Traditional Japanese Theater Research Articles

Andrew T. Tsubaki

Andrew Tsubaki’s touring productions using nō and kyōgen techniques, his lectures, and his teaching at the University of Kansas and beyond were important avenues for alerting American scholars and students to traditional Japanese theatre forms.

The Story of Breakthrough of ‘Ataka’ :Transformation from Traditional Japanese Theater to a Movie

The Story of Breakthrough of ‘Ataka’ :Transformation from Traditional Japanese Theater to a Movie

From Wooden Masks to Stone Statues: The Influence of Traditional Japanese Theater on Daimajin (1966)

From Wooden Masks to Stone Statues: The Influence of Traditional Japanese Theater on Daimajin (1966)

Road Show (review)

Reviewed by: Road Show Alisa C. Roost Road Show. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman. Directed by John Doyle. Public Theater, New York City. 6 December 2008. Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman have collaborated on three of the most unusual musicals—Pacific Overtures, Assassins, and Road Show—all of which deal with the negative impact of elements of the American Dream, a theme Sondheim has interwoven into many of his shows. Sondheim and Weidman and their directors also have experimented with techniques unusual for the commercial musical stage, including Brechtian alienation and traditional Japanese theatre conventions. Pacific Overtures explores the effect on Japan when the United States demanded access to trade. Featuring two Japanese characters influenced by American culture, it allows the audience some of the traditional pleasures of emotional identification. Assassins, a meditation on the dark side of the American Dream, examines the motivations of presidential assassins. The main characters reveal their passionate and intellectual underpinnings, thus giving the show surprising moments of emotional resonance. A few group numbers delve into the societal conditions the motley characters share, but the beauty of the individual solos is more chilling. When John Wilkes Booth sings his magnificently evil thoughts, the moments create a weird dissonance between his passionate commitment (and the beautiful music) and his horrific acts. Unusual in its subject material, Assassins is one of the more successful uses of Verfremdungseffekt in the American musical theatre: enticing audiences into identifying with the passions of the characters, and then being utterly repelled by that identification. [End Page 624] Click for larger view View full resolution Michael Cerveris (Wilson) and company in Road Show. (Photo: Joan Marcus.) Road Show tells the story of two antagonistic brothers at the turn of the last century as each pursues his own version of the American Dream. Road Show has had three major incarnations with three different directors. In 2000, the show (then known as Wise Guys and directed by Sam Mendes) applied a light touch; Nathan Lane and Victor Garber sparkled with vaudevillian humor and witty repartee. The various issues relating to the dark side of the American Dream percolated without a particularly didactic edge, while humor, wit, and charisma drove the show. The second act had not been finished by the beginning of the run, leaving only delicious possibilities. With a phenomenal cast in an unusually small theatre, Wise Guys allowed Garber and Lane to pull the audience into their camaraderie. Their charisma may have overshadowed the work itself, but, to my mind, it remains the most successful version of the show. In 2003, Harold Prince collaborated with Sondheim on Bounce, for which a cast album is available. In the post-9/11 environment, the show became larger, with more focus on the broad scope of the brothers’ lives without focusing on a specific theme. Strongly plot-based with little character introspection, the Mizner brothers had more romance (heterosexual for Wilson, homosexual for Addison) and more of a happy ending. The show touched on a variety of themes: sibling rivalry, dueling visions of the American Dream, artistic passions, and the interplay of various forms of capitalism with art and con games, but it never explored any single theme to satisfaction. In 2008, John Doyle directed a sparse production of the piece, now titled Road Show, tightly focused on the economic themes. Serendipitously timed, the show premiered in the midst of the economic meltdown. Early in the show, the boys’ father tells his sons that their choices will be “determining what kind of nation we’ll be,” forging a life from the riches of nature and their own determination. Wilson (Michael Cerveris) embodies the “cocaine-fueled con game” of unregulated capitalism under the Bush administration, dabbling in anything that could gain him wealth or notoriety, feeding his drug habit and ego. The Boca Raton housing crisis, a major plot point in the show, comments on our recent disastrous economic bubbles. In sharp contrast, Addison Mizner (Alexander Gemignani) serves as an archetype for what many see as the upside of capitalism; his round-the-world tour is a subtle history of Western colonialism, for he visits only former colonies. Unlike his country...

