Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Zeami’s concept of the noh actors’ relative critical perception of themselves while onstage has been vigorously discussed among scholars such as Tadashi Nishihira and Shinpei Matsuoka. The actors, they argue, are strictly expected to see themselves from the outsider’s viewpoint. However, this actor-centered perspective is inadequate for clarifying the dynamics of noh performance that involve both actor and audience. My paper addresses these dynamics with special attention to the totality of medieval noh’s theatre space which actors and spectators interactively create. I will examine how this theatre space can be characterized in terms of the mental posture shared by both groups in order to reveal how medieval actors and spectators interacted beyond the realm of the traditional western self-other distinction. This paper brings to the fore Ryosuke Ohashi’s experimental inquiry into Zeami’s perception of otherness. I argue that both groups communicate with each other with a mixture of empathy (attachment) and nonchalance (detachment) in a way similar to medieval marketplace transactions that observed the mercantile ethics inherently derived from beliefs of Shinto-cum-Buddhism. In comparing these two, medieval noh theatre becomes a more profoundly symbolic meeting place for mortality and immortality than the contemporary marketplace.