Taro Yokoyama
横山 太郎
Professor of Theatre Studies, Rikkyo University
能楽 Nō and Kyōgen / Noh / Nogaku / Nohgaku, 身体史 Body History in Performance, 技芸伝承 Transmission of Embodied Knowledge, 演劇の詩学 Poetics of Theatre, 観世文庫研究 The Kanze Archive, 越境する能楽 Nō Across Borders
Japanese, English
Japan
I am a professor of theatre studies at Rikkyo University, specializing in nō theatre. My research approaches nō from a variety of angles, but my central theme is the body in nō.
My earliest scholarly interest was in shintai-ron (Japanese philosophical theories of the body). Two experiences in my undergraduate courses connected this interest to nō: the lectures of Matsuoka Shinpei, author of Utage no shintai (published in English as Embodied Performance), and a kyōgen workshop given by Nomura Mansai. I found the nō body fascinating. At the same time, however, I felt resistance to the essentialist discourse in which the nō body was invoked as an emblem of Japanese cultural tradition. It was, after all, an era when critical theory and constructivism were ascendant.
This ambivalence toward the body in nō — and toward Japanese body theory more broadly — transformed into a drive for research when I read Zeami's treatises on nō in preparation for my graduation thesis. The body and performance that Zeami described were strikingly different from what is today spoken of as "the traditional Japanese body." The surprise and excitement of discovering for myself, through the texts, the simple fact that the body changes through history became what drove me to pursue a career as a researcher in this field. I went on to study nō under Professor Matsuoka in graduate school, and have continued this work ever since.
My research takes interdisciplinary approaches to nō, including the history of the body in nō described above, the intellectual history of nō reception in the modern and contemporary periods, the poetics of nō plays (theoretical analysis of rhetoric and narrative), and the study of artistic transmission through conversation analysis and movement analysis. I have also been a member of the Kanze Bunko document survey project, led by Matsuoka Shinpei, since its inception in 2003, and oversaw the development of the Kanze Archive (a digital image archive of materials held by the Kanze family). I now serve as principal investigator of this project.
Recently, I have been working on three new themes: (1) the tension between orality and literacy in nō texts, particularly the role of improvisation and temporary scripts outside Zeami's circle; (2) the role of amateurs in eighteenth-century nō and its international comparison, exploring the hypothesis that the growth of amateur practitioners and the documents they generated shaped professional practice worldwide in an era of urbanization; and (3) the border-crossing of nō in postwar North America, reconceived not as "reception of nō" but as a movement of nō itself.
博士, 学術, 東京大学, 日本, 2005
- 教授, 立教大学 現代心理学部 映像身体学科, 2019–
- 教授, 跡見学園女子大学 文学部, 2018–2019
- 准教授, 跡見学園女子大学 文学部, 2009–2018
- 専任講師, 跡見学園女子大学 文学部, 2006–2009
- 特任研究員, 東京大学UTCP, 2005–2006
- 助手, 東京大学 総合文化研究科, 2002–2005
「ワキ登場段の機能──夢幻能の物語論序説 」、『能楽研究』、50号（2026）：1–20。
「能の身体史──鬼からサイボーグへ」、『思想』、1222号（2026）: 41–59。
『 わざを伝える──能の技芸伝承の領域横断的研究』、編著書、法政大学能楽研究所、2024年。
"Modern Theories of Nō." In A Companion to Nō and Kyōgen Theatre, Vol. 2. Edited by Yamanaka Reiko et al., Brill (2025): 563–569.
"Reception." Co-edited with Diego Pellechia. In A Companion to Nō and Kyōgen Theatre, Vol. 2. Edited by Yamanaka Reiko et al., Brill (2025): 669–725.
『観世文庫所蔵能楽資料解題目録』、高橋悠介との共編（編集代表松岡心平、監修観世清和）、檜書店、2021年。
「能における掛詞と縁語の詩学」、上：『観世』88巻4号（2021）: 46–53。下：『観世』88巻6号（2021）: 30–37。
- 芸能の理論と歴史, 立教大学, 2021–現在
- 古典演劇研究, 日本大学, 2021–現在
- 科研費（B）観世文庫資料を活用した近世中期能楽の実態解明（研究代表者）, 2024–2028
- 能楽学会
- 表象文化論学会
- 日本演劇学会
- International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR)
- European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS)
- Association for Asian Studies (AAS)
- Association for Japanese Literary Studies (AJLS)
4/30/2026