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Paper short abstract

In Furukawa Hideo’s 2017 novel Inu-oh, the struggle of rival performing troupes in Kyoto mirrors the political chaos of the early Muromachi. This presentation reads the novel as an alternative literary history, looking at the relationship of forgotten performers and the city where they work.

Paper long abstract

In his own time, the Muromachi sarugaku performer Inu-oh was one of the greats; Zeami himself called him “the flower of the art.” But as Zeami’s inchoate noh theater grew to dominate the scene, Inu-oh and his school of sarugaku were all but forgotten; today little is known of him other than his name and reputation. Furukawa Hideo fills the void in the unlikely tale Inu-oh (2017). Furukawa’s novel is an original sequel of sorts to The Tales of the Heike, which Furukawa translated into contemporary Japanese. Inu-oh and his friend, the blind biwa hōshi Tomoichi, tell forgotten tales of dead storytellers to pacify their spirits and to help themselves rise in the world.

In Inu-oh, the struggle for control of Kyoto by the rival performing troupes mirrors the political chaos of the early Muromachi period. This presentation looks at the relationship of the two performers and the city in which they make their fortunes. The alternate history Furukawa creates by drawing connections between the early days of the noh theater and stories of the Genpei Wars, already 150 years in the past at that point, reminds the reader of the constructed nature of the corpus of Heike and noh texts and imagines alternate possibilities from the periphery that must have been erased along the way.