Performance Review Essay: Japanese Theatre in Los Angeles

Performance Review Essay: Japanese Theatre in Los Angeles Kevin Wetmore Jr. Shochiku Grand Kabuki—Chikamatsu-za. By Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Directed by Nakamura Ganjiro III. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles. 22June 2005. Blood! Love! Madness!By Nakamura Kichizo, Kikuchi Kan, and Shimizu Kunio. Directed by Brent Hinkley. Ivy Substation, The Actors’ Gang, Los Angeles. 14October 2005. Hiroshima Maiden. Created by Dan Hurlin. REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre), Los Angeles. 5November 2005. In Mark Jacobson’s 1991 novel Gojiro,the eponymous lizard, clearly based on Tōhō’s Gojira(Godzilla), decides to attack and destroy Los Angeles, only to be defeated by the scope of the city: “It was the sprawl that did it, that L.A. whizzing by: the overwhelming sameness, the diffuse repetition. It dulled all passion, doused every fire. Ever spreading, the city was an amorphous sweep without a vital organ or center at which a determined Destroyer could aim . . . [I]n what amounted to a perfect defense against exactly the attack the monster envisioned, the town had no cherished emblem of itself beyond its very vagueness” (Jacobson 1991: 172). Unable to do to Los Angeles what it has done to Tokyo countless times, the monster instead capitulates to the seductions of the city and becomes a movie star. This scenario is a telling metaphor for many things Japanese that enter the City of Angels: unable to remain as they are and change the city, they change themselves and become part of the culture already present, an [End Page 159]assessment that holds true to varying degrees of three Japanese or Japanese-inspired productions in Los Angeles: one kabukifrom Japan, one an American production of three shingekiclassics, and an American fusion production utilizing bunraku-style manipulation and other forms of puppetry to tell the story of one of the Hiroshima Maidens. As with Gojiro,the American location in general, and the Southern California location in particular, transform the performance experience, sometimes to the benefit of performance and audience experience and sometimes to the detriment of both. (Interestingly, when Hollywood had the opportunity to remake the Godzilla story in its own image in 1996, it was to New York to which the giant radioactive lizard went, regardless that the West Coast was much closer to Godzilla’s Pacific origins. It was apparently much easier to attack Manhattan, filled with recognizable symbols, than Los Angeles, even in an American film). These productions are also unique in that they form a continuum of connection between East and West that require us to reevaluate what is meant by “Asian theatre” in general and “Japanese theatre” in particular, especially when performed outside the culture that produced them. What is it that makes a particular theatre Asian? The ethnicity of the performers? The culture of origin? The subject matter? The claims of the producers? If an American company performs a play set in Japan, about Japan, written by a Japanese playwright, with a multiethnic company for a multiethnic audience, is it solely an American play, or is the production inherently multicultural? The globalization of culture allows for American theatre artists to seize upon elements of both traditional and modern Japanese theatre and present them in new American contexts while making claims of authentic Japaneseness. For the purposes of this review, I am interested in how this “Japaneseness” is made manifest within productions, how it is marketed to American (specifically Southern Californian) audiences, and how, if at all, the stated authenticity is accurate. As part of their 2005 tour of the United States and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, the Shichiku Grand Kabuki performed in Los Angeles at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. Living National Treasure Nakamura Ganjirō III’s Chikamatsu-za presented Boshibari(Tied to a Pole) and Sonezaki Shinjō(Love Suicide at Sonezaki), the former being a dance play based on the kyōgenoriginal, adapted for kabukiin 1916 and the latter being one of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s (“Japan’s Greatest Playwright,” proclaims the program) best-known plays. Nakamura played the geisha heroine Ohatsu, a role he used to play opposite his father Nakamura...

