Somatic attunement/self-cultivation: Japanese immigration and the performing arts

Abstract

Contemporary theorists, Schechner, Fisher-Lichte, Bharucha, Holledge and Tompkins and others, have written extensively on the global discourse of intercultural performance and its attempt to intermingle such cultural traditions as the textual borrowing of Peter Brook’s Mahabharata or Tadashi Suzuki’s Trojan Women, the integration of physical styles of Ariane Mnouchkine and the conscious cultural negotiations of such productions as Ong Seng’s Masterkey, a collaboration between Japanese and Australian performers. While these theorists acknowledge that the performer’s body is an integral part of intercultural performance, the majority of their discussion has centered on materialist readings of colonialism, race, gender, authenticity, cultural ownership, and the political empowerment of post-colonial subjects. At the margins of their discussion has been the subjective knowledge or phenomenological experience of the ethnic communities, in some cases immigrant communities, whose expertise, directly or indirectly, contributes to the style of performance. This essay examines the role of Japanese Americans, as immigrants and citizens, in the evolution of cultural life and performance training in the United States.

Keywords:

• Japan
• immigration
• Nihon Buyô
• self-cultivation
• somatic
• Zen

Notes

1 Personal communication, Portland, Oregon, 1993.

2 Personal communication, Portland, Oregon 1993.

3 Observed and participated in classes from 1985–1993.

4 Observations of classes in summer of 1999.

5 Personal communication, Sacramento, California 2001.

6 Observed and participated in classes from 1998 to 2001.

7 Personal communication 1995.

8 Oral History, June Watanabe, https://archive.org/details/csfpal_000018/csfpal_000018_d1_access.HD.mov Accessed October 1, 2019.

9 Helen Rolfe, Dance Spirit, Oct 4, 2018, https://www.dancespirit.com/japanese-classical-dance-2608175025.html, Accessed October 1, 2019.

10 Zeami’s ideas on acting are discussed in Richard N. McKinnon, “Zeami on the Art of Training,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 16 (1953): 200–225. See also Mark Nearman, “Zeami’s Kyûi: A Pedagogical Guide for Teachers of Acting,” Monumenta Nipponica, 33 (Autumn 1978): 299–332; “Kyakuraika: Zeami’s Final Legacy for the Master Actor,” Monumenta Nipponica, 35 (Summer 1980): 153–197; “Kakyô: Zeami’s Fundamental Principles of Acting,” Monumenta Nipponica, 37 (Autumn and Winter 1982): 333–74, 459–496; and “Feeling in Relation to Acting: An Outline of Zeami’s Views,” Asian Theatre Journal, 1 (Spring 1984): 40–45; Zeami, On the Art of the Nô Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami, translated by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazi. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.

11 These comments are based on my long personal experience of working as an acting teacher and movement coach, which has brought me in contact with actors, directors, and teachers in workshops and productions across the United States.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barbara Sellers-Young

Barbara Sellers-Young is a Senior Scholar and Professor Emerita in the Dance Department at York University. She is past president of the Congress on Research in Dance and has taught at institutions in United States, Australia, China and England. She is the author of three single authored books: Teaching Personality with Gracefulness, Breathing, Movement, Exploration, and Belly Dance: Pilgrimage and Identity as well as the jointly authored book with Robert Barton Movement OnStage and Off. She co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity and Belly Dance: Orientalism, Transnationalism and Harem Fantasy with Anthony Shay. Other co-edited volumes include: Embodied Consciousness: Performing Technologies and Narrative in Performance with Jade Rosina McCutcheon.