Jo-ha-kyū

Jo-ha-kyū (序破急^?) is a concept of modulation and movement applied in a wide variety of traditional Japanese arts. Roughly translated to "beginning, break, rapid", it essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly. This concept is applied to elements of the Japanese tea ceremony, to kendō and other martial arts, to dramatic structure in the traditional theatre, and to the traditional collaborative linked verse forms renga and renku (haikai no renga).

The concept originated in gagaku court music, specifically in the ways in which elements of the music could be distinguished and described. Though eventually incorporated into a number of disciplines, it was most famously adapted, and thoroughly analysed and discussed by the great Noh playwright Zeami, who viewed it as a universal concept applying to the patterns of movement of all things.

It is perhaps in the theatre that jo-ha-kyū is used the most extensively, on the most levels. In following with the writings of Zeami, all major forms of Japanese traditional drama (Noh, kabuki, and jōruri) utilize the concept of jo-ha-kyū in the choice and arrangement of plays across a day, to the composition and pacing of acts within a play, down to the individual actions of the actors.

Zeami, in his work "Sandō" (The Three Paths), originally described a five-part (five dan) Noh play as the ideal form. It begins slowly and auspiciously in the first part (jo), building up the drama and tension in the second, third, and fourth parts (ha), with the greatest climax in the third dan, and rapidly concluding with a return to peace and auspiciousness in the fifth dan (kyū).

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