No and Kyogen in the Contemporary World

Foreword

ix FOREWORD The phrase “the world of nò” has often been invoked to denote a closed and sometimes exclusive domain. However, in this book it connotes quite the opposite. The conference on nò from which this collection of essays comes was an extraordinary occasion. It brought together an international and multilingual group of scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts, not only to reflect and discuss but also to witness a University of Hawai‘i production of nò in English whose cast was also international and multilingual. The juxtaposition of performance and scholarship in this single event simultaneously enabled a broader understanding of performance and provided an immediate, palpable context for scholarship. What remains after such an event comes to an end? For the performance there is the videotape; for the conference, the book. Each is a document of the occasion that is selective in what it presents and certainly in what it foregrounds. We found that the consideration of nò can be more than the examination of an historical Japanese elitist theater genre. Today “our” world of nò extends beyond the country of its orgin and beyond its medieval form. It certainly informs us about the historical time from which it came; it also informs us about ourselves, positioned at the end of the twentieth century. What does it tell us about ourselves? One of the central themes is the multiplicity of approaches for examining and studying it. What are the insights that come from recorded documentation? How do they relate to those derived from performance practice? Deductive analysis and inductive study illuminate different aspects of the same subject and can reveal the constants and contrasts between theory and praxis. The range of approaches contained here confirms the richness of the subject matter and affirms our present-day fascination with it. x Foreword I find it significant that we are concerned not only with what nò was, but what it is today and what it may be in the future. All three foci unavoidably use the gaze of the present. What are our claims and our understandings of the past of nò? The themes of continuity, authority, and tradition are certainly imbedded in that past. Do those diachronic inquiries tell us more than what nò was; do they also prescribe what it should be in the present? That present is necessarily in continual conversation with aspects of internationalism and modernity, as this book attests. How do we make a place for nò as a creative and re-created form in “our” present, both artistically and intellectually? Considering the future generates similar questions. It certainly includes continuity in both scholarship and performance. Also explicit are innovation, reinterpretation , and experimentation—all processes of change. Who are the agents of the continuity and the change? The essays here provide us with a range of provocative answers in terms of background : Japanese within Japan, foreigners within Japan, Japanese outside Japan, and foreigners outside Japan. Equally fascinating are the choices made by individuals as to approach, medium, and focus in their contributions to this world of nò. In the new and novel perspectives on scholarship we see ways in which individual background shapes viewpoint and presentation. The efficacy of locating each reflexive and creative gaze along a continuum between the polarities of insider and outsider is a major subtext. This book is one means of “capturing the moment,” of sharing the substance and the content of the conference with others. It presents a world of nò that is as timely as it is timeless. Ricardo D. Trimillos Nò and Kyògen in the Contemporary World CHARACTERISTICS OF NÒ 1– 4. Tomoeda Akiyo, of the Kita School, demonstrates four basic forms, or kata, of nò movement: the basic “at ready” standing posture (kamae), flat “sliding feet” (suri ashi), the abstract “ornamental” fan movement (kazashi), and the stylized “crying” gesture (shiori). (Photos: Noh Research Archives, Tokyo.) Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 ...