I found this nice, short biography of Kanze Hisao (観世寿夫) curated by the Minato-ku library website. It’s short and nice, and contains information that is normally difficult to find on the internet, so I thought I would share it here. Oddly there is no Wikipedia entry for Kanze Hisao in English (there is one on his brother Hideo).

I have read a number of Hisao’s essays (available only in Japanese) which I found enlightening both from the perspective of the scholar and of the actor. His level of analysis and clarity of expression are impressive. Hisao died one year before I was born but I know of some commercial DVDs of his performances. I would really like to hear how his voice sounds like.