Fūshikaden: the performer’s flower changes with age and occasion

Seven parts have a layered history

The first three parts carry a 1400 authorial colophon, followed by additions and revisions. The Japan Arts Council distinguishes Zeami’s title for parts one to five from the separately written and transmitted sixth and seventh parts. The seven parts cover different subjects; the seven ages of training belong within the first part. Part one concerns training through life; two studies nine role types; three uses questions and answers about performance; four relates origin traditions; five considers varied styles and audiences; six addresses scripts, acting and artistic rank; seven concentrates on flower.

Training responds to a changing performer

Age-related practice begins at seven with encouragement of song and movement. At twelve or thirteen, youthful appeal is treated as temporary; at seventeen or eighteen, changing voice and body require persistence. Later warnings concern applause mistaken for mastery and the adjustment of effort in older age. These are historical theatrical prescriptions rather than a modern biological timetable.

Flower involves an audience

Flower is more than attractive appearance. Freshness, cultivated skills and the occasion matter together. Youthful appeal can fade, while learning roles and developing a repertoire provide other resources. The performer must judge audience and circumstances rather than assuming that repeating a successful action will always have the same effect.

Secrecy concerns expectation

The seventh part connects withheld knowledge with an audience’s experience of novelty. It sits beside practical discussion of scripts, roles, performance and timing. Reducing this to a maxim that keeping secrets guarantees success removes its theatrical setting. Later motivational uses are adaptations rather than substitutes for the argument.

The manuscript is another historical layer

The Kanze collection’s five-volume manuscript at the University of Tokyo is a late-Muromachi copy bearing Sōsetsu’s signature, not Zeami’s autograph of all seven parts. Separate sixth- and seventh-part autographs preserve further transmission histories and textual differences. A copied authorial colophon does not date the physical manuscript.

A different stage came with Yoshida Tōgo’s edited Zeami Jūrokubushū, published by Nōgakukai in February 1909. Publication brought teachings long transmitted within Noh lineages to a broader readership. The printed edition and a surviving manuscript have different histories.

View the University of Tokyo’s five-volume manuscript record ↗View the National Diet Library’s 1909 printed-edition record ↗