Konparu Zenpō Explained

was a Japanese Noh actor and playwright of the Konparu school. He was the grandson of Konparu Zenchiku. Zenpō's plays were more popular and dramatic, novel and crowd-pleasing with large casts and more elaborate effects and sets, than the plays of his grandfather's, or his great-grandfather Zeami's, although he did have an appreciation of yugen and wabi (Zenpō was a pupil of Shuko and quoted him as saying "The moon not glimpsed through rifts in clouds holds no interest"^[1]).

Plays

• Arashiyama (嵐山)
• Hatsuyuki ("Virgin Snow" or "First Snow"; 初雪; written in the yugen Zenchiku style)
• Ikarikazuki ("The Anchor Draping"; 碇潜)
• Ikkaku sennin ("One-Horned Wizard"; 一角仙人; this Noh inspired the kabuki play Narukami)
• Ikuta Atsumori (生田敦盛)
• Kamo (賀茂)
• Tōbōsaku (東方朔)

Treatises

• Mōtanshichinshō (1455)^[2]

Further reading

• Four classical Asian plays in modern translation (1972), by Vera Rushforth Irwin. . (Contains a translation of Ikkaku sennin.)
• Furyuno no jidai: Konparu Zenpo to sono shuhen ("Komparu Zempo and the age of furyu (spectacle) noh performance"; 1998), by Tomoko Ishii. Published in Tokyo by Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai; http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/asian_theatre_journal/v022/22.1lim.html

References

1. (Zempo Zodan, 1553, p. 480)
2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2385466 "How to Write a Noh Play; Zeami's Sando"

• Zempo Zodan (manuscript dated 1553) section 4, in Kodai Chusei Geijutsuron. Cited in Hirota, D. (ed) (1995). Wind in the pines: classic writings of the way of tea as a Buddhist path. Fremont, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 71.