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Paper short abstract:

Inspired by considerations of gender in Zeami's writings, I analyze a database of 305 noh plays to consider the reach of his thought and to complicate the gender binary in the noh tradition. In doing so, I consider the value of a back and forth between close and distant reading in big data research.

Paper long abstract:

Long before Judith Butler wrote about “gender performativity,” noh performer-playwrights and theorists also considered gender performance. In one of his earliest secret critical writings, one such performer-playwright and thinker Zeami (1363?-1443?) made a distinction between gentle and strong words. According to him, words such as “sway” (nabiki), “lie down” (fusu), “return home” (kaeru), and “approach” (yoru) should produce “gestural echoes,” while words such as “fall” (otsuru), “crumble/collapse” (kuzururu), “be broken/defeated” (yabururu), and “topple/fall down” (marobu) should accompany strong movements (Omote 1974, 51; Hare 2008, 61). While gentleness aligns with Zeami’s understanding of that mysterious, aristocratic, and feminine aesthetic called yūgen, strength aligns with martial prowess and hypermasculinity. In this reconsideration of Zeami’s critical thought as a premodern theory of gender performativity, I am analyzing the UTAHI corpus of noh plays to consider the applicability of Zeami’s thought on gender performance to the standard noh canon. The UTAHI corpus is a digital collection of 305 noh plays by various playwrights, including 51 no longer in the active repertoire, that was input and corrected manually by Japanese scholars (Takahashi 2010). Results of an initial tally of -ru/-raru verb endings that often—but not exclusively—mark passivity suggest that although Zeami considered passivity a feminine trait, it might have been more often verbally expressed in warrior plays. To refine and understand this result requires a reinvestigation of the data, including determining the frequency of passive meanings in -ru/-raru usage and close reading. One explanation might be that these plays by and large promulgated a Buddhist belief system that condemned warriors’ duty to kill by revealing their weaknesses. This might also explain why Zeami’s “strong” words all describe moments of defeat rather than success in battle. Further data about linguistic indicators of gender in the play corpus using Zeami’s word lists will bring increased specificity to this investigation. Although quantitative, this paper is posed to reveal that gender in noh is not as easily differentiated using binary categories as the two lists above might suggest, advancing the necessity of reconsidering and reevaluating the nuances of gender performance in Zeami’s thought and in noh generally.