Japanese Noh Theatre Research Articles

Kissing The Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater with Some Thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines. By William T. Vollmann. New York: HarperCollins, 2010; 528 pp.; illustrations. $17.99 paper, e-book available

<i>Kissing The Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater with Some Thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines.</i> By William T. Vollmann. New York: HarperCollins, 2010; 528 pp.; illustrations. $17.99 paper, e-book available

Lear Dreaming (review)

Reviewed by: Lear Dreaming Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco Lear Dreaming. Conception and direction by Ong Keng Sen. Text by Kishida Rio. Singapore Arts Festival 2012. School of the Arts Drama Theatre, Singapore. 31 May–1 June 2012. My expectations were high for this revisiting of the King Lear theme that the auteur-director Ong Keng Sen first explored in 1997. Ong is a celebrated figure in intercultural theatre practice, mounting works in New York and European Festivals as well as in Asia.1 His works are studied as intercultural performances in theatre journals and books on performance, and this was an opportunity to see how he remounts a work that gained international popular applause and yet also roused critical hackles (a cultural pastiche, thought some; an appropriation of Western intercultural bad practices by an Asian subject, said others; politically incorrect or hyper-masculinist, said a few when it first played).2 Aesthetically, this 2012 performance was strong, with striking visual design, virtuoso performers, and unexpected juxtapositions. Nō master-performer Umewaka Naohiko re-enacted his role as Lear. The only trained actor onstage, he was accompanied by music artists rather than “actors” to fill the other roles. All of these performers had considerable intercultural musical experience. Contemporary female pipa virtuoso Wu Man played Lear’s ungrateful Daughter, and she has been a major collaborator with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road project. Kang Kwon Soon, a leading female vocalist of traditional Korean court music (junga) and a member of the Tori ensemble who has collaborated in creating Korean fusion jazz, played Lear’s (dead) wife. Piterman, a specialist in the Minang music-dance-theatre (dikia rabano) of Sumatra who has collaborated with noted modern dance artist Boi Gumarang Sakti, played the loyal fool. Japanese expert Toru Yamanaka provided electronic music, and celebrated Javanese composer Rahayu Supanggah led a contemporary ensemble of gamelan musicians. Set design (Justin Hill), lights (Scott Zielinski), costume (Mitsushi Yanaihara), and graphics (Hanson Ho) were crucial to the work and made the piece a feast for the eyes. The lavish production also raised questions about intercultural work for me as a Filipino theatre scholar who has not previously experienced such intercultural projects. I will describe the production, note some of the alterations [End Page 532] from the 1997 version, and give my own response to the work as a Southeast Asian viewer, acknowledging that what formed my deepest critique may not have been consciously intended by the director. But unequal cultural capital, persistent historical memory, and current economic realities ground art creation and viewing. While some issues regarding gender representation that were raised in the original production were rebalanced in this one, the intercultural inequalities born of casting ethnic bodies in certain roles seemed even more striking in this reincarnation. Part of the 2012 Singapore Arts Festival, Lear Dreaming re-imagines the Shakespearean tragedy “on patriarchy and succession through the pristine philosophy of Japanese Noh theatre” (Lear Dreaming Program 2012). Ong, an Asian postmodern director who trained at New York University (MA, 1995) and has regularly toured the international festival scene, has, like Robert Wilson or Suzuki Tadashi, adopted an auteur approach to the classic he adapts. He emphasized during a post-show dialogue that this piece, which was written by Japanese author Kishida Rio, is no longer the Shakespearean tragedy, though it derived inspiration from it. For example, in the Shakespearean text, Lear has three daughters: the betraying Goneril and Regan and the loving Cordelia. In Ong and Kishida’s rendition, the Old Man (Lear character) has only two daughters, only one of whom has lines and (in 2012) only one of these two appears onstage; however, we get the impression that the Old Man favors her, referring to the absent one as his “daughter” and never using the term for the present child. Thus Goneril and Regan are combined into the solo Daughter, and the absent daughter (Cordelia character) is only discussed. The missing daughter, as mentioned by Ong during the post-show dialogue, was a strategy to embody the “presence of an absence.” Other changes include the onstage presence of Lear’s wife (albeit as a ghost), someone not encountered in Shakespeare and who...

Constellation Translation: A Canadian Noh

Daphne Marlatt’s play, The Gull, explores the form and structure of traditional Japanese Noh theatre to expand the possibilities of translating Noh for a Canadian audience. Marlatt developed the play out of her 1974 collection of poems, Steveston, which touches on the experience of Japanese-Canadian residents of the fishing community of Steveston, BC, who were evacuated and interned during World War II. In 2006, under the direction of Heidi Specht, Pangaea Arts staged The Gull through collaboration among Japanese Noh master Akira Matsui, Noh professionals from Tokyo, and Canadian actors. This research demonstrates that the emphasis on maintaining traditional structures of Noh disrupted the potential for a well-balanced collaboration and in important ways othered the Canadian actors. At the same time, Marlatt’s script, the emotions it explored, and the aesthetic sophistication of the performance allowed for an expansive liminality of identity and location. This essay examines issues of formal and cultural translation for the stage and builds on the scholarship of Susan Bassnett and Jean-Michel Déprats. To the existing conceptions of translation as divided between acculturation and foreignization, this research proposes a constellation translation that enables the cultural locations of translator, actors, artists, and audiences to shape the production.