Revisiting the Tale of Obasute in the Japanese Imagination

Abstract In 1983, Japanese director Imamura Shôhei's film The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama bushikô1) gained international recognition by winning the Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was based on a well-known Japanese novel of the same name, written by Fukasawa Shichirô in 1956,2 depicting a rural village where an elderly woman, Orin, stoically prepares to make her final journey to a sacred mountaintop where she will await death, after the village custom. The earthy realism of the film's portrayal of the harsh world of the farming village both shocked and touched critics (Kehr, 1997: 85-86; Lardeau, 1997: 157-158; Tesson, 1997: 159-163). Imamura's film was not, however, the first to adapt Fukasawa's novel for the screen. Earlier, in 1958, Kinoshita Keisuke had also directed a film3 based on the same novel, in a very different style which incorporated elements of traditional Japanese theatre.

Double Aortic Arch: An Unreported Anomaly with Kabuki Syndrome

Kabuki syndrome is a rare congenital disorder characterized by mental retardation, postnatal dwarfism, visceral anomalies, and peculiar facies (resembling the makeup of actors in Kabuki, traditional Japanese theater) initially described in Japan. Congenital heart and great vessel defects are the most frequent visceral anomalies found in children with Kabuki syndrome. Although many cardiovascular defects have been described, a double aortic arch has never been reported with Kabuki syndrome.

Progressive Traditions: An Illustrated Study of Plot Repetition In Traditional Japanese Theatre (review)

Progressive Traditions: An Illustrated Study of Plot Repetition In Traditional Japanese Theatre (review)

A Synthesis of 3-D Kabuki Face from Ancient 2-D Images Using Multilevel Radial Basis Function

A technique to synthesize a 3-D Kabuki face model from ancient images is proposed. Kabuki is a traditional Japanese theater art. Kabuki researchers can know some ancient information of Kabuki from the ancient 2-D images such as Ukiyo-e (Japanese drawing) and Kumadori images (Kabuki makeup). Compared with the real face images in photographs and paintings, the face images in Ukiyo-e and Kumadori images were distorted a little from the real face for art representation. Hence, it is necessary to synthesize a new 3-D face model between the 3-D real face original model and the 2-D images. A deformation technique is proposed for transforming 3-D real face original models according to the 2-D images, and a mapping algorithm is given to map the images onto the 3-D face shape model. To ensure balance between precision and smoothing of 3-D model deformations and mappings, the radial basis function (RBF) is developed and a multilevel RBF is proposed. This multilevel RBF solver can be used to deform the 3-D real face model as well as map the 2-D images onto the 3-D face model. Some experimental results are given to demonstrate the effect of this technique.

Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre Holly A. Blumner Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre. Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts, No. 4. By Samuel L. Leiter. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. 2006. xlvii + 558 pp. 24 Illus. Cloth. $99.00. As a graduate student struggling to learn the Japanese language, I longed for a book of Japanese theatre terminology in English, a volume that would concisely define terms that I could understand only with the help of cumbersome language and specialty dictionaries. Samuel L. Leiter's new book, Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre, fills this need and makes Japanese theatre terminology more accessible for Asian theatre scholars. Leiter published the New Kabuki Encyclopedia: A Revised Adaptation of Kabuki Jiten, in 1997, which continues to be an outstanding reference work for kabuki studies. His current book is another excellent reference work, a compilation of theatrical terms for the traditional theatres of nō, kyōgen, bunraku, kabuki and a few other forms. Also included in the volume is an introduction to the four above-mentioned theatre forms, a historical chronology of Japanese theatre history, appendixes, and a bibliography. Black-and-white photographs and illustrations are assembled together in a twenty-four-page section at the center of the book. Leiter has selected a range of pictures that do justice to each of the forms Beginning with the first term, "abura tsuki," a type of kabuki wig worn by samurai characters (p. 29), and ending with "zukin," a turbanlike cloth headgear seen in all forms of traditional theatre (p. 447), this dictionary features approximately 1200 entries. Dictionary entries are arranged alphabetically so that words are easy to find, and, like the New Kabuki Encyclopedia, if a [End Page 531] term used in a definition has an independent entry, the term is placed in boldfaced or capitalized type so it is easy to cross-reference. Both English and Japanese terms are cross-referenced within the same entry to provide the reader with a broader base of knowledge. For example, the entry for novelist and playwright Mishima Yukio gives the dates of his birth, titles of three of his plays, and cross-references "shin kabuki," "playwright," "kabuki actor Nakamura Utaemon IV," and "gidayū bushi," as well as gives a reference to modern nō plays (p. 238). Leiter has done an excellent job of cross-referencing words across this volume. Users of this book will appreciate the amount of time and thought that went into the organization of this dictionary. Most of the entries consist of Japanese terms. However, Leiter has included many entries with broad, descriptive categories in English, such as "actors," "costumes," "masks," "music," "playwrights," and "religion," that make the dictionary more accessible to someone with no knowledge of traditional Japanese theatre. Categories listed under "L" (a letter usually not found in Japanese words) include "language" (pp. 211–212), "lighting" (pp. 212–213), and "literary sources" (pp. 213–215). The language section mentions kakekota (pivot words) and the waka poetry of nō, and the onomatopoeia of kyōgen, among other language devices. The same entry later provides cross-referencing for specialized kabuki terminology such as wari zerifu (divided dialogue) and yakuharai (literally "exorcism speech"). In the entry for "literary sources," Leiter provides a list of stories and poems that, while by no means comprehensive, can direct a reader to literary texts from which many traditional Japanese plays are based. Both the introduction and the appendixes deserve special mention. In a reader's note, Leiter states, "The entries in this book cover individuals, technical terms, important documents, and theatres" (p. xiii). No plot summaries of any genre are included, but several books with play summaries are referenced at the beginning of the book and included in the bibliography. Leiter includes a selective, historical chronology that begins in 1301 with the beginning of tagiki sarugaku (torchlight sarugaku) (p. xv) and ends with kabuki actor Nakamura Ganjirō III succeeding to the name Sakata Tojūrō IV in 2005 (p. xlviii). Before the alphabetic entries is a brief introduction to the four genres of traditional terms that includes history, practice, and references to many of the terms listed in the volume. Appendix...

The How of Literature

In a challenging article that starts not from the conventional Western literary canon but from traditional Japanese theater, Andrew Gerstle (2000:43) has raised the interesting question of whether the concept of "performance literature" might be illuminating as an analytic and comparative tool when approaching the literatures of Africa and Asia. Further light on this has been shed by the impressive crosscultural range of the articles in this volume of Oral Tradition (20) and the comparative and interdisciplinary workshops that gave rise to them. My article also follows up Gerstle's question, seeing it as of potential relevance not just for Africa or Asia but also for any literary forms in which performance has a part and thus for theories of "literature" more generally.1 It is a question well worth addressing. For despite the now-accepted problematizing of the concepts of "text" and of "literature," conventional approaches to studying literature and literary theory still regularly bypass performance. As pointed out directly or indirectly in several of the articles here (notably those by Peter Middleton [2005] and John Miles Foley [2005]) the implicit starting point still seems to be that the defining heart of "literature" lies in "texts," prototypically texts in writing; and that this is how and where literature exists. Most textbooks and glossaries on literature contain little or nothing about the complex performed aspects of literature in the sense of its realization as a publicly enacted display in the here and now; [End Page 164] if this is mentioned at all it comes in as something marginal to the prior and enduring existence of the written text.2 It is, perhaps, scarcely surprising that the usual dictionary definitions of "literature" focus on "writings" or "written texts" or that scholars have conceived of "literature" as basically existent in this form. After all, we have long accessed past literary enactments—across centuries, even millennia— through the medium of verbalized texts-on-a-written-surface. This is what exists, it seems; here are the objects we can get our hands and eyes on. Non-verbalized and non-writable performance dimensions, ephemeral and elusive, could not be captured or directly transmitted from the past, and therefore (sic) could be passed over as lacking any abiding graspable reality. The written verbal formulation, something hard and permanent, appears as the essence, a notion further reinforced in a range of influential languages by the association of "literature" with alphabetic writing (letters). As a standard reference book has it, "at its most neutral, and broadest, literature signifies textual manifestations of writing" (Wolfreys, Robbins, et al. 2002:51). Or, more directly, in a statement that would probably be implicitly accepted by many, Peter Widdowson defines literature as written works, by which he means "works whose originating form and final point of reference is their existence as written textuality" (1999:15). Literature must be "reproducible in print," and (ibid.:127, 128) a centrally determining characteristic of "the literary" . . . is that it is realised in a tangible object which is readily present for close inspection or re-reading, and that it does not have to be performed (or pre-emptively interpreted) in order to be read for the first time as unmediated text. The notion of performance seems to lie outside this ground of literature, even be opposed to it. Indeed those who have pointed to the significance of performance have been less the literary scholars than anthropologists, folklorists, cultural historians, ethnomusicologists, and other scholars (and practitioners) coming to the issues from first-hand experience of performance arts and forms outside the conventional high-art Western canon. These scholars have now been strengthened by perspectives rooted in the continually developing genres of popular culture and by the growing acknowledgment of the wealth and reality of non-Western literary forms. [End Page 165] This article, then, attempts to take up Gerstle's challenge by some direct consideration of the concept of performance in the context of literature. How, if at all, does literature exist in performance? What has "performance...

