Noh Creativity? The Role of Amateurs in Japanese Noh Theatre

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Notes

1. Diego Pellecchia, ‘Traditional Theatre: The Case of Japanese Noh’, in The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History, ed. by David Wiles and Christine Dymkowski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 136–48.

2. This article has been informed by my continuing experience as an amateur practitioner belonging to the Kongō School in Kyoto, Japan. I have performed participant observation of fellow practitioners and university student practice groups. This work was generously supported by the Japan Foundation. 2013–14.

3. In this essay I will consider shite actors, as they constitute the great majority of the professional and amateur population.

4. Shinji Yanagizawa, Noh-Kyogen No Mikata Tanoshimikata [How to See and Enjoy Noh] (Tokyo: Yamakawa, 2012), pp. 151–55.

5. Susumu Kurasawa, Nōgaku Shakai No Kōzō [Structure of the Noh Society] (Tokyo: Rebun, 2004), pp. 471–72.

6. Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller, The Pro-Am Revolution: How Enthusiasts Are Changing our Society and Economy (London: Demos, 2004), p. 52.

7. Nicholas Ridout, Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), p. 15.

8. Richard Emmert, ‘Training of the Nō Performer’, Theatre Research International, 12.2 (1987), 123–33 (pp. 124–25).

9. Here ‘black’ and ‘white’ do not refer to skin colour, but are direct translations of the original Japanese.

10. Japanese writing allows different ideograms in the writing of the same sounds.

11. Robert A. Stebbins, ‘The Amateur: Two Sociological Definitions’, The Pacific Sociological Review, 20.4 (1977), 582–606.

12. Thomas D. Looser, Visioning Eternity: Aesthetics, Politics and History in the Early Modern Noh Theater, Cornell East Asia Series, 138 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 105.

13. Matsunosuke Nishiyama, Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, trans. by Gerald Groemer (Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), pp. 185–91.

14. Eric Rath, The Ethos of Noh: Actors and their Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 190–214.

15. Noh was even added to the curricula of some girls schools. See Yusuke Suzumura, ‘Players, Performances and Existence of Women’s Noh: Focusing on the Articles Run in the Japanese General Newspapers’, International Japanese Studies Collection, 10 (2013), 86–75 (p. 46).

16. In Japanese, ‘salaryman’ refers to male office workers, usually working long hours, but participating in leisure activities, often with co-workers.

17. Ken Horigami, Nō No Shūsekikairo [The Closed-Circuit of Noh] (Tokyo, 2009), p. 76; Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück, The Culture of Japan as Seen through Its Leisure (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 8.

18. Rupert Cox, The Zen Arts (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 161.

19. Horigami, Nō no Shūsekikairo [The Closed-Circuit of Noh], pp. 64–67.

20. Critic Ken Horigami estimated the number of amateurs studying as shite actors was around 25,000 in 2005. Horigami, Nō No Shūsekikairo [The Closed-Circuit of Noh], pp. 64–67.

21. Yanagizawa, Noh-Kyogen No Mikata Tanoshimikata, pp. 155–61.

22. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 33.

23. Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 37–38.

24. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

25. Maki Isaka Morinaga, Secrecy in Japanese Arts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 112.

26. Ibid., pp. 2–3.

27. I have undertaken my research in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka with amateur students from the Kanze, Kongō, and Kita schools of shite, with the Ishii school of hip-drum, and Morita school of flute.

28. Jonathan Gershuny, A New Measure of Social Position: Social Mobility and Human Capital in Britain (Colchester: Institute for Social and Economic Research, 2002), pp. 8–9.

29. Anne Ubersfeld, ‘The Pleasure of the Spectator’, Modern Drama, 25.1 (1982), 127–39 (pp. 131–32).

30. Yasuo Yuasa, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind–Body Theory, ed. by Thomas Kasulis, trans. by Thomas Kasulis and Shigenori Nagatomo (New York: SUNY, 1987), p. 104.

31. Masatoshi Taniguchi, unpublished interview with the author, 2013.

32. See, for example, Shinpei Matsuoka, Noh No Mikata [How to See Noh] (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 2013); Tamotsu Watanabe, Noh Nabi: Daremo Oshietekurenakatta Noh No Mikata [The Noh Navigator: The Way to See Noh Nobody Told You Before] (Tokyo: Magazine House, 2010); Yanagizawa, Noh-Kyogen No Mikata Tanoshimikata.

33. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception’, in The Field of Cultural Production, ed. by Randal Johnson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), pp. 215–37 (p. 220).

34. Maria L. Cronley, Frank R. Kardes, and Scott A. Hawkins, ‘Influences on the Illusory Truth Effect in Consumer Judgment’, NA – Advances in Consumer Research, 33 (2006), p. 247.

35. Noel Pinnington, ‘Models of the Way in the Theory of Noh’, Japan Review, 18 (2006), 29–55 (p. 30).

36. Geidō are often referred to as shugyō, a term associated with the practice of religious austerities, suggesting that training is a hard discipline leading to a higher, immaterial cultivation.

37. Anthony Ogden, ‘A Brief Overview of Lifelong Learning in Japan’, The Language Teacher, 34.6 (2010), 5–13 (p. 10).

38. Katrina Moore and Ruth Campbell, ‘Mastery with Age: The Appeal of the Traditional Arts to Senior Citizens in Contemporary Japan’, Japanstudien, 21 (2009), 223–51 (pp. 239–40).

39. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1984.

40. ken Horigami, Nōgaku Jōhō Omote Ura[‘Noh Information Inside-Out’] (Tokyo:Nōgaku Shorin, 2014), pp. 232–36.

41. Lave and Wenger, Situated Learning, p. 53.

42. Katrina Moore, The Joy of Noh: Embodied Learning and Discipline in Urban Japan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014), p. 106.

43. Ibid., p. 4.

44. In some of the groups I observed, women were expected to serve tea and sweets as well as clean up, while men were exempted from these duties.

45. See Barbara Geilhorn, ‘Between Self-Empowerment and Discrimination: Women in Nō Today’, in Nō Theatre Transversal, ed. by Stanca Scholz-Cionca and Christopher Balme (Munich: Iudicium, 2008), pp. 106–22; Naoko Miyanishi, ‘The Potential of Women’s Noh’, Yugobunkakenkyu, 6 (2005), 2–21; Rebecca Teele, ‘Women in Nō Today’, Mime Journal, 17 (2002), 67–79.

46. Hideo Kanze, ‘Noh: Business and Art: An Interview with Kanze Hideo’, TDR: The Drama Review, 15.2 (1971), 185–92.

47. Miyanishi, ‘The Potential of Women’s Noh’, p. 4.

48. See ‘Works’, Noh Ryoko Aoki Website <http://ryokoaoki.net/e/> [accessed 14 November 2016].

49. Colin Campbell, ‘The Craft Consumer Culture, Craft and Consumption in a Postmodern Society’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 5.1 (2005), 23–42 (p. 24).

50. See Noh Professionals Association <http://www.nohgaku.or.jp/> [accessed 14 November 2016].

51. Stebbins, ‘The Amateur’, pp. 586–87.