Women break into Japan’s male Noh theatre
IRELAND VOTES TO REMOVE ‘SEXIST’ WOMEN REFERENCE IN CONSTITUTION
Tokyo, March 7: Kimonoclad Mayuko Kashiwazaki delivers her lines in guttural tones and transforms into an evil snake in the lead role of a Japanese Noh play where most of the cast are women.
Noh, with its elaborate layered costumes and hand-crafted masks, is one of the most ancient surviving forms of theatre, with origins dating back to the eighth century.
Unlike kabuki, another type of classical Japanese theatre, or sumo wrestling — both steadfastly male — Noh has been open to performers of both genders for over a century.
But women are still a rarity in the traditional Noh world, where fathers often pass the vocation to their sons. Women represent just 15 per cent of the 1,039 actors and musicians registered with the professional Nohgaku Performers’ Association.
And their opportunities to appear on stage are “relatively limited”, 43-yearold Kashiwazaki told AFP.
“One reason is that Noh audiences are generally older, and often see Noh as a masculine art form,” she said. But now it’s time “for women to reflect on their future in Noh, and to play a role in building that future”. Kashiwazaki acted the principal part in “Dojoji”, a famous drama about the revenge of a betrayed woman, at Tokyo’s National Noh Theatre last weekend. Twirling a fan, and wearing a heavy kimono embroidered with a crane motif, the masked actor belted out her lines in an archaic, warbling style as the story slowly unfolded.
After hiding under a prop representing the bell of a Buddhist temple, she emerged transformed as a demonic serpent character.
Dublin, March 7: Ireland is poised to vote on Friday — International Women’s Day — to replace constitutional references on the importance of a woman’s “life within the home”.
While social change in the once deeply Catholic nation has spurred the removal of bans on abortion and same-sex marriage, the constitution contains a clause recognising “that by her life within the home, woman gives to the
State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved”.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar has pitched the vote as a chance to delete “very oldfashioned, very sexist language about women.” Still, some disability campaigners and advocacy groups have opposed the government's proposal for not placing a greater legal onus on the state to support those who give or receive care.