Japanese Noh and Kyōgen Plays: Staging Dichotomy

The Noh and Kyogen forms of Japanese theater were perfected during the Muromachi period (1336-1568) and (combined as Nogaku) they comprise the Japanese traditional aristocratic theater still being performed today. Although they evolved alongside each other, sharing various theatrical elements and being performed together on the same stage, they are separate forms. Their actors' training programs, which usually pass from generation to generation within a family, are different, and actors of one form do not perform the other. Noh (literally, skill or ability), the lyrical traditional Japanese theater, draws its material from many sources and its form from ritual and folk dances. It is essentially a poetic, quasi-religious musical drama, usually without dramatic conflict. Generally, only the main actor wears a mask. The performance is accompanied by a chorus (ji utai) of six to ten actors and a musical band (hayashi) comprised of a flautist and two or three drummers. The chorus plays a narrative role or may even chant the lines of the main character. The rhythm of the drums and the tension suggested by the flute add an important element of the performance. The play is acted with very few props, on a raised, resonant, and empty stage. The second form, Kyogen (literally, ecstatic speech) comprises relatively short comic plays that serve as interludes between the serious Noh plays. The plots are based in the present, and the texts express a stylized form of the vernacular of the Muromachi period. Kyogen can evoke modes of farce, satire, tragicomedy, or various other genres that deal with the daily life of the lower and middle classes. Relationships between an ordinary man and his wife or lover, or between a master and his servant, are the most common themes in Kyogen, contrasting with the more serious appearances of ghosts, gods, and demons in Noh. An exploration of the full dramatic meaning and structure of Nogaku as the combination of Noh and Kyogen reveals these as two dichotomous forms that complement each other, with the various dramatic elements of each molded in a harmony of contrasts that create balance and dynamism. This harmony of contrasts, which I consider as one of the most important concepts of the traditional Japanese theater, originated in Chinese philosophy, which teaches that change is the main factor in cosmic existence. This notion of change taking place between two poles led to the concept that seeks to fuse contradictory elements into a unified harmony. The Chinese philosophers termed the two poles of each contrast yin and yang (in and yo in Japanese). While yang represents activity, positivity, masculinity, heat, brightness, and so forth, yin represents the opposite--passivity, negativity, femininity, coldness, darkness, and so forth. Through the interaction of these opposing principles, all phenomena of the universe are produced. Each contrast possesses two contradictory states: static and dynamic. At all times there is a harmonic balance between the two poles of each contrast, which exist side by side, creating a dynamic interaction that replaces and regenerates the other; and each of them contains a minor manifestation of the other. The Chinese concept of harmony of contrasts, adopted by the Japanese in the seventh century, was already well established by the eighth century. (1) The way of life derived from this concept is still evident today in many areas in Japan. As was the case in other areas of life, Japanese classical theater too was greatly influenced by this concept, employing not only one pair of Chinese philosophical contrasts but two. In addition to the contrast of in/yo that relates in particular to formative contrasts (dark/light, quiescence/movement, feminine/masculine, weak/strong, bent/straight, and so forth), there is the contrast of kyo (fiction, false, abstract, and empty) and jitsu (reality, real, concrete, and full). The kyo and jitsu relate to the essence of the material, and form the basis of the theatrical medium--the coexistence and dynamic interaction of two alternate worlds, fiction and reality. …

