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Theatre Audiences of Japan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Extract
In Japan it is easier to realize than in America a basic but neglected truth, namely, that the audience, and not the people on the stage, is the heart of the theatre. In America plays are, and have been generally, written to attract audiences, but not definite audiences: actually audiences in hodgepodge, whatever multitude can be induced to attend. In Japan, traditionally, the drama has been created for definite audiences.
The Noh drama was originally produced for an audience of nobility and high dignity, both from the religious and from the civil standpoints. Originally Noh plays were acted exclusively in shrines to propitiate the deities of Shinto. On the other hand, they were enthusiastically supported by the shōguns (the Japanese military dictators who, though paying nominal court to the emperors, were the real rulers in Japan for several hundred years) and somewhat regulated by the tastes and preferences of the daimyōs (the hereditary feudal nobles).
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1964
References
NOTES
1 Aston, W. G., The History of Japanese Literature (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1899), pp. 199–200Google Scholar; Waley, Arthur, The Nō Plays of Japan (New York: Grove Press, 1957), p. 41Google Scholar; Toyotaka, Komiya, comp. and ed., Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era (Tokyo: Ōbunsha, 1956), pp. 13–20.Google Scholar
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3 Nogami, Toyoichirō, Zeami and His Theories on Noh, tr. by Matsumoto, Ryōzō (Tokyo: Tsunetaro Hinoki, 1955)Google Scholar, passim; McKinnon, Richard N., “Zeami on the Art of Training,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. XVI, Nos. 1 and 2 (June 1953), pp. 200–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Michitaro, Shidehara and Whitehouse, Wilfred, Seami Joroku Bushû (Seami's Sixteen Treatises), in Monumenta Nipponica, vol. IV, No. 2 (1941), pp. 204–239.Google ScholarScott, A. C., The Kabuki Theatre of Japan, (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1955), p. 35Google Scholar, tells of the transformation of Noh from purely noble to somewhat popular entertainment.
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5 Toyotaka, , op. cit., p. 27.Google Scholar See also Kincaid, Zoë, Kabuki, the Popular Stage of Japan (New York: Macmillan, 1925), p. 15Google Scholar; Ernst, Earle, The Kabuki Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 72–90.Google Scholar Since the Pacific War (World War II), Kabuki is reported as somewhat more popular than before among the younger—more modern—Japanese. See Chap. V, “The Kabuki and Contemporary Japan,” in Hamamura et al, Kabuki (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, Ltd., 1956), pp. 120–122.
6 Kabuki Japanese Drama (Tokyo: The Foreign Affairs Association, 1958), pp. 5–6.
7 Toyataka, , op. cit., pp. 37–42Google Scholar, 263–283, 285–310; Bowers, Faubion, Japanese Theatre (New York: Hermitage House, 1952), pp. 211–212, 217–233.Google Scholar
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15 Nogami has listed for 1955 the following census of Noh theatres: 15 in Tokyo, 4 in Kyoto, 3 in Osaka, 2 in Kobe; 1 each in Himeji, Kanazawa, Fukuoka, Otaru (Nogami, , op. cit., p. 9).Google Scholar