Kunqu

This article compares extractivist ideologies of voice and listening in late eighteenth-century Europe and China to envision a decolonial comparativism. Inspired by Dylan Robinson’s “apposite methodology,” the article “writes with” the French Jesuit Jean-Joseph-Marie Amiot, who compared European and Chinese ears several times during his career in Beijing to ascertain why the Chinese abhorred European harmony. Through his correspondence with the Republic of Letters, Amiot’s comparisons resonated with the “sharp-eared Chinese” trope in European discourse. The dialectics of this trope, laid bare in Johann Gottfried Herder’s surprisingly similar denigrations of China and of deafness, reflected an extractivist phonocentrism by which recognition of one’s subjectivity required opening oneself up to society’s extractive listening. Hegel and post-Thermidorian French elites even posited such extraction as the foundation for pluralism and progress. Though specifically othered by European phonocentrism, the Qing Empire then ruling China articulated similar ideologies. While Amiot compared the qupai stock melodies of Kunqu theater to the vaudeville songs of opéra-comique, eighteenth-century Qing court adaptations of Kunqu departed from the pervasive use of qupai to achieve a transcendent positionality of listening. Qing-imperial ethnographies of languages and songs further revealed such transcendent listening as undergirding the multiethnic empire, where subjecthood depended on proffering a voice to the imperial ear via an extractive phonography (“voice-writing”). The article concludes by situating this phonocentrism shared between Europe and China within current academic discourses on decolonization and deimperialization. It argues that comparativism can create spaces that facilitate “turning away” from the extraction of voices, which continues to sustain imperial hegemonies as uniquely transcendent ears.

Huang Xieqing (1805-1864) is considered as one of the best nineteenth-century writers of Kunqu plays. The Mirror of the Official, composed around 1855, describes the career of Wang Wenxi, a model official who confronted the Opium war, then
ensuing social tension, and the Taiping menace in Zhejiang, Huang's native province. This article offers an analysis of the play and attempts to relate it to the life and Iiterary career of its author. It establishes that the career of its main character
was modeled on that of Wang Youling, the Zhejiang governor who perished during the assault on Hangzhou by the Taiping in 1861. The scenes dealing with the Opium war are studied in more detail. The qualities demonstrated by Wang Wenxi as a magistrate and a prefect refer the reader to the recommendations of the official handbooks that were published in large numbers during the Qing. The title of the
play is an allusion to such a handbook, composed by Wang Wenxi's father and supposed to have guided him during his career as an official.

冊封・幕藩、両制度に属した近世琉球の外交政策の中心部として芸能があった。能楽・浄瑠璃・歌舞伎や琉球口頭文学から本説を得て琉球語で演じられる組踊が、明代中国からの使節団向けに、異国でありながら儒教などの思想を理解する文明国としての姿勢を見せるために作られたというのは周知の通りである。ただし、私が大英博物館で発見した絵入り図録『琉球奏楽図』がこれまで知られる中でもっとも詳しく物語るように、逆に江戸上りの際、琉球使節団が将軍の前で中国語による演劇を「唐踊（とうおどり）」という名称で上演することもあった。本発表では板谷徹氏が紹介された東京大学総合図書館蔵『琉球劇文和解』、徳川美術館蔵『琉球歌舞図巻』などの諸本との異同を確かめる。その結果、日本外務省蔵『通航一覧』の寛政８年の該当箇所に一致して東大本にはない、音楽、合唱曲、琉球踊、唐踊の番組・役者目録、琉歌や合唱曲の歌詞、さらにその晩の料理の菜単まで備わっているということがわかる。なお、その絵を見ても徳川本に見られない細部描写もある。したがって、近世琉球が日本と中国、二つの本国を相手に、それぞれ適切な文芸を披露することによって自国の一種の独立を図った一相を伝えてくれる貴重な資料だということになる。

Throughout the early-modern period, the small island kingdom of Ryūkyū was putting on diplomatic shows for its two tributary masters, China and Japan: cultural pageantry was essential to most exchanges. Kumi odori, a theatre developed in Ryūkyū’s vernacular from a mix of Japanese and Ryūkyūan legends and performance traditions to entertain Chinese investiture missions, remains an important part of Okinawan culture today. However, a previously-undiscussed picture book in the British Library provides the most complete textual and pictorial record yet known of a roughly opposite phenomenon: a Ryūkyūan performance of Chinese theatre for a Japanese audience. Personnel lists, synopses, and lyrics accompany colorful paintings of orchestral and choral music, Ryūkyūan songs, fan dances, and sanshin performance, the Chinese plays—even the menu of the banquet served. Based on correspondences with records preserved by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I identify the occasion as the 1796 tributary mission to Edo, situate this object as the most complete yet known, and argue that Chinese performance was as important as Japanese and local forms to Ryūkyū’s theatrical diplomacy, whose basic move was to preserve Ryūkyūan independence by playing the domesticating and exoticizing gazes of Japan and China against one another.

Abstract:Performing Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu is a vehicle for innovation for Shen Yili, Zhang Jun, Luo Chenxue, and their fellow actors at the Shanghai Kunqu Theatre (SKT). As my case studies of The Story of Bloody Hands (a 1986 adaptation of Macbeth), Zhang's reinterpretation of Tang's Four Dreams, and the SKT's role in the quatercentenary celebrations for Shakespeare and Tang, reveal, these encounters led the artists to re-examine what was previously construed to be the quintessential quality of kunqu.

The conventional view of kunqu as an elite form of traditional Chinese theatre has left its legacy of live performance and the performers’ efforts and creativity to keep kunqu alive onstage overlooked. Borrowing the Fan (Jieshan) provides a living and popular example of actable plays (zhezixi), plays created by performers that rework selected scenes from texts of the playwrights and turn them into standalone pieces that are actable, complete in themselves, and exciting to watch in performance. The translation is based upon the version shaped and performed by Ms. Wang Zhiquan and her colleagues of the Shanghai Kunqu Theatre Troupe (Shanghai Kunju Tuan). With her training in the female martial art role type (wudan), Ms. Wang has created a version which not only capitalizes on her virtuoso skills but also develops new and inventive ways of performing that pushes herself and her stage partner to attain a higher level of artistic achievement and brings freshness and excitement to the stage performance of the play.

Throughout the early-modern period, the small island kingdom of Ryūkyū was putting on diplomatic shows for its two tributary masters, China and Japan: cultural pageantry was essential to most exchanges. Kumi odori, a theatre developed in Ryūkyū’s vernacular from a mix of Japanese and Ryūkyūan legends and performance traditions to entertain Chinese investiture missions, remains an important part of Okinawan culture today. However, a previously-undiscussed picture book in the British Library provides the most complete textual and pictorial record yet known of a roughly opposite phenomenon: a Ryūkyūan performance of southern-Chinese kunqu theatre for a Japanese audience. Personnel lists, synopses, and lyrics accompany colorful paintings of orchestral and choral music, Ryūkyūan songs, fan dances, and sanshin performance, the Chinese plays—even the menu of the banquet served. Based on correspondences with records preserved by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I identify the occasion as the 1796 tributary mission to Edo, situate this object within a visual culture of Ryūkyūan diplomacy, and argue that imported Chinese forms were as important as local ones to Ryūkyū’s theatrical diplomacy, whose basic move was to preserve Ryūkyūan independence by playing the domesticating and exoticizing gazes of Japan and China against one another. Here, Ryūkyū is acting Chinese for the benefit of Japan.