Anaesthetic management in a case of Kabuki syndrome

Anaesthetic management in a case of Kabuki syndrome

The Trope of Transformation in Medea : A Noh Cycle

Since the rise of feminism in the United States in the 1960s, cultural and materialist feminist theater playwrights have actively searched for new literary and theatrical that transcend the patriarchal strictures of realism. (1) As Jill Dolan suggested more than decade ago in The Feminist Critic as Spectator, realism is ultimately limited form for advancing political and social change. (2) In its presentation of a slice of life realism often perpetuates degrading and static stereotypes. Even female mimesis championed by cultural feminists, in which productions can mirror content through forms Dolan argues, often reinscribes the binary between gender and sex. (3) Moreover, even though cultural feminist theater practitioners have often embraced nonrealist forms, such as lecriture feminine, they ultimately value biology as the overriding criterion for unifying all women. As result, cultural feminist theater reifies women's primary roles in society as mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, and caregivers. Materialist feminism, on the other hand, looks at women as class oppressed by material conditions and social relations. (4) Rather than linking sex and gender together, materialist approach denaturalizes gender in order to show how society has constructed specific social roles for both men and women. Traditional Japanese theater forms--gigaku, no, kyogen, bunraku, and kabuki--have long prioritized stylization over realism in performance. (5) Paradoxically, their long history of all-male authorship and all-male performers has contributed to the notion that these theater are inherently sexist. Yet, since the 1960s, theater practitioners have drawn on these traditional to rediscover feminine and feminist messages. (6) In this essay, I discuss one of these experiments: Carol Sorgenfrei's 1975 work Medea: A Noh Cycle Based on the Greek Myth. (7) By rejecting mimetic realism and drawing on the highly stylized no Sorgenfrei has crafted play that is politically engaged in order to expose the constructed nature of everyday lived experience and to present number of viewpoints. (8) By adhering to the structure of n6, Sorgenfrei creates world where time, place, and gender are transcended in favor of larger-than-life emotions and issues. As she explicitly states in her title Medea: A Noh Cycle Based on the Greek Myth, Sorgenfrei's work is not so much singular no play as no of five plays. The cycle refers to the manner in which no plays were performed until recently. (9) While no performances today reflect the short attention span of contemporary audiences, performances--as they came to be codified during the Tokugawa period (1603-1867)--consisted of five different plays, thematically based, in order, on the following five categories: God, Warrior, Woman, Frenzy (and miscellaneous), and Demon. (10) Each play was individually written and performed to embody Zeami's requisitejo-ha-kyu [prelude (jo), development (ha), finale (kyu)] developmental structure, and the plays performed as whole worked to conveyjo-ha-kyu, so that with the final demon play an all-day performance would end with riveting climax. (11) As whole, the five plays were usually thematically unrelated, though it is possible that one or two of the plays performed in the day-long five-play may have been related, such as Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi) and Nonomiya (The Shrine in the Fields), two plays taken from The Tale of Genii. (12) In departure from the standard dramaturgy, however, Sorgenfrei develops the Medea myth through her play's five scenes, which progress through the different traditional categories despite the thematic linkage. In this way, she entitles her first scene God Play the second Warrior Play, and so forth. Thus Sorgenfrefs Noh Cycle, while profoundly inspired by the n6, works differently from pure no play in that it encapsulates the entire all-day no in one play that has five thematically related scenes. …

Performing Shakespeare in Japan. Edited by Minami Ryuta, Ian Carruthers, and John Gillies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; pp. 259 + illus. $74.95 hardcover; Shakespeare and the Japanese Stage. Edited by Takashi Sasayama, J. R. Mulryne, and Margaret Shewring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; pp. 357 + illus. $74.95 hardcover.

