published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis offers an insight into the way of exploring dance in nō theater as the "language of gestures", which it subjects to semantic analysis. The author deals with the formal structure of dance in nō - its historical origins and formal changes related to the context, and brings an analysis of the nowadays form and its components. The thesis also focuses on the process of semantic reception of dance - it examines the relationship of actors and audience in the historical and socio-cultural context, as well as the changes in semantic reception. Above all, a detailed analysis and translation of basic structural and semantic units of movement vocabulary is presented and subsequently used in specific semiological analysis of the choreography kuse from the play Hagoromo. Keywords: Japanese dance, nō theater, semantic analysis, Hagoromo

The field of video game studies is young and requires innovation in its approach to its object of study. Despite the large number of Japanese games and game developers, most scholars in the West approach video games from a point of view that emphasizes Western thought and that is concerned with either very recent video games or the medium as a whole. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask defies Western interpretations as its inspiration and aesthetics are steeped in a Japanese theatrical tradition that dates to the early Middle Ages, namely Noh theater. The game’s emphasis on masks and possession provides unique commentary on the experience of playing a video game while the structure of the game harkens back to traditional Noh cycles, tying in pre-modern ideas with a modern medium in order to comment on video games and the people who play them. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The Iliad and Heike monogatari are each seen as seminal pieces of literature in Greek and Japanese culture respectively. Both works depict famous wars from which subsequent generations of warriors, poets, and other artists in each society drew their inspiration for their own modes of conduct and creation. While neither work is emphatically pro-war, both were used extensively by the warrior classes of both cultures to reinforce warrior culture and to inculcate proper battlefield behavior. In spite of this, however, both tales contain a strong undercurrent of anti-war sentiment which contrasts sharply with their traditionally seen roles of being tales about warriors and their glorious deeds. This thesis examines these works and details the presence of anti-war sentiment while also highlighting its emergence to greater prominence in later works found within the genres of Greek tragedy and nō theater. Ultimately, the Iliad and Heike monogatari act as foundational sources of anti-war sentiment for the later dramatic works, which poets of both cultures used to decry the woeful effects of war on both combatants and the innocent. By examining the presence of anti-war sentiment in two cultures that share surprising similarities but are widely separated by geography and chronology, we are presented with both a broader and deeper understanding of the effects of warfare on society and of the historical responses of citizen populations to events in war.

This work examines how the aesthetics of Japanese actor and playwright Zeami Motokiyo (1346-1443) offers insight into the value of the unseen elements in art, specifically in the art of acting. What acting makes appear is likened to a vessel, which creates an empty space of what doesn’t appear. This non-appearing element is at the same time what gives the vessel its function. Nō theater is described as an art of suggesting, giving a background to Zeami’s theories. The importance of the tangible in Zeami’s aesthetics is underscored in a discussion of the technique, beauty, specificity, and variation implied by the principals of two basic arts, monomane, and hana. Then, the way the actor according to Zeami can make use of the unseen to fascinate the spectator is thoroughly investigated, relating it among other things to the question of emotion in western theory of acting, and the japanese concept of yūgen. Finally, Zeami’s concept of hana is described as relying on both what appears and what doesn’t appear, and the relevance of hana as a definition of the value of art is emphasized.