Secrecy in Japanese Arts: "Secrecy Transmission" as a Mode of Knowledge (review)

Maki Isaka Morinaga's book Secrecy in Japanese Arts examines the genre of "secret teachings" (hiden, among other terms) that serve as cornerstones of legitimacy in Japanese artistic traditions. Through readings of three main texts, each of which represents a different era and art form, the author analyzes what she calls the "logic of esotericism": that which enables the very notion of an "esoteric tradition" to have value and to continue to exist. The book has a number of strengths. It begins by challenging the common perception that esoteric texts cannot be understood by an "outsider" to the tradition, and instead argues that close textual readings of these texts can provide us with an understanding of how esotericism itself is constructed and perpetuated. Morinaga asserts that hiden's status as a fetishized object of secrecy is not its sole significance; rather, the content of such texts—their rhetorical figurations—can tell us a great deal about how the logic of esotericism operates. She focuses on what I might call the strategies of esotericization: that is, how texts achieve the status of esoteric teachings, and how such texts shape, legitimize, and participate in the maintenance of the artistic traditions themselves. The author is well versed in critical theory, and the book raises provocative questions regarding the various contingencies involved in the process of textual and lineage production.

Due to the varied scope of the book, which considers secret teachings in swordsmanship and the nō theater as well as essays in modern theater, Morinaga's work can be situated in several different scholarly contexts. In the field of martial arts, an area that has attracted much popular interest, the book is one of the few scholarly works that squarely addresses the issue of transmission, along with past scholarship such as Cameron Hurst's Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery (Yale University Press, 1998). In the realm of the nō theater, the study that comes most readily to mind as relevant is Eric C. Rath's recent book The Ethos of Noh: Actors and Their Art (Harvard University Asia Center, 2004), which also includes a significant discussion of secret teachings. Shelley Fenno Quinn's Developing Zeami: The Noh Actor's Attunement in Practice (University of Hawai'i Press, 2005) is another book that investigates Zeami's writings in detail. Morinaga's study of the modern theater pioneer Osanai Kaoru is a much-needed one that will render this figure more familiar. In addressing the main issue of secret transmissions, the book successfully builds upon and productively critiques Nishiyama Matsunosuke's analyses of gei (arts) and the iemoto system. Morinaga's work thus contributes nicely to this diverse body of past scholarship by tying together the different "traditions" of swordsmanship, nō, and modern theater under the rubric of secret teachings. This book is also notable for its deft dismantling of Nihonjinron, which has been an important focus of critique across the disciplines in the past several years; she shows that certain scholarly works on hiden have participated in Nihonjinron discourse through their assumption that "Japaneseness" constitutes a type of insider category for the esoteric arts.

The main body of the book begins with a strong analysis of Yagyū Munemori's Heichō kadensho (1632), a hiden about swordsmanship. Morinaga shows that this text is filled with markers of secrecy: both the literal words (e.g., terms that mean "secret") and a rhetorical reluctance (a stated unwillingness to reveal further information) are tactics that work together to produce the effect of esotericism. What these texts refuse to speak about tend to be concrete instructions regarding an art's practice; the author argues that this targeted concealment was necessary in order for a particular family (ie) to monopolize knowledge about an art and thus control its practice for generations to come, and that the discourse of concealment itself elevated the very notion of secrecy to a...