Paper short abstract:

Mugen-noh sometimes offers moments when its dual temporality is resolved. This paper analyzes this fluidity of time in noh by applying a cognitive narratological approach, paying special attention to the linguistic characteristics of Japanese and issues of gestures and language in drama.

Paper long abstract:

The structure of mugen-noh (dream play) is often compared to a box within a box, or a picture within a frame; the frame (or the outer box) stands for the dramatic present, in which a living person encounters a ghost, and the picture (or the inner box) stands for the past, which is retold and reenacted by the ghost, and is the main interest of the play. However, careful analysis reveals that quite a few dream plays offer moments in which the past and the present merge, and the narrated moment and the narrating moment become almost indistinguishable.

This uncertainty of time is brought about mainly by three causes. The first cause is the linguistic characteristics of Japanese that tends to narrate a past incident as a present one; when telling/writing a past incident, verbs often take present forms, and temporal deixis takes the narrated past moment as its anchor, instead of the narrating moment in the present. The second cause is the nature of onstage gestures, which is a locus where two different spatiotemporal spheres converge; when a past incident is reenacted by a character in the dramatic present (like a play within a play), the character's gestures "show" the temporally (and often spatially) remote offstage space on the dramatically present onstage space. The third cause is the nature of language in drama (especially "narration" in drama) that freely manipulates the audience's spatiotemporal perception of the physical onstage space.

As a result, the audience of noh witnesses not solely the ghost's retrospective telling of the past but also the ghost's "experiencing" his or her most emotionally-charged moment in the dramatic present. In one sense, it is the ultimate form of "creativity" of the dream-play structure which enables playwrights to create something new out of a well-known story, through a character's extremely subjective recollection. At the same time, this fluidity of time realized on noh stage could be viewed as a dramatization of the linguistic characteristics of Japanese itself, which, by nature, makes the retrospective telling a telling of the present.