Secrecy in Japanese Arts "Secret Transmission" as a Mode of Knowledge

by Morinaga, Maki Isaka

• ISBN13: 9781403965509
• ISBN10: 1403965501
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-06
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book explores the Japanese tradition of secret transmission of knowledge within a closed and often hereditary group. The author investigates how esoteric practices function, how people make meaning of their practices, and how this form of esotericism survived into the modern age. The first two questions are examined by using esoteric texts from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The last looks at theatrical treatises from the late nineteenth century on.

Author Biography

Maki Isaka Morinaga is assistant professor of Japanese literature and theater at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction: Quest for Esotericism	1	(18)
Historicization	3	(5)
Methodology	8	(4)
Texts	12	(1)
Organization	13	(4)
A Note on the Text	17	(2)
Operation of Esotericism	19	(26)
Heiho Kadensho, an Esoteric Text Par Excellence	20	(6)
What to Conceal? ``I Can't Tell, or You Won't Tell''	26	(9)
Why Conceal? Intentions, Pretensions, and Functions	35	(10)
Transmission, the Creation of Knowledge	45	(28)
``Hearsay'' from the Imagined Past: Creativity and Traditionality	46	(17)
Legitimate Transmission: Lineage, Talent, Body, and Insideness	63	(10)
Secrecy, Concealing the Revealing	73	(28)
Reasoning of ``Non-Reason'': Verbalization and Physicality	74	(15)
Secrecy as a Performative: A Protective Mechanism	89	(12)
Esotericism and Modernity	101	(36)
Osanai Kaoru and Modern Japanese Theater	103	(7)
Amateurism: The Independence of the Enunciated from Enunciation	110	(14)
Translationism: The Separation of Creativity and Traditionality	124	(13)
Epilogue: Esotericism for Us	137	(4)
Notes	141	(40)
Bibliography	181	(12)
Index	193