Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014. xv, 124 pp. (Figures.) US$75.00 cloth. ISBN 978-1-4384-5059-9.
By the end of 2014, 26 percent of Japan’s population was sixty-five or older, making it the oldest of any country in the world. Japanese women have had the unique distinction of holding the record for longest life expectancy for nearly thirty consecutive years; on average a Japanese woman who reaches sixty will live an additional thirty years. This is not the longevity once found in the countryside, where physical work, close social ties, and traditional diet were keys to long life. Today, longevity in Japan is increasingly urban, middle-class, and marked by a life course break between retirement and pursuits of leisure. Anthropologist Katrina Moore’s ethnography of leisure and learning in Tokyo beautifully captures the rich life stories and “serious play” (7) of older Japanese women engaged in what Thomas Rohlen referred to as the “promise of adulthood” found in creativity, personal growth, and acceptance (“The Promise of Adulthood in Japanese Spiritualism,” in Adulthood, ed. Erik H. Erikson, W.W. Norton and Company, 1978). By approaching questions of what it means to grow older in Japan from the perspective of this relatively new leisure life stage, Moore’s book moves us beyond simple descriptions (or prescriptions) for “successful aging,” and provides a fresh look at some perennial topics in anthropology (gender, embodiment, community, and generation) as well as broader questions of existential meaning, well-being, and identity. We have a lot to learn from the women in Moore’s book.
In the first two chapters, Moore introduces us to the setting, including a very brief introduction to the history, aesthetics and pedagogical traditions of Noh. Noh, an ancient form of Japanese theatre revitalized in the early twentieth century through its popularization among women, is the perfect vehicle for drawing together themes of aging, embodiment, and identity. Moore’s central argument is that women who take up Noh in their later leisure years are cultivating a new self-awareness, a new sense of the possibilities of the body and of personhood in old age. While John W. Traphagan’s ethnography of gateball clubs in rural Japan examined similar dynamics (Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan, State University of New York Press, 2000), Moore’s work is the first ethnography to focus on leisure activities among urban Japanese women (certainly a very large and growing section of the aging population and worthy of attention in their own right). By focusing in on a small group of older amateur Noh practitioners, Moore takes readers inside the processes of dissolution and transformation of selfhood that these women refer to as polishing one’s gei, or “art” (103), into old age.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on embodiment, discipline, and the transformation of the self. As Moore practices alongside the other novices, the reader acquires a deep sense of the tense, warm, vibrating body as it is shaped and reshaped in the able command of the formidable instructor. Like Liza Dalby’s (University of California Press, 2008) descriptions of intense arts training in Geisha, Moore illustrates the cultural complexity of Noh practice: novices are embodying tradition and transcending it; cultivating femininity and transgressing norms; achieving a means of individual expression; and performing bonds between cohorts and generations. Sometimes these women were more like monks than geisha, describing Noh as a means of achieving “no-mind,” or a non-attached, selfless connection to a deeper sense of being that Moore compares to psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” (77).
It is notable here that Moore focuses throughout on the specificity of the ethnographic setting, keeping her phenomenological and psychological discussions grounded in her empirical observations and extensive interviews. The stories of the performers become interwoven with those of the plays themselves. These are often stories of other kinds of transformations, of lifting up into a spiritual layer of experience, one full of emotion and aspiration. Just as these women have played several roles during their lifetimes, they are not reducible to those roles. There is power in this ability to put on and take off these identities, a power shared in the group like a kind of effervescence (63), and Moore treats this with sensitivity and grace.
Although Moore develops her argument about women’s self-development in later life in contrast to theories of leisure as politics (6,104), a thread of empowerment and even resistance runs throughout the book. This empowerment is less about individual agency and self-reliance than it is relational, constituted in the interactions between teacher and novice and the comradery felt between fellow novices. Older women’s dedication to this community and to the traditions it maintains, forms the basis for reassessing wider circles of relationships, especially in the family. Moore beautifully describes both the dissolution of former identities as mothers and housewives, and aspirations for independence, self-satisfaction and even joy. This process of developing transformational relationships is one that takes time, something these older women were keenly aware of. While some conflict (internal and social) was not absent from the narratives, most women seemed to embrace change with determination and grace. Fittingly, the book ends with a sublime, reflective chapter on acceptance, maturity and the capacity to “be with” others; these are poignant lessons not only about age, or fieldwork, but about the tone and texture of the spirit.
The Joy of Noh is an ideal text for instructors looking for a case study exploring aging, selfhood and the arts in contemporary Japan. The book itself is slim, and the chapters are relatively short, clearly written, well-organized and full of memorable ethnographic vignettes well suited to further discussion. Moore avoids burdening the reader with lengthy theoretical discussions or specialist jargon, making this accessible to a variety of readers.
Jason Danely
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom