The Japanese Theatre: From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism

Benito Ortolani was a scholar of Japanese theatre, and this Princeton University Press book is his standard academic history of Japanese theatrical forms, tracing Noh drama back to its origins in shamanistic ritual through to its later contemporary and pluralistic forms, including the Okina performance's own ritual antecedents. Its strength is treating theatrical form and religious ritual as genuinely continuous rather than separate categories, showing how Noh's distinctive style grew directly out of earlier ritual practice rather than developing independently of it. Its limit is broad scope across a very long historical span, a claim needing detailed textual or performance practice analysis of one specific play or one specific historical period of Noh's development is better served by a study focused on that narrower subject than by this wide historical survey.