Oral Tradition

Japanese Noh and Heike katari

Shelley Fenno Quinn

Although literature specialists tend to classify Noh and Heike katari differently (Noh with a representational dimension that renders it more a hybrid), a student of oral tradition will find in them many common elements. Central to both is narrative recitation and a commitment to the expressive potential of the voice. Both show oral traditional characteristics, but early on, both also assigned a central role to libretti that performers work from. The co-presence of chanting and instrumentation is another defining characteristic. Heike katari have been traditionally performed by blind minstrels, who accompany their own solo recitations on the biwa (lute). Noh actors have performed to an instrumental ensemble of drums and flute. Both of these arts, which continue to be practiced today (Noh more widespread than Heike katari), rely on audience foreknowledge of traditional materials, making them both potential resources for examining how performances may be "re-keyed" over time to adjust to changing reception.

In Japan, the field in which the most work has been done on Noh and on Heike katari respectively is known as kokubungaku, "national literature." Kokubungaku specialists, whose philological contributions have been invaluable, have tended to concentrate on the transmission of texts as such, and on the accurate exegesis of those texts. Since such textual study has its own rigors, perhaps it is not surprising that few specialists have ventured into comparative work. The idea that the examination of Noh, Heike katari, or related narrative arts in terms of their media and processes of performance might inform our understanding of these arts has gained momentum only in the last decade. One reflection of this trend is that at least two major kokubungaku journals in the last four years have devoted entire issues to the significance of music and the human voice across a range of religious and entertainment-oriented arenas for performance in traditional Japan. ¹ [End Page 21]

There has also emerged a more interdisciplinary group of scholars from kokubungaku, ethnomusicology, and folklore studies (minzokugaku) with interests in a comparative approach that takes the field of oral tradition studies into account. One major contribution to this approach is a two-volume collection of essays on "orally transmitted literature" (kôshôbungaku), published in 1997. ² The opening essay of volume 1, by Hyôdô Hiromi, provides an overview of oral tradition studies, briefly introducing the findings of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, and touching even more lightly on contemporary work, such that of John Miles Foley. Each of the remaining essays in volume 1 introduces a traditional art of performance and its patterns of transmission, with an emphasis on its local contexts. To borrow Hyôdô's term, all the better to understand "ooraru na pafuoomansu" ("oral performance")! ³

Shelley Fenno Quinn is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Ohio State University. She researches performance traditions of Japan, especially the Noh theatre. Among her publications is "Oral and Vocal Traditions of Japan" in Teaching Oral Traditions (1998).

© by Shelley Fenno.

References

Butler 1965-66
Kenneth Dean Butler. "The Textual Evolution of the Heike Monogatari." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 26:5-51.

Matisoff 1978
Susan Matisoff. The Legend of Semimaru, Blind Musician of Japan. New York: Columbia University Press.

McCullough 1988
Helen Craig McCullough, trans. The Tale of the Heike. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Plutschow 1990
Herbert Plutschow. Chaos and Cosmos: Ritual in Early and Medieval Japanese Literature. Leiden: Brill. [End Page 22]

Quinn 1993
Shelley Fenno Quinn. "How to Write a Noh Play: Zeami's Sandô." Monumenta Nipponica, 48:53-88.

Quinn 1998
——. "Oral and Vocal Traditions of Japan." In Teaching Oral Traditions. Ed. by John Miles Foley. New York: Modern Language Association. pp. 258-65.

Ruch 1990
Barbara Ruch. "The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan." In The Cambridge History of Japan. vol. 3. Ed. by John W. Hall et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 500-43.

Yasuda 1989
Kenneth K. Yasuda. Masterworks of the Nô Theater. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Footnotes

1. Chûsei bungaku (Medieval Literature) published an issue titled "Oto to koe no chûsei bungaku" ("Sound and Voice in Medieval Literature" [vol. 46, June 2001]). Also, an issue entitled "Ongaku: koe to oto no porifuonii" ("Music: Polyphony of Voice and Sound") was published in Kokubungaku: kaishaku to kyôzai no kenkyû (The National Literature: Research on Interpretation and Learning Materials [vol. 44, issue 13, November 1999]).

2. "Kôshô bungaku" ("Orally Transmitted Literature") 1 and 2; see also Iwanami kôza Nihon bungakushi ("Iwanami's Collected Writings on the History of Japanese Literature"), vols. 16 and 17 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1997).

3. "Oral performance." See Iwanami kôza Nihon bungakushi, vol. 16, p. 32.