Reviewed by: Dancing the Dharma: Religious and Political Allegory in Japanese Noh Theater by Susan Blakeley Klein Paul S. Atkins Dancing the Dharma: Religious and Political Allegory in Japanese Noh Theater. By Susan Blakeley Klein. Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. 424 pages. ISBN: 9780674247840 (hardcover). Susan Klein's new book is a sequel to her previous monograph, Allegories of Desire, which explored the fascination in medieval Japan with searching for secret meanings in classic texts such as Kokin wakashū (Collection of Japanese Poetry from Ancient and Modern Times) and Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise), as well as the "Kokin" denju—the elaborate (and sometimes-lucrative) system of transmitting the secrets of Kokinshū from teacher to disciple.1 In that earlier book, she aimed to recover the importance of allegorical reading, or allegoresis, for understanding how Japanese medieval readers approached literary texts, especially ancient texts with their plentiful aporias. It was quite convincing and left me with the impression, for example, that a proficient allegorical reader might notice when watching the Star Trek series that its protagonist Captain Kirk (Scottish "church") and his ship, the Enterprise, can be interpreted as representing religion and capitalism, respectively. In Dancing the Dharma, Klein turns her gaze from the page to the stage, shifting her focus to dramatic texts and performances. The base texts are still Kokinshū and Ise, but their manifestations are noh plays and treatises. Once upon a time, noh librettos were dismissed as patchworks of quotations from the Japanese and Chinese classics, but the first wave of modern scholars demolished that myth with studies of the playwrights' creative and artful use of earlier literary sources. A second wave proved that the playwrights' engagement with earlier poetry and prose was sometimes mediated by commentaries. Itō Masayoshi showed that in Zeami Motokiyo's (1363?–1443?) play Izutsu (The Well Cradle) the protagonist is identified as the daughter of Ki no Aritsune (815–877) only in medieval commentaries and not in the original story in Ise, while Janet Goff demonstrated that noh plays about Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji) were frequently based on digests and manuals for composing renga (linked verse) instead of the tale itself.2 Klein's work builds upon and extends these previous studies. Part 1, "Allegory and the Commentary Tradition in Poetry and Noh," orients the reader with three introductory chapters. Chapter 1, "Establishing the Frame: Allegory, Commentary, Narihira," outlines the idea of allegory in poetry and noh, introduces key commentaries, and focuses on the figure of Ariwara no Narihira (825–880). To us, Narihira was merely a courtier, poet, and bon vivant who is tightly associated with the mukashi otoko (man of old) in Ise. Not so fast! Medieval readers and writers also recognized him as a deity of yin and yang and a bodhisattva of song and dance who brought enlightenment to 3,733 women by means of sexual intercourse (p. 36). Chapter 2, "The Six Poetic Modes: A Medieval Understanding of Allegory," explores secret understandings of the rikugi, six styles of Chinese poetry adapted [End Page 319] and introduced by Ki no Tsurayuki (ca. 872–945) in his kana preface to Kokinshū. The inapt and somewhat mystifying transfer of Chinese poetic concepts to waka (Japanese court poetry) left a gap that medieval interpreters were all too happy to fill. The noh actor and playwright Zeami composed an eponymous treatise on the rikugi at the request of his son-in-law and colleague Konparu Zenchiku (b. 1405). The most esoteric of all noh actor-playwrights, Zenchiku returns in chapter 3, "Zenchiku, Meishukushū, and Allegoresis," which discusses his mystical treatise Meishukushū (Collection Illuminating the Indwelling Deity), in particular his emphasis on the figure of the okina (old man) and his identification of it with Narihira. In Part 2, "Ise Monogatari Commentaries and Noh," Klein turns to the primary focus of her book, providing thoughtful and provocative readings of three plays and their relations to the Ise commentaries and, in an interesting twist, their contemporaneous political context, as the lines are sometimes blurred between political and religious allegory. Chapter 4, "Early Noh and Medieval Commentaries on Ise monogatari," briefly illustrates the concept with readings of two plays outside the current repertory...
Read full abstract