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Paper short abstract

The Kanze Archive comprises 4,500 digitized nō documents collected since Zeami’s lifetime. This paper analyzes kishōmon, menjō, and notation from the archive to reveal how a pyramid-shaped ecosystem of artistic transmission emerged in 18th-century Japan through organizational document practices.

Paper long abstract

The Kanze Bunko preserves 4,500 nō-related documents accumulated by the Kanze family over six hundred years since Zeami’s lifetime. I am part of a research project that digitized this collection and released it as the "Kanze Archive" in 2007, with investigation and refinement continuing since. This project has made precious materials, once closely guarded, accessible to researchers worldwide. This paper first overviews the archival formation history of the Kanze Bunko, then offers a case study utilizing the Kanze Archive: through analysis of transmission documents—kishōmon (oath documents), menjō (licenses), and notation—I reveal the dynamic relationship between artistic transmission and organizational management within the Kanze school, hoping to stimulate further research using this archive.

Among the rapidly expanding digital archives of Japanese literature, the Kanze Bunko holds distinctive value as an organizational archive of documents generated through an artistic community's activities. From the Edo period onward, the Kanze house produced, exchanged, preserved, and reused various documents at its interfaces with the shogunate, nō performers nationwide, utai masters, and amateur disciples. These documents served core functions in the Kanze school's artistic transmission and organizational management, offering crucial evidence for understanding how nō was shaped into its present form.

This paper focuses particularly on kishōmon, menjō, and notation—documents that created the hierarchical structure of artistic transmission known as the iemoto system. Kishōmon are oath documents submitted by disciples to the tayū (grand master) via their teachers upon entering discipleship or when mastering special repertoire, swearing before gods and buddhas not to divulge transmitted content and not to study under other masters. In exchange, menjō—licenses permitting performance of the art—were granted by the tayū to disciples through their teachers. During this process, naoshi (corrections)—subtle oral adjustments supplementing the prescribed notation in utaibon (play texts) and katatsuke (movement notes)—were transmitted. I demonstrate that this pyramid-shaped ecosystem of artistic transmission took shape in the eighteenth century, drawing on materials such as kishōmon and menjō that were inaccessible before the Kanze Archive's release. This research explores historical changes in nō performance in relation to organizational practices of document circulation.