Intersections of Religion and Drama : A Comparison of Japanese and English Culture in the 16th and 17th Century

1998 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09610551
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 文学一般(含文学論・比較文学)・西洋古典
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: YOKOTA-MURAKAMI Gerry Faculty of Language and Culture, Osaka University, Associate Professor, 言語文化部, 助教授 (90216242)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1998
• Keywords: drama / religion / noh / coomparative literature / Quakerism / English drama

Research Abstract

In this the second year of a two-year research project, I continued to collect data and to correspond with other scholars in the field, but at the same time began polishing for publication the four papers I presented the first year.
During the period of religious reformation in the West, the new Elizabethan drama was severely criticized, especially by the Puritans, as a secular corruption in comparison to medieval morality and passion plays. In Japan, too, the noh theater gradually separated from the shrines and temples which had originally been its patrons and developed into a secular art. And just as Elizabethan drama was censored, so the repertoire of noh was manipulated for political reasons under pressure from the bakufu.
With this project, I attempt to contribute to the comparative history of thought by clarifying the processes of manipulation of both dramatic repertoires and public opinion concerning the theater. One way to accomplish this is to study the incorporation of religiou s material into representative dramatic works. However, in order to achieve a more historical perspective, I have sought to delineate prominent features of the repertoires as a whole-for example, by comparing the current "classical" repertoire with earlier corpuses which included works that were later excluded-and to analyze commentaries on drama by religious figures-on the English side, records such as the minutes of Quaker headquarters (London Yearly Meeting), and on the Japanese side, commentaries by Buddhist priests and Confucian scholars.
One serious risk in attempting a comparative history of thought is that of applying modern Western concepts retroactively to the past. In order to avoid such error, I have attempted to conduct this research with an awareness of possible limitations in my methodology (primarily poststructural deconstruction and materialist feminism). I am also concerned about problems of methodology brought about by overspecialization in the humanities, especially the division between literary and linguistic studies, which seems to be leading to an everwidening gap between qualititative and quantitative approaches. As an attempt to bridge that gap, I have tried to incorporate corpus linguistics into an analysis which is still based primarily on literary theory.