The Ballad Drama Of Medieval Japan

A history of Kowaka, the 16th century ballad-drama, including stylistic analysis and explication of the texts, with examples, plus two complete librettos.

Nomai dance drama, an artistic expression combining sacred, communal, economic, and cultural spheres of community life in the district of Higashidorimura, is a performing tradition that provides an identity to agriculturally based villages. It has retained features characteristic of the music, drama, and sacred practices of medieval Japan. N=omai singing exhibits traits linked to Buddhist chanting. The instrumental music originates from folk Shinto. This study highlights the social and cultural value n=omaii has for the residents in villages that perform it by providing the historical context in which it is examined, as well as its current performance practices. As this work explores the aspects of agricultural Japanese society, revealed through a dance drama, it will appeal to music and drama scholars as well as students of Japanese culture and history. After establishing the historical lens from which to view n^D=omai drama, the theatrical and musical aspects are discussed in detail. Photographs and musical examples enhance this thorough, well-organized study.

Investigates some historically important political and social issues raised by the Genpei War (1180-1185). This epic civil conflict, which ushered in Japan's age of the warriors, is famously articulated in the monumental narrative Heike monogatari (The Tale of the Heike).

This book is an introduction the Japanese history, culture, and society from 1185 - the beginning of the Kamakura period - through the end of the Edo period in 1868.

Chinese and Japanese Music-Dramas is the result of a conference on the relations between Chinese and Japanese music-drama held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on October 1–4, 1971. In addition to the Association for Asian Studies, four U-M departments participated in the conference: the Center for Japanese Studies, the Center for Chinese Studies, the School of Music, and the Speech Department. One important inspiration for the creation of such an interdisciplinary conference was the fact that each participant had found, after years of individual research on music-drama in East Asia, consistent frustration caused by attempts to deal on their own with multiple cultural and technical problems. Another motivating force was an awareness among many members of the four disciplines involved that the topic is in fact one of the largest untouched fields of scholarly endeavor in both Asian and theatrical studies. The collection opens with J. I. Crump’s exploration of the Ming commentators who began to subject Yüan musical drama to the same critiques as other literature from the past. In the second chapter, Rulan Chao Pian looks to the structure of arias in Peking Opera for clues about what distinguishes this art form. William P. Malm turns to three key sources for the performance conventions of Japanese Noh drama to glean any Sino-Japanese music relationships that exist in technical terms and practices. In the fourth essay, Carl Sesar analyzes a Noh play that stages the tension between Chinese influence and Japanese originality. Roy E Teele concludes the volume with a formal study of Noh play structure to assess lineages of influence from Chinese dramatic forms. After each contribution, the editors print a transcript of the conference participants’ discussion of that paper, providing the reader with a detailed and nuanced view of how the contributors understood and responded to each other’s work.

First Published in 1971. This annotated bibliography of doctoral dissertations on Japan and Korea grew out of a decision to expand and bring up to date an earlier list entitled Unpublished Doctoral Dissertations Relating to Japan, Accepted in the Universities of Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States, 1946-1963, compiled by Peter Cornwall and issued by the Center for Japanese Studies in 1965.