Taro Yokoyama
Professor of Theater, Rikkyo University
Monday, 17 November 2025, 5:00PM
Kent Hall, Room 403, Columbia University
Preregistration is required. Click here to register. Seating is limited so preregister early. A one-time-use QR code for entry to campus will be distributed a day before the event date. Please bring a government-issued ID matching the name on the preregistration.
Mansai Nomura, Japan’s most acclaimed contemporary performer of nōgaku (nō and kyōgen), calls himself a “kyōgen cyborg.” This provocative term captures how 20th-century nōgaku forged the performer’s body into an autonomous system of technique. This cyborg body stands in stark contrast to nō’s origins. Before Zeami, the fundamental art was becoming a demon (鬼 oni/mono), centered on the dance hataraki. The masked performer loosened subjective control to become a conduit for mono: not simply a supernatural power, but what can be understood today as an assemblage of non-human agencies within the performance environment. Zeami revolutionized this by humanizing the demon and taming the ecstatic body. His project initiated a centuries-long effort to discipline nō embodiment, paradoxically culminating in today’s cyborg performer. This genealogy offers a new framework for understanding the body in Japanese performance and its relevance to contemporary debates on embodiment, agency, and posthumanism.
Taro Yokoyama is Professor of Theatre Studies at Rikkyo University, Tokyo. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo and previously taught at Atomi University before joining Rikkyo. He specializes in the history and poetics of nō performance. He recently edited 『わざを伝える──能の技芸伝承の領域横断的研究』(Transmitting Waza: An Interdisciplinary Study of Skill Transmission in Nō). His current research includes the Kanze Archive Project, nō across borders and genres, and narratology of nō theatre.
