The Society for Japanese Studies

Secrecy in Japanese Arts: "Secret Transmission" as a Mode of Knowledge by Maki Isaka

Morinaga
Review by: Terry Kawashima
Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 276-280
Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies
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276 Journal of Japanese Studies

33:1(2007)

tises, accompanied by extremely close analyses thatoften quote headnotes

that rightly
and other annotations from standard printed versions?material
to follow
of
it
is
hard
in
the
the
endnotes.
detail,
Despite
plenitude
belongs
at
text
close
and the
without
the
classical
hand,
having
Japanese
along
come
so
contin
in
Zeami's
treatises
that
from
different
many
quotes
points
are
of
from
the
is
infeasible.
the
(Most
quotations
ually consulting
originals

the authoritative volume Zeami, Zenchiku annotated by Omote Akira and

Kat? Sh?ichi in the series Nihon shis? taikei; citing page numbers in the
main text, rather than in the endnotes, would have helped.) Thus the reader
is often leftwithout any real means of determining whether Quinn's inter
pretations (ormore often, the comments of Omote, Kat?, and other annota
are on

tors)

the mark.

Compounding matters, the writing often lacks vividness and clarity.

Quinn uses the passive voice toomuch and tends tomake sentences more
elaborate or convoluted than they need be; over the span of almost 500
pages, the cumulative effect of such habits on the reader is indescribable.
The publisher's description of the book, printed on theback cover, says
thatDeveloping Zeami is "eminently readable and accessible." It is neither;
in fairness,

but,

neither

are

the texts

it examines.

a raft of attempts,

Despite

we still lack authoritative, intelligible English versions of Zeami's writings

on n?, which are a prerequisite to a comprehensive study of them inEnglish.
Undaunted, Quinn has produced a competent and thoughtful study that su
persedes

previous

Secrecy

in Japanese

By Maki
pages.

to explain

attempts

Arts:

"Secret

Isaka Morinaga.

Zeami's

Transmission"

secrets.

as a Mode

of Knowledge.

Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005. x, 197

$65.00.

Reviewed by
Terry Kawashima
Wesleyan University
book Secrecy inJapanese Arts examines the genre
of "secret teachings" (hiden, among other terms) that serve as cornerstones
of legitimacy in Japanese artistic traditions.Through readings of threemain
texts, each of which represents a differentera and art form, the author ana
lyzes what she calls the "logic of esotericism": thatwhich enables the very
notion of an "esoteric tradition" to have value and to continue to exist. The
book has a number of strengths. It begins by challenging the common per

Maki

Isaka Morinaga's

ception that esoteric texts cannot be understood by an "outsider" to the

tradition, and instead argues that close textual readings of these texts can

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277

Review Section

provide us with an understanding of how esotericism itself is constructed

and perpetuated. Morinaga asserts thathiden's status as a fetishized object
of secrecy is not its sole significance; rather,the content of such texts?their
tell us a great deal about how the logic of eso
rhetorical figurations?can
tericism operates. She focuses on what Imight call the strategies of esoteri
cization: that is, how texts achieve the status of esoteric teachings, and how

such texts shape, legitimize, and participate in themaintenance of the artis

tic traditions themselves. The author iswell versed in critical theory,and the

book raises provocative questions regarding the various contingencies

involved in the process of textual and lineage production.
Due to thevaried scope of thebook, which considers secret teachings in
Mori
swordsmanship and then? theateras well as essays inmodern theater,
can
contexts.
in
In
the
field
be
situated
several
work
different
scholarly
naga's
ofmartial arts, an area thathas attractedmuch popular interest,the book is
one of the few scholarlyworks that squarely addresses the issue of transmis

sion, along with past scholarship such as Cameron Hurst's Armed Martial
Arts ofJapan: Swordsmanship and Archery (Yale University Press, 1998). In
the realm of then? theater,the study thatcomes most readily tomind as rele
vant is Eric C. Rath's recent book The Ethos ofNoh: Actors and Their Art
(Harvard University Asia Center, 2004), which also includes a significant
discussion of secret teachings. Shelley Fenno Quinn's Developing Zeami:
The Noh Actor's Attunement inPractice (University ofHawai'i Press, 2005)
is another book that investigates Zeami's writings indetail.Morinaga's study
of themodern theaterpioneer Osanai Kaoru is a much-needed one thatwill
render thisfiguremore familiar. In addressing themain issue of secret trans

the book successfully builds upon and productively critiques

Nishiyama Matsunosuke's analyses of gei (arts) and the iemoto system.Mori
naga's work thuscontributes nicely to thisdiverse body of past scholarship by
tying together the different"traditions" of swordsmanship, n?, and modern
theaterunder the rubric of secret teachings. This book is also notable for its
deft dismantling ofNihonjinron, which has been an important focus of cri
tique across the disciplines in the past several years; she shows that certain
scholarlyworks on hiden have participated inNihonjinron discourse through
theirassumption that "Japaneseness" constitutes a type of insider category

missions,

for the esoteric

arts.

