A masterly drama about a master dramatist is playing at the New National Theater in Tokyo through Dec. 21. Bando Mitsugoro, a 47-year-old kabuki actor, takes the title role in "Zeami," a biographical play about the talented writer-actor-director who, in the early 15th century, did more than any other to establish noh theater.
Playwright Masakazu Yamazaki portrays Zeami as a man, who, after achieving fame under the patronage of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), became fatally embroiled in the rivalry between the shogun's successors.
Yamazaki is something of a theatrical star himself. A graduate of Kyoto University, where he majored in aesthetics, he completed postgraduate study in drama at both Kyoto and Yale, and wrote "Zeami" in just two weeks in 1963, at the age of 28. The play won a prize and caught the attention of Senda Koreya, then a prominent actor and director of the Haiyuza (Actors' Theater) in Tokyo. Senda staged "Zeami" the same year, taking the title role. In December 1964, the play received an experimental staging at Asia House in New York City. In 1987, "Zeami" was revived at the Sunshine Theater in Ikebukuro, with kabuki actor Matsumoto Koshiro playing the lead. That version then toured three cities in the United States.