UC Irvine

Salvation is a central concept in multiple religious doctrines. In East Asia, Mahāyāna Buddhism's universal soteriology doctrine influences all facets of the religion. Despite this, the tradition displays incongruities in actual ethical practice. One is the representation of women and their potential for enlightenment. An example is manifested in Noh theatre, Japan’s masked drama of the Muromachi period (1337-1557). Noh acts as a vector for Buddhist soteriological discourse and popular medieval shamanic beliefs, providing a window into this gendered ethical conflict. It is presented in sharpest relief through the genre of “female-spirit Noh” (katsura mono, or “wig plays”). Featuring dense religious language, utilization of shamanic ritual, and ambiguous soteriological status for its female characters, female-spirit Noh displayed an amalgam of contemporaneous religious concepts present at multiple levels of Muromachi society. I argue that as a living theatrical tradition dating to medieval Japan, Noh theater provides scholars insight into the religious dynamics of the medieval era, with the female-spirit plays of Komparu Zenchiku (1405-1468) giving one of the clearest examples of this complex soteriological conflict. By placing critical works back into their original religious, historic, and social context, I directly address the religious conflict of gender inequality within Buddhist soteriological discourse.