The main body of the book begins with a strong analysis of Yagy?
Munemori's Heich? kadensho (1632), a hiden about swordsmanship. Mori
naga shows that this text is filled with markers of secrecy: both the literal
words (e.g., terms thatmean "secret") and a rhetorical reluctance (a stated
unwillingness to reveal furtherinformation) are tactics thatwork together to
produce the effectof esotericism. What these texts refuse to speak about
tend tobe concrete instructions regarding an art's practice; the author argues
that this targeted

concealment

was

necessary

in order

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for a particular

fam

278 Journal of Japanese Studies

33:1(2007)

ily (ie) tomonopolize knowledge about an art and thus control its practice
for generations to come, and that the discourse of concealment itself ele
vated the very notion of secrecy to a privileged status. In turn, this exalted

status of secrecy insured that followers of the artwould observe the path of
a "correct," extratextual education monitored strictlyby the rightfulheirs of
the tradition,because the followers' desire for the ultimate secrets ofmas
teryhas been cultivated by the overall privileging of secrecy as thatwhich

contains something powerful and desirable.

then turns to Zeami's famous treatise, F?shikaden
(early
Morinaga
fifteenthcentury), in order to examine how textual representations of trans
mission attempt to establish legitimacy. The author illustrates that the
rhetorical technique of "hearsay" effectively forges a lineage between the
writer of the esoteric textand an imagined, authoritative past, and proceeds
to a discussion of criteria for "proper" lineage and "talent," concepts thatare
crucial to themaintenance of the artisticmonopoly that is generated as a re
sult of efforts such as these "hearsay" strategies in secret teachings. Two as
pects of this chapter detract from an otherwise effective argument. First, I
am not convinced by the assumption thatwriting represents a threat to the
continuity of a "tradition" in that it "can mark, ifnot cause, a certain break,

be

it an addition,

revision,

omission,

or creation"

(p. 46),

as such

a statement

turnsa blind eye to thepossibility thatall discursive productions render such

disruptions possible. Second, I am not certain that the terms "creativity"
(which is differentiatedfrom "originality") and "traditionality" do justice to
the interesting theorizations found in this chapter; instead, Imight suggest
something like "textual production" and "lineage production," respectively,
as possible alternatives thatwould clarifywhat is being discussed.
In the next chapter, the focus shifts to theworkings of "secrecy" in eso
teric teachings; the author begins by addressing the seemingly puzzling phe

nomenon

that many

esoteric

texts

are,

in fact, practically

"open

secrets"

to

one degree or another, in that theycan be read bymore than just the insiders
to a "tradition."Morinaga compares certain Zen Buddhist textsand practices
with hiden in order to examine indepth the seeming distrust of language that
appears tobe exhibited in suchwritings. She concludes thatwriting is not ac
tually devalued, but rather, that"proper transmission" is touted as thekey to
is why the
unlocking the true potential of a secret written teaching?this
a
to
a
not
the
of esoteri
threat
of
hiden
does
pose
logic
necessarily
"leakage"
cism. She argues that"secrecy" should thereforebe conceptualized as a tex

tual performance thatgives weight to the text itself. It is interesting that the
very idea of secret teachings necessitates a lack?that is, it seems thata hiden
must be missing its supplements (cultivation, for example) in order to legit
imize itself and the "tradition" it seeks to establish; a hiden by definition
might be characterized as a forever incomplete yet crucial piece in theproject
of lineage formation.

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279

Review Section

The final chapter is a discussion of thewritings ofOsanai Kaoru, amajor

early figure in the shingeki (New Theater) movement in the early twentieth
century.Morinaga
esoteric

framework,

shows thatalthough Osanai's writings exist outside of the

his

conceptualizations

effectively

subvert

the very

as

sumptions upon which the "logic of esotericism" rests. First, she illustrates
that the shingeki aesthetics of "amateurity,"which privileges the nonestab
lishment,outsider status of actors, is one thatgoes against esotericism's fun
damental faith in theposition of the insider to a particular tradition. Second,
the author investigates what she calls "translationism"?a prioritization of
translations thatdo not attempt tomold the "original" language into the con
ventions of the "target" language, and a valorization of translation strategies
inwhich the latter is allowed tobe radically affectedby the former,resulting
in a final product that stands out as being differentfrom both the "original"

a movement thatchallenges the

and thenorms of the "target" language?as
asserts
works hard to blur the dis
of
that
She
esotericism
esotericism.
logic
tinctionbetween thepresent and thepast, the self and other: since each heir to
the "tradition"must pose as being one with theunbroken, legitimate lineage
of a particular artistic practice, such dichotomies are carefully avoided. In
contrast, the author states, "translationism" emphasizes the difference be
tween translation and the "original," the self and other, and thus raises a rad

ical alternative to the esotericist paradigm. The unexpected juxtaposition of

a shingeki dramatist with well-known hiden writers in the fields of swords
manship and n? yields this fresh and interestingconclusion.
There

are some

questions

that remain

about

this chapter,

however.

For

ex

ample, theauthor acknowledges thatthe "logic of esotericism" still remained

credible in the form of the iemoto system inOsanai's era and continues to do
so even today.She ends thechapter by stating thather analysis ofOsanai's dis
course should be helpful to future studies of iemoto-based arts,which are be
yond the scope of thisbook (p. 136). It seems, however, thata discussion of
the impact of the destabilizing effects of Osanai's writings is precisely what
would be interestinghere; without it, the chapter remains a series of readings
thathighlight thepotential implications inOsanai's texts.Clearly, itwould be
beyond the scope of thebook to survey the entire field of iemoto-based arts,
but this chaptermight have benefited from a complementary chapter thatfo
cused on a particularmodern-era artistic tradition thatoperated on some ver

sion of the "logic of esotericism" yet had discursive slippages thatmay be

attributable to challenges posed by the likes of Osanai's texts.Without this
kind of anchoring, thefifthchapter feels a littledetached from thepreceding
chapters.

More generally, thereare some aspects of thebook thatmight have been

better approached differently.For example, there seems to be an excessive
concern with taxonomy; virtually every discussion involves an enumeration
of types/categories that are unnecessarily difficult to follow (consistently

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280 Journal of Japanese Studies

33:1(2007)

referring to an analytical framework by name would be more effective than

calling it "Type 3," for instance). The temporal characterization of the "de
velopment" of secret teachings represents another potentially problematic
area. In the introductory chapter, the author delineates a periodization
narrative for the genre: formative ("prehistory" and "diffusion" stages), cli

mactic ("establishment" and "apex" stages), and decline ("survival" stage).

Words such as "ripen" and "past its prime" are used to describe these sup
posedly distinct, knowable phases of hiden history. This kind of neat rise

and-fall schematization clashes with the author's otherwise sophisticated

understanding of critical theory. Since the rest of the book does not return
to the question of periodization in any directmanner, omitting this discus
sion would not only leave other arguments intact,but would have made the
author's significant contributions more evident. Finally, thewriting style
would have benefited from closer attention by thebook's editor. There are a
number of confusing word choices, and the overuse of extended parentheti
cal comments made this reader wonder whether some of themmight not be

more

as endnotes.

appropriate

Morinaga's book encourages us to thinkdeeply about themultiple ways

inwhich "knowledge" is crafted and maintained. The author argues com
pellingly thatwe must pay attention to the detailed dynamic contours of the
production, performance, attempted transmission, and motivated reception
of "knowledge" in order to understand itsworkings in any context.

Notes from Toyota-Land: An American Engineer in Japan. By Darius

Mehri. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2005. xviii, 231 pages. $26.00.
Reviewed by
Mark Fruin
San Jose State University
Darius Mehri's Notes from Toyota-Land is a colorful, diary-like account of
and tem
the personal and working lives of numerous employees?regular
and non-Japanese?at

porary,

Japanese

counts

of working-for-the-Japanese,

a Toyota

Motor

affiliate

somewhere

in Japan during the 1990s. Anyone thinking about working for a Japanese
firm in Japan or overseas should read thisbook, especially since insider ac
appeared

in recent

once

fairly

common,

have

all but dis

years.

The subtitle,An American Engineer in Japan, coupled with the refer

ence to Toyota in the title give the impression that readers will learn a lot
about Toyota. The author, in fact, claims thathis account offers a detailed

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