Nomai Dance Drama

N=omai dance drama, an artistic expression combining sacred, communal, economic, and cultural spheres of community life in the district of Higashidorimura, is a performing tradition that provides an identity to agriculturally based villages. It has retained features characteristic of the music, drama, and sacred practices of medieval Japan. N=omai singing exhibits traits linked to Buddhist chanting. The instrumental music originates from folk Shinto. This study highlights the social and cultural value n=omaii has for the residents in villages that perform it by providing the historical context in which it is examined, as well as its current performance practices.As this work explores the aspects of agricultural Japanese society, revealed through a dance drama, it will appeal to music and drama scholars as well as students of Japanese culture and history. After establishing the historical lens from which to view n^D=omai drama, the theatrical and musical aspects are discussed in detail. Photographs and musical examples enhance this thorough, well-organized study.

.,."an important contribution to scholarship....bound to engage the curiosity of any student of Asian performance, folk traditions, or performance studies."-Theatre Journal, ?...an important contribution to scholarship....bound to engage the curiosity of any student of Asian performance, folk traditions, or performance studies.?-Theatre Journal, ?This book covers new ground in its approach and focus, and is accesing blend of a diverse number of performing traditions from both the court and lower classes of medieval Japan and the way it draws on religious practices including Buddhist chant and folk Shinto music...both the general and specialist reader may gain from the extensive experience of this author ensuring that we may have insights into these traditions that are inherited across so many centuries of Japanese history.?-Ethnomusicology, ..."an important contribution to scholarship....bound to engage the curiosity of any student of Asian performance, folk traditions, or performance studies."-Theatre Journal, "This book covers new ground in its approach and focus, and is accesing blend of a diverse number of performing traditions from both the court and lower classes of medieval Japan and the way it draws on religious practices including Buddhist chant and folk Shinto music...both the general and specialist reader may gain from the extensive experience of this author ensuring that we may have insights into these traditions that are inherited across so many centuries of Japanese history."-Ethnomusicology

SUSAN M. ASAI is a music professor at Northeastern University in Boston. She received her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of California at Los Angeles.