Home Staging Poetic Balance: A New Introduction to and Translation of the Noh Play Hakurakuten
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Staging Poetic Balance: A New Introduction to and Translation of the Noh Play Hakurakuten

  • LeRon James Harrison EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 30, 2019
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

The introduction discusses the noh play Hakurakuten in relation to the earlier introduction to and translation of the play by Arthur Waley, the reading of the play by Leo Shingchi Yip, and the concepts of allusion and allusive space advanced by Joseph Pucci. Using Pucci’s concepts, I discuss the allusions to literary texts, cultural practices, and historical events and persons in Hakurakuten in a new manner as well as assess the aspects of the play both Waley and Yip overlook and how Waley and Yip’s readings fit into an allusive space reading of the play. The translation is based on the version of the play appearing in Itō Masayoshi’s annotated volume and incorporates as much as possible the information Itō gives. It contains a translation of the kyōgen interlude, which is important to appreciating the central theme of the play and was left out of the Waley translation. It also contains more footnotes than the earlier Waley translation, notes that point out matters such as puns in language and source material for lines.

Bibliography

Harrison, LeRon James (2017): “Gagaku as Place and Practice: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Place of Japanese Imperial Court Music in Contemporary Japanese Culture”. Asian Music: 4–27.10.1353/amu.2017.0001Search in Google Scholar

Itō, Masayoshi 伊藤正義 (annot.) (1988): Yōkyoku Shū. 謡曲集 (Vol. 79, Shinchō Nihon Koten Shūsei 新潮日本古典集成). Tokyo 東京: Shinchōsha 新潮社.Search in Google Scholar

Katagiri, Yōichi 片桐洋一 (ed.) (1973): Chūsei Kokinshū chūshaskusho kaidai 中世古今集注釈書解題 Vol. 2. Kyoto 京都: Akao Shōbundō 赤尾照文堂.Search in Google Scholar

Klein, Susan Blakeley (2002): Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.10.1163/9781684170388Search in Google Scholar

Konishi, Jin’ichi (1986): A History of Japanese Literature. (Vol. 2, The Early Middle Ages). Translated by Aileen Gatten. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar

May, Todd (2001): Our Practices, Our Selves. Or, What It Means to Be Human. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Ortolani, Benito (1990): The Japanese Theatre: From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1163/9789004484146Search in Google Scholar

Pollack, David (1986): The Fracture of Meaning: Japan’s Synthesis of China from the Eighth through the Eighteenth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400886029Search in Google Scholar

Pucci, Joseph (1998): The Full-Knowing Reader:Allusion and the Power of the Reader in the Western Literary Tradition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Waley, Arthur (1979): The Noh Plays of Japan. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company.Search in Google Scholar

Yip, Leo Shingchi (2007): “Nō as Sociopolitical Commentary: Staging Chinese Literari in Medieval Nō Theatre”. Asian Theatre Journal 24.2: 505–517.10.1353/atj.2007.0042Search in Google Scholar

Yip, Leo Shingchi (2016): China Reinterpreted: Staging the Other in Muromachi Noh Theater. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Book.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2019-06-30
Published in Print: 2019-07-26

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 26.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/asia-2019-0014/html
Scroll to top button