[Preface]
If we seek the origins of the art of sarugaku, some say it came from the land of the Buddha, some that it was handed down from the age of the gods, but times have changed and so much has passed that we cannot study its roots. What everyone enjoys today began in the reign of Empress Suiko, when Prince Shotoku ordered Hata no Kawakatsu to create sixty-six entertainments, for the peace of the realm and the pleasure of the people, and named them sarugaku. Since then, generation after generation have borrowed the beauty of wind and moon as the medium of this art. Kawakatsu's descendants inherited the art and served as performers for Kasuga Taisha and Hiyoshi Taisha. So the sarugaku troupes of Yamato and Omi still serve faithfully in the rites of these two shrines.
[Training Through the Years]
Age seven. In this art, training generally begins at seven. At this age, there is always some natural gift in what the child does of its own accord. Do not tell the child this is good and that is bad. If you correct the child too strictly, it will lose heart, and its art will stop right there.
From twelve or thirteen. The voice fits the pitch, and the child begins to understand Noh. Whatever the child does has elegant grace. But this flower is not the true flower. It is only the flower of the moment.
Twenty-four or twenty-five. This is when one's art for a lifetime begins to take shape. People praise you, and you may even beat a master, but this too is the flower of passing novelty. To mistake it for the true flower is a heart that moves away from the true flower. Do not forget the "beginner's mind."
[Separate Secret Teaching]
Know the hidden flower. It is because it is hidden that it is the flower; if not hidden, it cannot be the flower. Knowing this distinction is the most important thing in knowing the flower. In every art, each house has its secrets, because keeping things secret has great effect.
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Zeami and his father Kan'ami were actors of the Yuzaki troupe (later the Kanze troupe), based at Yuzaki in Yamato. The four Yamato sarugaku troupes served at the rites of Kofukuji and Kasuga Taisha in Nara, and performing Noh at the torchlight Noh (takigi sarugaku) every second month and at the Kasuga Wakamiya On-matsuri in the eleventh month was among their most important duties. The Transmission of the Flower is Japan's oldest treatise on theater, written by Zeami between his thirties and forties from the teachings he had inherited from his father.