No: The emergent reorientation of a traditional Japanese theater in crosscultural settings (China)

This study explores responses to Japanese Nô theater by Japanese, Western, and Chinese audiences during the period of modernization in Japan. The site of meaning making is the intersection of performance contexts and audience response. Cultural environment, changes in audiences, and various responses to performances are crucial factors. The pressure of Western influence precipitated the fall of the bakufu, the former patrons of Nô. Nevertheless, it will be shown that the exposure of Nô to foreign audiences ultimately played a crucial role in helping to reestablish it as an art with both historic importance and a vital, contemporary presence.; In its six-hundred years Nô has been forced to reinvent itself more than once, and each time has gained a wider audience and a stronger base of support. The interactive nature of Nô has been fundamental to its resiliency. As a multisensory fusion of music, dance and poetry, a performance elicits imaginative participation and lends itself to myriad interpretive strategies. In this respect, Nô is a prism uniquely suited to revealing the multiple ways that cultural factors shape meaning making. Reactions by Japanese, Western and Chinese audiences illustrate this point. In addition to comments by practitioners and champions of Nô, reactions of casual observers are considered for what they reveal about crosscultural patterns of reception.; This study is divided into three parts. Part One concerns the proliferation of Nô prior to the Meiji Restoration (1868) within and outside Tokugawa patronage, and early crosscultural encounters with Nô. Part Two addresses the evolution of Nô after the dissolution of the Tokugawa bakufu, when a few persistent performers in league with a small, but influential constituency of supporters helped the art survive. Intervention by key political figures, touting Nô as a “national” art, furthered its recovery. Also addressed are records left by Chinese studying in Japan during this period. Part Three follows Nô overseas. Problematic issues surrounding performances in Japanese territories in East Asia are discussed, followed by a brief overview of the post-war growth in popularity of Nô—both domestically and internationally—in light of its history as an object of cultural scrutiny.