The Epic Theatre as “Dialectic (at-Play)”: Badiou, Brecht and the Dubious Mask of the Storyteller

This essay draws from Alain Badiou’s perspectives on revolutionary dialectics,and his discussion of Bertolt Brecht’s epic dramaturgy as a strategicappropriation of the mask, to discuss the deployment of narrativedevices of folk storytelling in Brecht’s work. Brecht’s epic dramaturgywas initially informed by oral narrative traditions such as German folktales and songs, and also by experimentations with the formal strategiesof traditional storytelling theatres such as Greek tragedy and JapaneseNoh Theatre. Badiou’s perspectives on dialectical division and the theatrical“dialectic (at-play)” are used to inform an understanding of howGestus as a theatrical language is influenced by the narrative devicesof folk storytelling, encouraging critical thought over lazy consensus,and insisting on division over conformity.

Neural correlates of delicate sadness

Although the role of the amygdala in processing facial expressions of fear is well established, its role in the processing of other emotions, such as sadness, remains unclear. We hypothesized that the amygdala would respond to a negative emotion such as sadness, when sadness was represented by a theatrical mask. In the traditional Japanese Noh theater, performers use masks to indicate many of the mental states of the characters they portray. Here, we report a functional MRI study, in which participants' brains were scanned while viewing Noh masks, whose faces appeared delicately sad. Among seventy standard Noh masks previously rated by the individual participants, we chose six top-rated sad masks and six neutral masks to study the neural correlates of such delicate sadness. Results based on a region of interest analysis indicated the activation of the right amygdala while viewing sad masks. We suggest the fact that such delicate sad masks could activate the amygdala, and it could possibly be because of an underlying similarity to emotions such as fear and disgust.

Kissing the mask: beauty, understatement, and femininity in Japanese Noh theater: with some thoughts on muses (especially Helga Testorf), transgender women, Kabuki goddesses, porn queens, poets, housewives, makeup artists, geishas, valkyries, and Venus figurines

Kissing the mask: beauty, understatement, and femininity in Japanese Noh theater: with some thoughts on muses (especially Helga Testorf), transgender women, Kabuki goddesses, porn queens, poets, housewives, makeup artists, geishas, valkyries, and Venus figurines

Beckett, Yeats, and Noh: as Theatre of Evocation

In , the ritualistic movements of M1 culminate in his conjuring of a woman who quotes from “The Tower,” the poem in which W. B. Yeats, who was profoundly influenced by Japanese noh theatre, evokes a number of ghosts. In this study, I demonstrate that Beckett was influenced in his writing of both by the highly stylised noh – the noh of dreams and phantoms – and Yeats's experience of noh.

KASPAR – A Minimally Expressive Humanoid Robot for Human–Robot Interaction Research

This paper provides a comprehensive introduction to the design of the minimally expressive robot KASPAR, which is particularly suitable for human–robot interaction studies. A low-cost design with off-the-shelf components has been used in a novel design inspired from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint, including comics design and Japanese Noh theatre. The design rationale of the robot and its technical features are described in detail. Three research studies will be presented that have been using KASPAR extensively. Firstly, we present its application in robot-assisted play and therapy for children with autism. Secondly, we illustrate its use in human–robot interaction studies investigating the role of interaction kinesics and gestures. Lastly, we describe a study in the field of developmental robotics into computational architectures based on interaction histories for robot ontogeny. The three areas differ in the way as to how the robot is being operated and its role in social interaction scenarios. Each will be introduced briefly and examples of the results will be presented. Reflections on the specific design features of KASPAR that were important in these studies and lessons learnt from these studies concerning the design of humanoid robots for social interaction will also be discussed. An assessment of the robot in terms of utility of the design for human–robot interaction experiments concludes the paper.

KASPAR – a minimally expressive humanoid robot for human–robot interaction research

This paper provides a comprehensive introduction to the design of the minimally expressive robot KASPAR, which is particularly suitable for human--robot interaction studies. A low-cost design with off-the-shelf components has been used in a novel design inspired from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint, including comics design and Japanese Noh theatre. The design rationale of the robot and its technical features are described in detail. Three research studies will be presented that have been using KASPAR extensively. Firstly, we present its application in robot-assisted play and therapy for children with autism. Secondly, we illustrate its use in human--robot interaction studies investigating the role of interaction kinesics and gestures. Lastly, we describe a study in the field of developmental robotics into computational architectures based on interaction histories for robot ontogeny. The three areas differ in the way as to how the robot is being operated and its role in social interaction scenarios. Each will be introduced briefly and examples of the results will be presented. Reflections on the specific design features of KASPAR that were important in these studies and lessons learnt from these studies concerning the design of humanoid robots for social interaction will also be discussed. An assessment of the robot in terms of utility of the design for human--robot interaction experiments concludes the paper.

