Transforming Identities through Dance: Amateur Noh Performers’ Immersion in Leisure

Abstract

While the performance of its celebrated actors is often in the limelight, an equally important, but often unremarked, element of the Noh world is the many amateur performers who engage in the practice as a leisure activity. This article explores the shifts in identity that women say occur through Noh practice. I examine the ‘states of being’ that arise through these performances, and explore how women say Noh practice contributes to their life course development. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examine how the process of learning Noh intertwines with the everyday lives of women amateurs, and how the rigours and pleasures of learning Noh take on a particular significance as women grow older.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editor, Carolyn Stevens, and the article’s anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. ¹Stebbins, Serious Leisure, 113.

2. ²Mori, ‘The Tea Ceremony’, 95.

3. ³Ibid., 95–96.

4. ⁴Ibid., 94.

5. ⁵Kato, The Tea Ceremony, 191.

6. ⁶Creighton, ‘Spinning Silk, Weaving Selves’, 26.

7. ⁷Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 29; Bourdieu, Distinction, 57.

8. ⁸With the exception of government officials and other public figures whose names and actions are a matter of public record, the names and identifying details of the Noh group and all its members have been changed.

9. ⁹The jun shokubun is the title given to a Noh professional of the second highest level. The top rank is the shokubun. Noh performers are shokubun.

10. ¹⁰Horikami et al., ‘Nōkai Tenbō’, 18.

11. ¹¹Keiko refers to both class-based learning under the guidance of a teacher and private individual practice outside class time.

12. ¹²Kondo, Crafting Selves, 238.

13. ¹³Wacquant, ‘From the Pugilist’s Point of View’, 511.

14. ¹⁴Yamanaka, ‘What Features Distinguish Nō from other Performing Arts?’, 79.

15. ¹⁵De Coker, ‘Seven Characteristics of a Traditional Japanese Approach to Learning’, 73–74.

16. ¹⁶Aoki, ‘The Construction of Japanese Noh Theatre as a Masculine Art’, 6.

17. ¹⁷Ibid., 5.

18. ¹⁸Tyler, ‘The Feather Mantle’, 25.

19. ¹⁹Yuasa, The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy, 30.

20. ²⁰Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 65.

21. ²¹For a discussion of examples of this literature, see Kawashima, ‘Japanese Working Holiday Makers in Australia’ and Sterling, ‘Searching for Self in the Global South’.

22. ²²Sterling, ‘Searching for Self in the Global South’, 55.

23. ²³Kawashima, ‘Japanese Working Holiday Makers in Australia’, 274.

24. ²⁴Kondo, Crafting Selves, 234–241; Bestor, Tsukiji, 239.

25. ²⁵Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 32–34; see also Kawashima, ‘Japanese Working Holiday Makers in Australia’, 273–274.

26. ²⁶Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 149.