Konparu Zenpō

Konparu Zenpō (金春 禅鳳, 1454–1520?^[1][2]) 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"^[3]).

Plays

• Arashiyama (嵐山)
• Hatsuyuki ("Virgin Snow" or "First Snow"; 初雪; written in the yugen^[2] Zenchiku style^[1])
• 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)^[4]

Further reading

• Four classical Asian plays in modern translation (1972), by Vera Rushforth Irwin. ISBN 978-0-14-021249-5. (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; ISBN 978-4-13-086027-7

References

1. Komparu Zempo. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 12, 2007
2. pg 1029 of Seeds in the Heart
3. (Zempo Zodan, 1553, p. 480)
4. "How to Write a Noh Play; Zeami's Sando", by Shelley Fenno Quinn. Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Spring, 1993), pp. 53-88.

• 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.