doi:10.58079/maew

Beings of Sound: Ghosts on the Kabuki Stage

par Yasuko D'Hulst · 02/04/2023

Intervention de Satoko SHIMAZAKI (Université de Californie à Los Angeles)

Jeudi 6 avril 2023 (16h30-18h)

Dans le cadre de son 50ème anniversaire, le Centre de recherches sur le Japon a le plaisir de vous inviter à la conférence exceptionnelle de Satoko Shimazaki, Associate Professor à l’Université de Californie à Los Angeles (UCLA), professeure invitée de l’EHESS en mars-avril 2023.

Discutante : Aleksandra Kobiljski

Bâtiment de l’EHESS, salle A302, 2 cours des Humanités, 93300 Aubervilliers

Contact : crj@ehess.fr

From magic lantern and the camera obscura to writing about phantasmagoria and ghosts, supernatural beings have been given extensive treatment in the area of visuality and visual representation. In the case of Japan, the thriving early modern print industry established visual forms for strange creatures that had not originally been subject to visual demarcation: perhaps most famously, the iconic image of the female ghost without feet came to characterize popular representations of ghosts in fiction. In an attempt to supplement the ocular orientation of existing research, this presentation will focus on dimensions of sound and voice that became integral to the representation of ghosts in nineteenth-century theater. Bringing the auditory and other senses, in addition to the visual and the semantic, to bear on our understanding of kabuki plays and rakugo or oral storytelling, I show how the synergies of different senses such as sound and smell generated affective registers and made representation of ghostly bodies credible on stage. This presentation also teases out the importance of the auditory to Japanese theatrical arts, in which many guilds of blind performers participated in the chanting of history and war tales or performed narratives of hell, suggesting a connection between the absence of sight and the ability to experience extraordinary encounters.