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Article

Zenchiku’s Mekari: Staging Ambiguous and Hollow Worlds

College of Global Liberal Arts, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto 603-8577, Japan
Humanities 2025, 14(6), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060113
Submission received: 18 March 2025 / Revised: 19 May 2025 / Accepted: 23 May 2025 / Published: 26 May 2025
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space Between: Landscape, Mindscape, Architecture)

Abstract

Konparu Zenchiku (1405–c. 1470) was the son-in-law of Zeami Motokiyo. Zeami is the most famous nō actor–writer–composer–showman–impressario, but Zenchiku brought nō back from the shōgun’s court to the temples, effectively resacralising the art form for a troubled, violent age. This paper asks whether Zenchiku’s approach to theatre has anything to teach us as contemporary creators and audiences in our own unstable era and, simultaneously, whether contemporary modes of interpretation, such as queer musicology, can highlight new aspects of Zenchiku’s work. Focusing on the under-studied and under-performed play Mekari—which dramatises a ritual cutting of seaweed at the Kanmon Strait between the islands of Kyūshū and Honshū as the new lunar year dawns—this paper explores how Zenchiku’s work plays with—crosses back and forth over—multiple physical, temporal, and spiritual boundaries in both its text and performance, leaving the audience with a sense of ambiguity and questioning the received wisdom of conventional capitalist reality. This paper concludes with a look at Kyōto School philosopher Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of the hollow expanse, or a place of limitless possibility. This paper argues that the audience viewing these ambiguities cultivated by Zenchiku’s sacred dramas—via the music, words, and staging together—might themselves be given a glimpse into the radically open place of the ‘hollow expanse’. The first full English translation of Mekari is included in Appendix A.
Keywords: Konparu Zenchiku; nō; Mekari; seaweed; Japanese aesthetics; Kyōto School; queer musicology; queer theory Konparu Zenchiku; ; Mekari; seaweed; Japanese aesthetics; Kyōto School; queer musicology; queer theory

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MDPI and ACS Style

Jamieson, D. Zenchiku’s Mekari: Staging Ambiguous and Hollow Worlds. Humanities 2025, 14, 113. https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060113

AMA Style

Jamieson D. Zenchiku’s Mekari: Staging Ambiguous and Hollow Worlds. Humanities. 2025; 14(6):113. https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060113

Chicago/Turabian Style

Jamieson, Daryl. 2025. "Zenchiku’s Mekari: Staging Ambiguous and Hollow Worlds" Humanities 14, no. 6: 113. https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060113

APA Style

Jamieson, D. (2025). Zenchiku’s Mekari: Staging Ambiguous and Hollow Worlds. Humanities, 14(6), 113. https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060113

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