The first significant wave of Western scholarship about Japanese theatre came after World War II in the combined efforts of Brandon, Ernst, Keene, Scott, Bowers, Maim and others, who provided an encyclopedic introduction to the histories, practices and aesthetics of traditional Japanese theatre. The scope of this collective undertaking (no less than the [re]construction of a cultural legacy pre-dating Shakespeare) was, and remains, a stunning achievement in terms of its sheer exuberance as well as in its revelatory contribution to Western knowledge. Yet, in spite of such an auspicious beginning (as well as the excellent contributions of subsequent scholars), extant studies of Japanese theatre in English remain scarce and new ones, scarcer still. Even now, more than a half-century after the war, the emphases of these examinations often privilege the study of traditional practices over contemporary ones. A near-absence of translated studies by Japanese scholars further compounds this imbalanced perspective.

The Written Face (review)

THE WRITTEN FACE. Directed by Daniel Schmid. Brooklyn: Icarus Films. 89 minutes. Color. 1995. $440. This is a stunning, if problematic, documentary film centering on the great kabuki female-role specialist (onnagata) Bando Tamasaburo V, now available as a videotape from Icarus Films (32 Court Street, 21st floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201; www.frif.com). It contains no narration, makes no attempt to explain its goals, combines arty surrealism with straightforward interview-like comments from its subjects, and provides sequences that are among the most wonderfully evocative in any documentary focusing on traditional Japanese theatre. Whether it can be recommended for classroom use will depend on the students' level of preparation, the teacher's sensitivity and background, and the nature and goals of the class. It is a film that is easy to watch and appreciate, and one that is often puzzlingly, even annoyingly, ambiguous. Schmid focuses on the art of Tamasaburo, forty-five when the film was made, but does not show him in the conventional world of big-city kabuki. Only a specialist would be aware, however, that we are watching performances by Tamasaburo at the Yachiyo-za in Yamaga, or the Uchiko-za on the island of Shikoku, out-of-the-way provincial playhouses that Tamasaburo enjoys playing because they retain the traditional intimacy and architectural features associated with Edo-period theatres. Similarly, few viewers will be aware that an important dance sequence featuring Tamasaburo is not traditional kabuki but is a modern dance in nihon buyo style. In fact, the only classical kabuki sequences are scenes from Seki no To and Sagi Musume, the latter clearly influenced by modernist aesthetics. Often, as we view Tamasaburo dancing, the director cuts to odd scenes of the actor--in contemporary male clothing--exploring the theatre's ancient cellar, talking about the art of acting women, putting on his makeup or costume, or even sitting in the old-fashioned pit watching himself perform on stage. We are, perhaps, being reminded of the division between the actor and the roles he plays--although in Tamasaburo's case his offstage persona is often as intriguingly theatrical as his onstage face. Where, we wonder, is the real Tamasaburo? Then we realize that the actor's entire life is a construction designed to make him reach the levels of artistry necessary to achieve transformation into the women he portrays. …

