Organizer and Chair: Patricia Pringle, Oglethorpe University
Discussant: J. Thomas Rimer, University of Pittsburgh
Classical Japanese theatre has been staged and performed exclusively by men for centuries, yet it has created a number of powerful female roles. These roles are accepted by audiences, both male and female, as representations of "woman."
This panel examines various male appropriations of the feminine voice in Japanese theatre, both classical and modern. Four presenters will examine four different genres: (1) Noh plays about crones, written by male authors in the Muromachi period, and performed exclusively by males; (2) Portrayal of courtesans in Bunraku puppet plays on love suicide themes which were popular in the Edo period, and also performed exclusively by males; (3) Female roles in Kabuki plays, performed by special male actors called "onnagata"; and (4) Portrayal of mothers in the plays of Terayama Shuji, Japanese avant-garde playwright of the 1960s and 1970s.
These papers analyze the disjunction between the fictional voices and bodies of "woman" presented on stage and women’s actual cultural circumstances. They also consider why these fictional male creations were accepted by the audience as representations of women. What relationship exists between male-created stage presentation of "woman" and women’s self-perceptions? Is there any special theatrical consensus between the artists and the audience about the portrayal of "woman" on stage? This panel seeks these answers across four different Japanese theatre genres: Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, and the 20th-century avant-garde.
Vampira Japonica: Motherhood and Sexuality in the Plays of Shuji Terayama
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, University of California, Los Angeles
Sanctified and demonized, more popular in death than in life, Shuji Terayama (1935–1983) remains the quintessential Japanese avant-garde playwright of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Born in the remote northeastern prefecture of Aomori, Terayama identified with outsiders and outcasts. Criminals, gamblers, prostitutes, dwarfs, hunchbacks, transvestites, magicians, rebellious students, and itinerant actors were characters in his life and his work. Both outrage and acclaim were heaped on Terayama’s intensely poetic, highly theatrical, often shocking plays.
Like outcast shirabyoshi and kusemai dancers (female precursors of male noh), or the prostitute-miko Okuni (creator of gender-bending kabuki), Terayama’s women defy traditional roles. Female representation is informed by fear and longing. Traumatized or raped women give birth to deformed, possessed, or monstrous male infants; mothers (or mother substitutes) become vindictive, suicidal, possessive, or manipulative; weak, alcoholic fathers die or abandon families. Seductive females torment innocent boys, driving them to violence or madness. Madonna-brides are transformed to blood-sucking whores. Loving mothers become suffocating old hags clinging to their son’s backs. Gender confusion intensifies the dilemma.
Analyzed in detailed are Inugami, The Hunchback of Aomori, La Marie Vison, and Jashumon. Terayama metaphorically relates traditional (though subterranean and disturbing) attitudes regarding motherhood, sexuality, and gender to the post-Hiroshima search for identity and the Japanese sense of betrayal by the desired West. References to kabuki, noh, and traditional literature demonstrate cultural continuity. Western feminist and psychoanalytic theories are somewhat misleading when applied to Japan. Rather, effective interpretation derives from culturally appropriate theory.
Pleasures in Pain: Landscaping the Onnagata Gender Body
Katherine Mezur, Georgetown University
The onnagata of the Kabuki theatre exemplifies the creation of alternative gender roles and the disruption of dominant patterns of sex/gender matching in theatrical gender roles. Adolescent boy prostitute performers, wakashu, created the onnagata role during the early stages of Kabuki (1603–1652), when women were gradually erased from the public stage. The onnagata’s layers of gender stylization, from the smallest gestures to the elaborate wigs and uchikake (overkimono), are deeply entwined with their historical development. Onnagata gender performance is ambiguous, transformative, and disrupts the sociocultural prescriptions for gender roles of the Edo period.
Throughout the three hundred year history of professional Kabuki theatre, men have literally owned the stage. Although they may be referred to as "female" characters, Kabuki onnagata roles are performative gender roles which have their own constellation of prescribed gender acts and aesthetics which are at once distinct and derivative of other gender roles. The boy prostitute based acts of early onnagata have developed into an elaborate and nuanced set of gender codes with their own sensual, aural, and visual aesthetic points.
This presentation analyzes the gender acts of one onnagata role type and focuses on how the male actor manipulates his body to produce the stylization of "appearances" and their related aesthetic codes. The onnagata takes the Fiction of Woman beyond any bipolar and fixed gender role and reveals the potential for theatrical transformation of genders over time and through bodies. Onnagata performance offers an "other" voice, which freely transforms the gender codes of theatrical roles.
The Aesthetics of Crones in Noh Drama
Erika Ohara Bainbridge, Library of Congress
Japanese Noh drama is performed entirely by men. Many Noh plays deal with the lives of old women. In particular, there are three secret sacrosanct plays which are so profound in their content that only senior actors who have reached a certain level of revelation in their art can perform them. The central characters of these three plays are all crones.
Every culture has its own idea of beauty, since there is no absolute standard for what is beautiful. When female beauty is represented in theatrical settings, it is usually associated with the physical aspect of women: the purity of young women or the sexuality of mature women. However Japanese Noh drama is a rare exception. Uniquely among other performing arts, it finds the expression of ultimate female beauty in old women.
This paper seeks to understand this unusual emphasis in classic Noh drama, and the qualities of the larger culture that it reflects. The beauty expressed through crone roles is obviously not the physical beauty found easily in virgins or mature women. Then what kind of beauty does it try to express? Noh drama’s portrayal of beauty through crones definitely does not correspond with the actual life circumstances of real crones. Then what kind of social voice or social class do they represent? Finally, what particular social need urged men to in the Muromachi period to find beauty in crones?
Male Construction of the Feminine in Bunraku Love Suicide Plays
Patricia Pringle, Oglethorpe University
Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s (1653–1724) love-suicide plays, which were written for the bunraku puppet stage, contain some of the most moving female roles in Japanese theatre. These female roles were conceived and written by a man, and have been staged and performed exclusively by men for almost 250 years. They are in fact "drag" roles—fictional male-marked women with little connection to the actual experiences of females. Why are these "drag" performances accepted as representative of "woman?" This presentation analyzes the disjunction between the female voice presented on stage and women’s cultural circumstances. It focuses on the construction of the roles of the prostitutes Ohatsu in The Love Suicides in Sonezaki (1703) and Koharu in The Love Suicides at Amijima (1721). It contrasts the fictions and the realities of life in the prostitution districts, and shows how the performers skillfully manipulate the fine margin between the two. It uses videotape of performances to illustrate the vocal and puppeteering techniques used to evoke such male-identified concepts as "erotic appeal," "coquetry," and "sincere emotion."