Person · Japan
Zeami and the Noh Treatises
c. 1363 – c. 1443
Actor, playwright, and theorist who shaped Noh and wrote treatises transmitted secretly within acting lineages.
Zeami Motokiyo wrote treatises including the Fūshikaden on training, aesthetics, and the concept of hana ('flower'). They were passed down privately within Noh families and became widely available only after their publication in the early twentieth century.
The case shows how a tradition can preserve its own knowledge deliberately outside public archives — a different relationship between secrecy, lineage, and history.