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Onna Mono: The “Female Presence” on the Stage of the All-Male Traditional Japanese Theatre
- Asian Theatre Journal
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 32, Number 2, Fall 2015
- pp. 387-415
- 10.1353/atj.2015.0027
- Article
- Additional Information
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As is well known, traditional Japanese theatre has been customarily a male domain, with women physically absent for the most part. The representative classical genres: nō, kyōgen, kabuki, and bunraku are performed only by men. The aim of this article is to look for and map a trajectory of the “female presence” on this predominantly all-male public stage, by exploring a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked: female versions of the popular all-male performing arts since medieval times, including reworking stories of the most prominent masculine heroes in kabuki. It could be argued that this practice did have a lasting presence in Japanese popular culture well into the twentieth century. I have come to denote this type of female-centered performances within the androcentric traditional Japanese theatre discourse as onna mono (おんなもの “female things”)—an expression that I would like to propose here as a general term inclusive of all related art forms.