Bokus
Samuel L. Leiter - Meiji Kabuki, Inbunden

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

Meiji Kabuki

Japanese Theatre through Foreign Eyes

Av Samuel L. Leiter

1602 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar. Fri frakt över 249 kr.

Beskrivning
A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic TitleThis book is an annotated collection of English-language documents by foreigners writing about Japan’s kabuki theatre in the half-century after the country was opened to the West in 1853. Using memoirs, travelogues, diaries, letters, and reference books, it contains all significant writing about kabuki by foreigners—resident or transient—during the Meiji period (1868–1912), well before the first substantial non-Japanese book on the subject was published. Its chronologically organized chapters contain detailed introductions. Twenty-seven authors, represented by edited versions of their essays, are supplemented by detailed summaries of thirty-five others. The author provides insights into how Western visitors—missionaries, scholars, diplomats, military officers, adventurers, globetrotters, and even a precocious teenage girl—responded to a world-class theatre that, apart from a tiny number of pre-Meiji encounters, had been hidden from the world at large for over two centuries. It reveals prejudices and misunderstandings, but also demonstrates the power of great theatre to bring together people of differing cultural backgrounds despite the barriers of language, artistic convention, and the very practice of theatergoing. And, in Ichikawa Danjuro IX, it presents an actor knowledgeable foreigners considered one of the finest in the world.
Produktinformation
  • Utgivningsdatum: 2022-11-30
  • Mått: 157 x 237 x 30 mm
  • Vikt: 767 g
  • Format: Inbunden
  • Språk: Engelska
  • Antal sidor: 438
  • Förlag: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • ISBN: 9781666926781
  • Utmärkelser: Winner of Outstanding Academic Title 2023
Utforska kategorier
Mer om författaren

Samuel L. Leiter is professor emeritus of theater at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Recensioner i media

Leiter is well known as one of the foremost scholars of Kabuki. In the present volume, he offers a fascinating glimpse of the cross-cultural moment when Japan opened to the West after the Meiji Restoration (1868) and "foreigners" encountered Kabuki for the first time. Including some 40 first-person accounts dating from 1859 to 1912, the anthology comprises six chronological sections and provides a kaleidoscopic view of Kabuki through non-Japanese eyes. The individual pieces are fascinating, but the value of the anthology is greater than the sum of its parts because of the variety and depth of the individual essays and Leiter’s erudition and strong, clearly written commentary. The book is equally intriguing for the range of its authors/observers: Americans, Europeans, Australians. Who were they? Why were they in Japan? What do their impressions of Kabuki reveal about them? This brilliant book will be an invaluable resource for scholars of Japanese theater and for those interested in history, intercultural encounters, and changing cultural perceptions. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Betyg & recensioner

0 recensioner

Inga recensioner tillgängliga.

Mer från samma författare