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Paper short abstract:

In a pivotal scene from Ozu’s masterpiece "Banshun," a widower and his daughter attend a performance of the noh play "Kakitsubata." This paper argues that critics have consistently misread how Ozu uses the poetry and themes of the noh play to effectively counterpoint the action.

Paper long abstract:

In Ozu Yasujirō’s 1949 film "Banshun" (Late Spring), a fifty-six-year old father (Professor Somiya Shūkichi, played by Chishu Ryu) and his unmarried twenty-seven-year old daughter (Somiya Noriko, played by Hara Setsuko) are attending a Kanze School noh performance of "Kakitsubata" (The Iris). The scene, which lasts about seven minutes, occurs at the mid-point of the movie, and is pivotal in every respect; while watching the play the father exchanges a nod of greeting to another woman who is in attendance, and his daughter Noriko jumps to the conclusion that he intends to remarry. She is visibly devastated, and because of the exchange decides she will leave her father and accept a marriage proposal that she had previously been rejecting. It is generally agreed that this is one of the most beautifully edited sequences in all of Japanese cinema: without a word of dialogue, the interactions of the characters occur almost as though in mime. The scene is not silent, however: we hear and see the noh play being performed throughout. Unfortunately for non-Japanese speaking viewers, there are no subtitles for the noh, and so how the play might be commenting on the action is left latent (given the difficulty of noh poetry, it is probably left latent for most contemporary Japanese viewers as well). Perhaps because of this, most critics have treated the play’s performance as merely a visual accompaniment to the action, with little or no meaning (some have gone so far as to say the choice of play was accidental). This paper will correct that misreading, showing how Ozu effectively uses the themes and poetry of the noh play to allegorically comment on, and emotionally counterpoint, the scene.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores misreadings and reinterpretations related to the Noh play Kinuta as cases of cultural reception. The paper concentrateson 1: the play itself as a medieval Japanese misreading of Chinese poetry and 2: a recent film as an American adaptation of Japanese medieval story-telling.

Paper long abstract:

Kinuta (The Fulling Block) is regarded as one of Zeami's greatest plays. At its heart, however, is a misreading of its sources.

Kinuta's inspiration derived from Chinese poems collected in Wakan Rōeishū concerning women pounding the fulling block (an equivalent to the current doing the ironing). Zeami participated in a medieval misreading of the genre, which has been traced to a commentary used at the time by Japanese learner readers of Chinese. One explanatory note in particular, partially based on varying kanji usages, alters the meaning significantly, but it reflects Japanese medieval cultural assumptions about women. It alters the motivation of the feminine voices of the poems. Zeami placed this motivation at the core of his play.

In 2017, an American professor of art, an afficionado of Zen arts, very taken with the play Kinuta, (partly from Royall Tyler's Penguin translation) approached me to provide some background to help him generate a playscript for a film adaptation he wished to make. As the project progressed, it became clear that we understood the play in quite different ways. To me these fundamental differences had their roots in cultural orientation, in other words, in the expectations of the film maker despite his strong interests in Japanese culture and religion. The film that he eventually produced, altered the import of the story radically, but was a fine work of art, appreciable in its own terms. It was in fact, the change of interpretation he brought to the play that was central to its appeal to its audiences. The original story would likely have led to puzzlement.

The roots of the misreadings considered in this paper appear to be mediated by commentary and translation, however, they also related closely to the cultural orientations of two creative artists: Japanese assumptions about the role of women in narratives, and American concerns about the position of women. It is likely that the universe of story-telling in the minds of the authors overrode what was outside their cultural expectations. Nevertheless, this was essential to the creation of effective works of art.

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Paper short abstract:

Emperor Gensō is the heroic protagonist of the noh play Kōtei, although he is weak and incompetent in the Chinese source text. I argue that this play illustrates the complex negotiatoin process in the construction of “Chineseness” in the karamono-noh plays.

Paper long abstract:

In noh play categorization, karamono-noh refers broadly to the group of noh plays that feature Chinese characters and narratives, often based on historical and literary texts brought from China to Japan around the ninth century. A close study of these karamono-noh plays reveal how “Chinese” or “Chineseness” is perceived and re-created by the noh practitioners, both in terms of written texts and stage presentations. Based on Tang poet Pō Chū-I’s poem Chōkonka (Song of everlasting regrets), Kōtei is one of such karamono-noh with characters reimaged from Chōkonka and other sources. In this play by late Muromachi noh practitioner Kanze Nobumitsu, Emperor Gensō is the heroic protagonist who comes to the rescue of his beloved consort Yōkihi, even when eventually he needs the help of a sorcerer Shōki, his bravado is in sharp contrast to the incompetent leader who has indirectly caused the death of Yōkihi in Chōkonka. This paper examines the metamorphosis of the emperor from the source text to the stage; by comparing the image and narrative structure of the source texts and noh play, I postulate that the karamono-noh plays illustrate Muromachi Japanese audiences’ imagination of China as well as a complex negotiation of cultural transmission.