Old wine, champagne bottles: Commemorative noh performances in Japan I recently attended the name-taking commemorative performance of Shigeyama Doji in Tokyo, as he leaped his father to take his late grandfather's name Sennojo. And a 30-year anniversary of the Ohtsuki Noh Stage by an active Kanze School noh performer Otsuki Bunzo in Osaka led me thinking about the role of commemoration as self-generating power source vital to the traditional arts for a variety of reasons. What follows are some general thoughts on the issue of 記念 （memorial) performances in noh. Commemorative performances in Japan are given often in the traditional theatre world. These serve multiple, mutually enforcing purposes, acting in much the same way that Corinthian pillars and marble floors, high ceilings with stained glass and natural light make churches and commercial banks symbols of god-given, stability and permanence. By dusting off rare plays and versions, famous names from t...
an occasional document of theatrical life in Kyoto and the virtual world at the beginning of the 21st century