Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

INTERMINGLING OF CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY61TRANSFORMING THINKING, TRANSGRESSING BORDERSJo KukathasIntroductionA year spent in Indonesia and Japan exploring traditionaland contemporary theater allowed me to witness theways in which artists and intellectuals transgress andtransform their traditions. A study of these theatersmade it obvious that these transgressions are nothingnew and that globalization, far from homogenizing thearts, can make them dynamic.However, the artist is often pitted against a nationalhistorical narrative that seeks to fix, not transgress,borders. It is in the lively skirmish between art andauthority that the artist has to find a dynamic balance.Authority and artists come in many forms; sometimesthey are one and the same, and it is here that theskirmish intensifies as artists contest the not-so-naturalevolution of art and society.In examining the artist as a transforming/transgressingagent, I have chosen to focus on Japan and in particularthe tradition of noh. But first a quote from an oldglobalist:The pursuit of reason and rejection of traditionalismare so brilliantly patent as to be above the needof argument. If traditionalism were proper, theprophets would merely have followed their eldersand not come with new messages.Akbar the Great, IndiaFrom traditional to contemporary: A surveyStart with tradition but don’t end there.Goenawan Mohamed, Indonesian poetNoh and Ulysses S GrantOne of the first non-Japanese ever to see a noh playwas Ulysses S Grant. It was 1879 and he was on aglobal good will journey. His flustered hosts in Tokyo,uncertain how to entertain him, asked the great nohactor Hosho Kuro to perform. To his hosts’ surprise,Grant did not fall asleep. Instead, it is recorded thatafter the performance he turned to them and said: “Youmust preserve this.”Grant was not to know that at the time the fate of nohwas hanging in the balance. Noh had been intimatelyassociated with the shogunate since the 14 th centurywhen the samurai lord Yoshimitsu took a shine to thebeautiful young actor Zeami Motokiyo—later calledthe father of noh, famous as its greatest theorist andplaywright. Under this military court patronage andremoved from its folk roots, noh took on the remoteesoteric features one associates with it today.However, in 1868, ten years before Grant’s visit,the shogunate was overthrown, and with the Meijirestoration and its mania for all things modern, thetraditional arts had fallen into disfavor. Noh wasbranded pre-modern and most of the old noh familiesdisbanded. However, Grant urged that the art form bepreserved “and the recommendations of so distinguisheda visitor were not lightly to be dismissed in those days ofuncritical respect for all things foreign” (Keene 1957).Simultaneously, a delegation sent to study European arthad witnessed opera and concluded that, as noh ratherresembled opera, it might be worth saving after all. Nohwas preserved and its status as a “classical” art after theEuropean model was affirmed. Noh was adopted by theMeiji government as a national representation of Japanand “Japanese-ness.”Ironically, it was the global gaze of Ulysses S Grant andothers that was an essential factor to noh’s survival. Nohwas “preserved” and monitored. Only five schools wereallowed to open, and the strict iemoto or headmastersystem meant that noh was carefully controlled bothfrom within and without.Noh and contemporary Japanese artists and audiencesSo did noh survive to have any meaning to ordinaryJapanese? Or has consumerist makudonarudo 1 cultureleft them dulled to more metaphysical desires? Ibelieve contemporary artists and audiences continue toexplore and respond to noh, not as an act of resistanceto “globalization” but out of a desire to explore analternative discourse to the present day’s dominant viewof human existence. Japanese audiences, while nervousof noh, respond deeply to its cultural signifiers 2 .Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows