Abstract

This article primarily examines Japanese divine myths that deal with funeral rituals for gods, which significantly provide the background for the most prominent noh dramatist, Zeami’s, phantasmal noh (“mugen noh” in Japanese). This mythological mode of divine funeral sheds light on what lies behind Zeami’s noh. In Zeami’s days, noh theatre remained spiritually connected to the Japanese far distant past, as vividly depicted in divine myths. Zeami is noted for his plays that depict supernatural and ghostly beings in a dream. Among other mugen noh plays, his ghost-centered plays in which a ghost contacts a human poignantly correspond to divine myths that include mourning rituals for departed mythological figures. When the mythological age ceased to exist, Japanese people continued to retain—and still preserve—this mythological funeral in their collective memory. They might have adapted a Chinese open-air funeral ritual to their own form, which they named “mogari.” This ritual also developed into the playful interaction between gods and humans, called “kami-asobi.” To promote research on noh today, this underexplored perspective on noh’s mythological background plays an undeniable role.