SEMINAR: Asian Studies Seminar Series

The historicizing of collective memory in the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries has often been considered the foundation of modern historical scholarship. To this extent, such inquiry exists in an effort to ‘capture memory and history in equipoise’ (Hutton 1993). The means by which we consciously choose to reconstruct images is manifested variously as memorial practice. This paper draws upon the work of Halbwachs, whose revolutionary theorization on collective memory will be utilized as a way of re-examining the Japanese dramatic form of kabuki. In doing so, it is argued that this Japanese artistic tradition, was in fact a performative way of commemorating Jesuit theatrical practice that thrived in sixteenth-century Japan. Although this hypothesis has been periodically revived and contested since the 1920s, this paper presents an alternative reasoning for its likelihood based on a two-tiered memorial framework. On the one hand, it will be argued that the pervasiveness of ‘mystery plays’ during the Jesuit mission in Japan continued after their prohibition in the late sixteenth century; on the other hand, it is proposed that the first encounter of Jesuit performative drama by the Japanese embassy in Europe, also facilitated the performance of their memories through kabuki. The purpose of this investigation is to establish a sounder foundation for this hypothesis based on newly reassessed evidence. At its core, this paper explores the role of memory in formulating collective identities, the means by which commemoration is performed through drama, and how cultural frameworks can continuously reinterpret memories in new performative ways.