Within the iemoto system, the Confucian father-son relationship was directly mirrored by that of the teacher-student. Each school of Noh was considered a “family” unit, with the iemoto fulfilling the role of “father”. The position of iemoto was passed down in patrilineal hereditary succession, either by “natural or adopted 'sons'- thus preventing any take-over or innovation by strangers .” (Ortolani 1995, 104) The methods employed to maintain “family” secrets and preserve lineage considered the “...personal teacher-disciple relationship [as] essential....[A] transmission from person to person of a private, spiritual heritage through practical, experimental, and concrete training.”(Ortolani 1995, 105) Accompanying this position were the rights to allow or prohibit performances, as well as to determine which teachings were orthodox.
In my opinion, evidence exists within the governmental ban on actresses to support the presence of women in early Noh. Historically, the ban on female performers was directed solely at Kabuki, which would indicate that females were performing within other theatrical traditions such as Noh at the time. This omission as proof of participation is logical, otherwise there would be no need to focus the ban's attention on Kabuki; it merely would have banned all actresses from all schools of theatre.
As Maki Morinaga adeptly points outs, the ban targeted the newly formed Kabuki for its involvement in de facto prostitution. (Morinaga 2002, 247) I believe that Neo-Confucian attitudes toward women coupled with the rigid social roles imposed through the Five Relationships were sufficient to pressure female performers to leave Noh. Additionally, the conservative morality within this system of hierarchical relationships stressed female chasteness as a sign of virtue. As one scholar succinctly puts it: “All of these factors combine to reinforce an ideology that very specifically limits women to their predetermined role in society.”(Dubroff 1996, 316) This role did not include performing on the traditional stage. With the intent of maintaining the purity of these “fallen women” and curbing the licentiousness and prostitution associated with Kabuki, a new tradition in which biological males performed as female, onnagata, was born.
Onnagata, from onna meaning woman and gata meaning technique or appearance, is the practice of male actors engendering female roles. Within academic circles it pertains exclusively to the world of Kabuki; and I will discuss the reasons onnagata came to be as well its subsequent development in the following section. This does not mean, however that onnagata is irrelevant to the understanding of Noh. Though subjugated to the realm of Kabuki, in its most literal sense “woman-technique” or “woman-appearance” is so crucially important to Noh theatre that Zeami dedicated multiple treatises to this art form, though he may not have used the term onnagata.
In instructing actors on women's roles Zeami writes:“An actor must look at himself using his internalized outer image, come to share the the view of the audience, examine his appearance with his spiritual eyes and so maintain a graceful appearance with his entire body.” (Zeami 1984, 81, emphasis mine) This suggests to me a whole-body approach, one not impeded by, or dependent upon the visual representation of the mask being engendered. It is my opinion that the onnagata framework is dismissed when discussing Noh because of the utilization of masks in performance, a techinique which may be seen as a tool used to hide the biological sex of the performer. However, the mask is an element that transforms, not conceals. The teaching central to Noh is that of hana-- to flower or blossom completely into a role. This is not imitation, or even representation, but an act of performativity, just like onnagata. Virtually nothing is written on onnagata within Noh, so I am turning to Kabuki to fill in the missing gaps.
The concept of performativity is quite different than that of performance. A performative act is, in its simplest form, the reiteration or citation of a norm that has social meaning attached to it. It has meaning because society has constructed a meaning for it. A performance, in contrast, has no meaning outside of its specific theatrical context. Gender is not a performance, it is a performative act.
When exploring the onnagata role, it is fundamental to keep in mind how it originated: out of the ban of female actors, with the intent of curbing prostitution; it involved an overall “appropriation of female sexuality...which demanded one-sided chastity and imprisoned bodies to beget patrilineal offspring,”. (Tonomura 1997, 148) The continued history of the onnagata role developed with numerous twists regarding gender: male prostitution, homoeroticism, and the creation of a cyclical relationship of gender performativity which resulted in an idealized femininity impossible for biological females to attain. The attempt to decrease prostitution, especially the theatrically associated variety, failed. Prostitution continued to flourish, with male actors selling themselves to supplement their incomes. (MacDuff 1996, 248; Morinaga 2002, 256) Women, as well, were not “liberated” from prostitution, which the ban on actresses had attempted to accomplish. Rejected from the stage, yet trained in the arts, many former actresses were adopted into geisha houses (Wakita 1999, 91), which in the 17th century, were still associated with prostitution.
Of particular interest to me is the radical alteration of gender performance: the imitators mirroring the imitated, mirroring the imitators. With regards to the onnagata, “imitation” does not fully encompass the extent of their performativity. Mere imitation could never give way to a paradigm in which male performers were considered the paragon of femininity: “gender is presentation, not representation,”(Morinaga 2002, 263) as Morinaga states.