They came to party: an examination of the social status of the medieval noh theatre

The Japanese noh theatre started out as a popular art form which originated among the lower classes of society. The noh master Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443?) refined it so that it conformed with the aesthetic preferences of the élite members of the audience. Within a century of Zeami’s death, many members of the audience had crossed the boundary between spectator and performer, and had begun ardently to learn to perform noh. By this time, the performers were able to participate in defining the noh theatre, rather than being constrained by the aesthetic preferences of their patrons as in the earlier times. This paper argues that evidence of the changing social discourse about the noh theatre can be found in historical documents written by both the audience members and noh practitioners. These historical documents, ranging from noh treatises to diary entries, demonstrate how the noh theatre was perceived and related to by both the performers and the audience since Zeami’s time. When the genre had successfully established itself as an officially sanctioned theatrical form during the late Muromachi period, noh practitioners were able to create a category of noh plays that were markedly different from the earlier ones.

New connections between Greek Tragedy and Japanese Noh theater

(1996). New connections between Greek Tragedy and Japanese Noh theater. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 1260-1265.

Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theatre. Parallel translations, with commentary, by Chifumi Shimazaki. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell East Asia Series, No. 60. 1993, xv, 220 pp. $11.00.

Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theatre. Parallel translations, with commentary, by Chifumi Shimazaki. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell East Asia Series, No. 60. 1993, xv, 220 pp. $11.00.

Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theater: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary

Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theater: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary

Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theater: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary.

Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theater: Parallel Translations with Running Commentary.

Noh Drama and The Tale of Genji: The Art of Allusion in Fifteen Classical Plays.

The Japanese noh theater has enjoyed a rich, continuous history dating back to the Muromachi period (1336-1573), when virtually the entire repertoire was written. Some of the finest plays were inspired by the eleventh-century masterpiece of court literature, The Tale of Genji. In this detailed study of fifteen noh plays based upon the Genji, Janet Goff looks at how the novel was understood and appreciated by Muromachi audiences. A work steeped in the court poetry, or waka, tradition, the Genji in turn provided a source of inspiration and allusion for later poets, who produced a variety of handbooks and digests on the work as an aid in composing poetry. Drawing on such sources from the Muromachi period, Goff shows how playwrights reflected contemporary attitudes toward the Genji, even as they transformed its material to suit the demands of the noh as a theatrical form. This book includes annotated translations of the plays, many of them appearing in English for the first time. The translations are preceded by essays covering the history of each play and its use of Genji material. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A Note On “Yeats On The Possibility Of An English Poetic Drama"

MR. SENA, BY DWELLING AT LENGTH on the disillusionment that Yeats experienced when his efforts to found an Irish dramatic movement proved futile, has represented him as being in total despair over this failure. But the attitude of despair was not one that was more than spasmodically congenial to Yeats. If, as Mr. Sena states, it has been a fashion to dwell upon Yeats's early hopes for the Irish theater as though they remained fixed in later life, it is equally untenable to take fitful expressions of dissatsfaction as if they indicated a settled mood of despondency. Like most pioneers of the theater Yeats was often frustrated in his ambisions and constantly explored alternative possibilities. He justified his new ventures by expressing a heightened dissatisfaction with even his own earlier efforts, but each such expression was intended to prepare the way for some innovation; it would be less than fair to argue that by so doing Yeats abrogated his earlier work. His dislike for Ibsen and Shaw gave him the warranty for establishing the Irish National Theatre; the feeling that drama had become too naturalistic led him to experiment with the Japanese Noh theater, and his recognition that this in turn severely limited his theatrical scope led him to take a number of quite different directions in his later plays. As he followed each of these possibilities to its extreme his energies necessarily flagged and he attempted something else. Thus there was a constant oscillation from dissatisfaction to enthusiasm in Yeats's dramatic thought, but his underlying concept of what drama should be never radically altered. The opening line of his short poem, "The Coming of Wisdom With Time," provides an appropriate commentary on the unity of his convictions: "Though leaves are many, the root is one."

Yeats and the Theater: A Selected Bibliography

YEATS'S INTEREST IN DRAMA spanned the whole of his productive career and manifested itself in varied forms, such as practical participation in the creation of the Abbey Theatre and the founding of the national theater movement in Ireland, production of extensive prose work on dramatic theory and criticism, collaboration with other playwrights, composing the English versions of two Greek plays, dramatic exploration of the world of Irish folklore and of the traditional Japanese Noh theater, and, most important, creation of a considerable body of original and experimental drama in verse and prose.