A lecture by Yokoyama Tarō (Rikkyo University)

In 14th-century nō, ecstatic dance (hataraki) was considered the mode by which performers were possessed by nonhuman forces which allowed them to effectively transform into demons (oni or mono) on the stage. The masked performer loosened subjective control to become a conduit for the demon: not simply a supernatural power, but what can be understood today as an assemblage of nonhuman agencies within the performance environment.  The playwright and actor Zeami (1363–1443) revolutionized this paradigm by humanizing the demon and taming the ecstatic body. His project initiated a centuries-long effort to regulate nō embodiment. Yet six hundred years later, Mansai Nomura (b. 1966), Japan’s most acclaimed contemporary performer of nōgaku (nō and kyōgen), paradoxically referring to himself a “cyborg,” a provocative term capturing how 20th-century nōgaku has disciplined the performer’s body into an inhuman, autonomous system of technique. This lecture traces the startling genealogy of the nō body from demons to cyborgs. It offers a radical new framework for understanding the body in Japanese performance, while opening fresh dialogues with contemporary debates on embodiment, agency, and posthumanism.