The onnagata performance was carried out not merely on the stage. It was expected that onnagata would establish a male fan base and live out femininity in daily life, maintain a youthful appearance, keep thoughts pure and chaste, and even go to the extreme of hiding evidence of marriage and offspring. If a spouse and children were discovered and inquiry was made, onnagata were expected to blush and act embarrassed (as a biological female would). (Morinaga 2002, 260,261, 265) An oft quoted writing on onnagata states: “'It is hardly possible for an onnagata to be called skillfull unless he spends his everyday life as a woman'.”(260)
Rather than imitation, onnagata was more of a citation; they lived out femininity in a way that both embodied and reconstructed the feminine. This comes into play in the formation of a reciprocal interplay of gender performance between biological females, and the onnagata personifying them. Initially, it was the women of the pleasure quarters whom began to imitate the portrayal of their own sex, resulting in a definition of femininity that circled from onnagata to geisha and back around. (Kano 2001, 5) Eventually, the cycle widened to included all women, both biological and performer, “patricipat[ing] in the labyrinth of citationality...that helped construct 'femininity' and yet nullified the boundary of 'woman', the alleged matrix of femininity.” (Morinaga 2002, 266)
Implications of homoerotic elements to this relationship abound, some of which directly imply that homosexual relationships were pivotal to the onnagata role. It is widely recognized that “Japanese thought during the middle ages understood male homoerotic desire to be a sacred force as well as a physical one. The ideal of male same-sex attraction as a source of spiritual revelation...can be found in many of the nō texts that survive,”.(MacDuff 1996, 249) This practice of wakashūdo, the way of loving boys, was recognized as a type of marriage, where the older partner was responsible for the spiritual training, social backing and moral guidance of the younger partner and was expected to set an example of manliness for the boy to exemplify. (MacDuff 1996, 250; Morinaga 2002, 251) In return, the younger partner was expected to mature into self-awareness and eventually take his place as the older partner, “training” the younger generation which parallels the iemoto/ “son” relationship. Whether this relationship was truly homosexual or not, this deeply patriarchal and highly misogynistic paradigm is what I believe is responsible for evicting women from the Noh stage. Onnagata became not only a stylized art form passed down in Neo-Confucian patriarchal succession, but also became the perfection of female performativity: developed, refined and idealized by men.
So highly valued was this standard of female performance set in the early 17th century that it has remained relatively unchallenged in the modern era. Though women gained the right to return to the stage in 1891, (Kano 2001, 5) the roles open to them were limited. It was only within Western theatrical productions, or Japanese plays influenced by Western playwrights, that they were allowed to perform. Within traditional Japanese theatre, women remained barred until after World War II, (Blummer 1996, 314) the only exception being the all-female Takarazuka review.(Kano 2001, 10) Seen as innovative, the Takarazuka review plays on gender-bending for comedic purposes; it is a “performance of male gender” not the performative embodiment of an ideal “masculinity”. This inverted gender performance grew directly out of Kabuki, where today Japanese women are thriving as director/choreographers and teachers to the next generation. (Blummer 1996, 313)
Noh, however, appears much slower in embracing change. In all of Japan, only about 40 women have been allowed to participate. In the Umewara School, one of the oldest schools in existence, only six to ten percent of the qualified players are female. (Vollmann 2010, 156) Women are still prevented from becoming heads of theatrical families, and even some roles, like Okina, are off limits. This is due to an interpretation of bekka-- the separate fire-- within the okina performance as the “absence of women” and that professional expertise can only pass “...patrilineally from father to son, or from a male teacher, such as the 'family head' (iemoto) to a male disciple.” (Rath 2000, 256) It is little wonder that to this day only 40 women have been admitted into these deeply patriarchal families where the parent/child/teacher/student relationship is so highly regarded.
Additionally, no self-proclaimed “Feminist Noh Theatre” exists in Japan today. (Dubroff 1996, 315) While the term “feminist” can be seen as problematic due to its Western connotations, it is still perplexing how such a theatrical movement does not exist considering how Noh grew out of Shinto ritual, in which women played an integral role. Furthermore, it is puzzling that over the course of 200 years, a non-native ideology warped gender performance within the tradition of Noh theatre so radically, yet, the various schools of thought within the fields of gender and Japanese theatre ignore the catalyst and focus on the outcomes.
Within these academic fields, a narrow focus on the ban and consequent expulsion of biological females from the stage is considered the cause, with onnagata and patriarchal hegemony within theatre being the effect. The resultant implication being the historical struggle to re-appropriate women's roles and gain footage within traditional theatre was a struggle with the mastery of theatrical technique as perfected by men. This concept lies within the parameter that onnagata was just a role performed by an actor, not a performative act one lived out. Viewing the disappearance of female actors as causal is problematic because it never acknowledges the ideology behind the decree.
Given the body of evidence presented, I propose that further investigation of Neo-Confucianism's impact on gender performativity within the field of traditional Japanese theatre is warranted. A fuller understanding of the impetus behind these radical alterations can only serve to expand methodologies of thought relating to formation of gender and Japan's theatrical arts. It is my hope that with a greater wealth of knowledge, modern female performers of Noh will fully transcend the limitations in the theater that are put upon them by Neo-Confucianist ideology. For if we consider theater to be a sociological window through which to view society, it is not surprising that, in a land where women are kept from fully participating in their own native theatre, they still have far to go in achieving full equality in their daily lives.
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