"Between Two Worlds": The Dybbuk and the Japanese Noh and Kabuki Ghost Plays

The Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds by S. Ansky (Shlomo Rapoport) (1) the most renowned production by Ha'bimah (The Stage), Israel's National Theater. It premiered in 1922 in Moscow, staged by Ha'bimah, which was a Russian-Jewish company at that time, with the advice and support of Constantin Stanislavski. The play was performed in Hebrew and directed by the Russian-Armenian Yevgeny Vakhtangov shortly before he died. (2) Since then it has been staged more than one thousand times, reviving Vakhtangov's direction, and has become probably the most famous Jewish and Israeli play. The play's themes, structures, dramatic means, and theatrical elements show a remarkable similarity to those of many plays in the repertoire of Japanese traditional theater, especially of Noh, the aristocratic lyrical theatrical form that was established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Noh draws its material from many sources and its form from ritual and folk dances. It is essentially a drama of soliloquy and reminiscence of the main character who in many plays begins as a reincarnation and then appears as a ghost. There are enormous differences in many respects between the backgrounds of this singular Western play, The Dybbuk, and the Eastern traditional Japanese theater and drama. Whereas the belief in dead spirits, reincarnation, and ghosts is quite common in Japanese thought, such beliefs were and still are not part of mainstream Jewish belief. The ritual that has always played an important role as a connection between beliefs and their artistic/performative embodiments is very developed in Japan but not in Judaism, in which belief is based mostly on verbal expression. Further, theater was discouraged in Judaism. The Dybbuk is therefore not a characteristic play in the Jewish or Israeli repertoire, and since few other plays deal with a dybbuk (a discontented dead spirit that takes possession of the body of a living human being) or gilgul neshamot (transmigration of souls), it is impossible to analyze this play as part of any dramatic genre. In spite of these differences, however, a comparison between various elements in The Dybbuk with those in Japanese Noh and Kabuki (traditional popular theater) ghost plays can provide a better comprehension of the various aspects of both this singular Western play and the traditional Japanese ghost plays. Belief in Dead Spirits, Reincarnation, and Dybbuks In Japan, belief in the existence of the soul, in spirits of the dead, and in reincarnation is ancient and widespread. The Japanese believe that the soul and the body are two separate entities, and this belief exists in both the original Shinto religion and the imported Buddhism that entered Japan in 552 C.E. and created a synthesis with Shinto in various elements. This synthesis, in turn, influenced the performing arts. (3) One of the expressions of this belief is the erection of two separate graves: one for the impure body and another for the soul. After death the soul (tamashii) wanders for several years until it is purified and becomes a quasi-god (kami) that resides in another world, beyond the sea or sky. It is there that the dead spirits become the ancestral souls. At the time of death, the soul of a person can become either an angered or a peaceful spirit, according to the psychological status of the person at the moment of death. Emotions such as jealous love or hatred will engender a very dangerous spirit. The spirit of an unmarried man or woman or of one killed in an accident will be disturbed after death and will face difficulty in entering the other world. Such hurt spirits can return to the mortal world and attack human beings. This belief led to the creation of various rituals aimed at honoring the purified spirits and at appeasing the disturbed ones so that they will refrain from doing harm. (4) The most important such event is obon, the Festival of the Dead nowadays celebrated in mid-August, during which the families prepare to welcome the dead spirits of deceased relatives, who come to visit. …

Zeami and the N?? Theatre in the World. Edited by Benito Ortolani and Samuel E. Leiter. New York: Center for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts, 1998; pp. 177. Paperback.

Thomas Rimer's Fall 1992 Asian Theatre Journal article, “What More Do We Need to Know about the No ?” notes that, despite the blossoming of interest in the no during the decade of the 1980s, and, despite having the no as a tradition and living performance to both study and enjoy, scholars of the no miss a “certain understanding of the tradition in the larger perspective” (217). Though perhaps not responding directly to Professor Rimer's concern, Zeami and the No Theatre in the World successfully places no in a larger context of theory, aesthetics, and performance. The editors of this volume, Benito Ortolani and Samuel Leiter, both widely published and highly respected scholars of traditional Japanese theatre, note in their introduction that Zeami (1363–1443), the acknowledged founder of the no, has “become increasingly well known as one of the great figures in the history of world theatre,” and they “wish not only to encourage readers to more effectively appreciate and understand no drama through increased access to his ideas, but to recognize Zeami's place in the pantheon of theatrical thinker artists as one whose insights are surprisingly pertinent on a universal plane.” The focus of the text is firmly fixed on Zeami as the creator of an art form that is at once ancient and modern, Japanese and universal. Despite the brevity of Zeami and the No Theatre in the World, the introduction by Ortolani and Leiter and the eleven essays they edited for inclusion in the volume attain the editors' stated goals, and, in so doing, provide a valuable resource for generalist and specialist alike.

Edward Gordon Craig and Japanese Theatre

Edward Gordon Craig's conception of theatre was stimulated not only by the European past but also by the Far East, especially the Japanese theatre. This influence can be claimed in particular for his endeavors to devise an aesthetic in which all the arts combined on stage to create a "total" theatre and in his emphasis on dance and color symbolism. Professor Lee's essay offers a detailed account of the myriad ways in which Craig was influenced by traditional Japanese theatre.

Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays. Edited by Karen Brazell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xiv, 561 pp. $52.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

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