野上記念法政大学能楽研究所　能楽の国際・学際的研究拠点 - 国際・学際的視野による能楽研究を確立するため、国内外の研究者と共同して、豊富な文献資料に基づく実証的研究を進めるとともに、総合芸術としての能楽に対応した多様な視点による新たな研究の創造、国際的研究に向けた方法論の共有をめざします。

Research

Reading Early-Modern Noh from the Global Documentary Record

Lead Researcher: Patrick SCHWEMMER
Member: TOYOSHIMA Masayuki, MIYAMOTO Keizō

Research Goals:
“I am reminded of the chant of Tōru: ‘How useless this long tale of an autumn night! Let me now go dip sea water, dip salt.’—thus the Old Man’s intonation,” (trans. Elison). Fukansai Fabian, the famous Japanese convert who defended Christianity in debates with Buddhist and Confucian intellectuals of the early seventeenth century only to apostatize by 1620, ends his anti-Christian tract Deus Destroyed with a quotation from the noh Tōru. As Schwemmer argues in his doctoral dissertation, the Jesuits created Christian oral literature in Japanese using stylistic elements lifted from ballad traditions like the kōwaka, whose libretti formed the core of the Japanese language curriculum for both Europeans and Japanese in the mission schools. To what extent did the various non-Japanese (Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Malays, Filipinos, Ryūkyūans, Dutch, English, Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, Mexicans) with whom Japan was in contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries engage with noh and other Japanese theatre, and what can we learn about period noh from the documents they left behind? For now, this research project focuses on Jesuit sources, whose vast corpus is only beginning to be catalogued, transcribed, and translated. Traveling to archives across Southern Europe, we transcribe and carry out research on previously-unstudied documents related both to the history of theatre on the missions and to noh and other performance traditions described by the missionaries, chiefly in the regular reports they were sending back to Rome.

Research Results

From 2013 to 2015, we used the facilities of the Noh Theatre Research Institute to find new information from overseas materials on the international history of late-medieval and early-Tokugawa Japanese performing arts. For now, we confined ourselves to the nearly-unstudied original Jesuit Japan letters. Regarding materials that Patrick Schwemmer transcribed and translated and Miyamoto Keizō and Toyoshima Masayuki analysed in fiscal 2013, we presented our findings at academic conferences and then wrote them out for publication. First, it was known to previous noh research that a Jesuit account survived of Hideyoshi’s noh stage at Osaka Castle, but this had only been read from a nineteenth-century Japanese translation of an eighteenth-century piece of imaginative Jesuit propaganda, which relied on a seventeenth-century translation of a translation of the sixteenth-century original. Accordingly, in an article in the 2015 issue of Nō to kyōgen, we step back through the layers of this material to the original eyewitness account, thereby revealing information which changes our understanding of the history of the noh stage and of Kōdaiji makie decoration. Moreover, in the 2015 issue of Nōgaku kenkyū, we addressed the Japanese-language Christian plays performed in churches around Kyūshū. These have sometimes been called “Christian noh”, “the wellspring of kabuki”, or “the seed of bunraku”, but based on many original eyewitness accounts we argue that it should rather be understood in the context of nameless folk traditions on the Japanese side, together with similar mystery plays common in Europe at the time. Furthermore, with an eye to future research, Professor Miyamoto viewed and recorded a mystery play in Elche, Spain, while Schwemmer continued archival work in Rome and Madrid. As of 2016, Schwemmer is continuing his work on Jesuit Japan letters at Kirishitan Bunko at Sophia University as an SSRC/JSPS postdoctoral fellow, in preparation for a book manuscript on Hideyoshi’s patronage and performance of the noh theatre and the formation of the system of noh as state ceremonial under the Tokugawa shogunate.

学術論文（査読付き）2015 パトリック・シュウェマー「大坂城本丸の能舞台をイエズス会日本報告の原本から読み解く」『能と狂言13』（ぺりかん社）2015 パトリック・シュウェマー「『キリシタン能』再考：イエズス会日本報告の原本から」『能楽研究39』
招待講演2016/1 “Noh as Traditional Japanese Leadership Training,” Center for Professional Communication Seminar (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies).2014/1 「キリシタン文献で見る日本中世芸能の国際享受史」『キリシタンと出版』刊行記念講演会 キリシタン版は語る（東京堂書店）学会発表2017/1 “Hideyoshi’s Viola Concert at Jurakudai: Between Confucian Musical Diplomacy and the European Brotherhood of Sovereigns,” Modern Language Association Convention (Philadelphia), scheduled.2015/9 “A bicultural, bilingual theatrical exchange between the Tenshō Boys’ Embassy and the Kyūshū Collegio,” Tsukuba Global Science Week (Tsukuba University).2015/7 “Alessandro Valignano’s Theatrical Diplomacy: The Boys’ Mission of Japan to Europe Performs for Hideyoshi, 1591,” Centro de História d’Aquém e d’Além Mar International Conference (Universidade Nova de Lisboa).2014/6 「キリシタン資料と能：イエズス会日本報告の原文を読んで」 能楽学会大会（早稲田大学）2014/6 「キリシタン劇の上演空間：イエズス会日本報告の原文を読んで」楽劇学会大会（国立能楽堂）
学内発表2015/11 「キリシタン文献と日本芸能史」学術研究特別推進費重点領域研究採択課題（上智大学）2015/4 “And The Angel Spake unto Harunobu: Jesuit Insurrectionist Propaganda in Japanese, 1591,” PIIRS Program in Translation (Princeton University).2015/2 “Converting Language: Jesuit Mission Literature in Japanese,” Colonialism and Imperialism Workshop (Princeton University).

Report
For the past two years, we have used the facilities of the Noh Theatre Research Institute to find new information from overseas materials on the international history of late-medieval and early-Tokugawa Japanese performing arts. For now, we confined ourselves to the nearly-unstudied original Jesuit Japan letters. Regarding materials that Patrick Schwemmer transcribed and translated and Miyamoto Keizō and Toyoshima Masayuki analysed in fiscal 2013, we presented our findings at academic conferences and then wrote them out for publication. First, it was known to previous noh research that a Jesuit account survived of Hideyoshi’s noh stage at Osaka Castle, but this had only been read from a nineteenth-century Japanese translation of an eighteenth-century piece of imaginative Jesuit propaganda, which relied on a seventeenth-century translation of a translation of the sixteenth-century original. Accordingly, in an article in the 2015 issue of Nō to kyōgen, we step back through the layers of this material to the original eyewitness account, thereby revealing information which changes our understanding
of the history of the noh stage and of Kōdaiji makie decoration.
Moreover, in the 2015 issue of Nōgaku kenkyū, we addressed the Japanese-language Christian plays peformed in churches around Kyūshū. These have sometimes been called “Christian noh,” “the wellspring of kabuki,” or “the seed of bunraku,” but based on many original eyewitness accounts we argue that it should rather be understood in the context of nameless folk traditions on the Japanese side, together with similar mystery plays common in Europe at the time. Furthermore, with an eye to future research, Professor Miyamoto viewed and recorded a mystery play in Elche, Spain, while Schwemmer continued archival work in Rome and Madrid.