. Out of favor under the shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori, he was exiled to Sado Island in 1434 and died in 1443.