TAKEUCHI Akiko is Professor of Comparative Theatre in the Faculty of Intercultural Communication at Hosei University, Tokyo. She received her MA from the University of Tokyo and her PhD from Columbia University. Her current research interests include the narratological analysis of linguistic ambiguity in noh plays in relation to their socio-religious functions; the interplay between verbal expression and the performing body in enabling audiences to experience otherworldly spatiotemporal realms; and comparative approaches to noh and other musical-narrative and lyric genres, including oratorio and ancient Greek poetry.
She has participated in all three meetings of the New Directions in Noh workshop. For her, as for all participants, the workshop provides, first and foremost, an invaluable opportunity to receive feedback on work in progress before publication. Yet the exchange is by no means one-directional. The working group collectively discusses both the pre-circulated papers and the responses they elicit from other members, creating an intellectually stimulating environment of sustained exchange. She has benefited enormously from this collaborative process at each meeting.
For example, the paper she presented at the first meeting in 2024 offered a narratological analysis of representations of otherworldly realms in the noh plays Takasago, Tōru, and Taema. Feedback at the workshop enabled her to deepen and substantially revise her argument, and the project subsequently developed into presentations at several international conferences, including the European Comparative Literature conference and the European Association for Japanese Studies conference in 2026. The revised article is now under review for the edited volume Time and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Literature. Her paper for the second workshop, in 2025, traced the development of mugen noh through the lenses of temporal disorientation and the interplay between chanted text and bodily presence onstage. Following extensive discussion at the workshop, she substantially reworked the paper, and the resulting article was published in Nōgaku Kenkyū in 2026. Her paper for the third meeting, in 2026, examined the development of representations of the Pure Land in noh through the motif of bodhisattvas performing song and dance. She is currently revising this paper in response to the feedback gained there.
Taken together, these three projects demonstrate that the workshop does far more than provide comments on individual papers: it creates a sustained intellectual community in which ideas are tested, challenged, refined, and transformed through collective discussion. The impact of this process extends well beyond the meetings themselves, generating new publications, conference presentations, and lines of inquiry. In this sense, the workshop provides a form of collective intellectual momentum that is difficult to achieve through individual research alone. Takeuchi’s experience is only one example of the broader intellectual value of this collaborative model: the sustained exchange of ideas within the group strengthens the work of individual participants while simultaneously opening new directions for noh scholarship as a whole.
The workshop has also become an important site of exchange between noh research communities in Japan and North America. Its Japan-based members, Tarō Yokoyama and Akiko Takeuchi, are both affiliated with the Noh Theatre Research Institute at Hosei University, a major center for noh scholarship in Japan. Together with Yokoyama, Takeuchi has actively served as an intermediary between other scholars in Japan and members of the workshop, bringing researchers and ideas from the Japanese noh scholarly community into dialogue with colleagues in North America. The significance of the workshop therefore extends beyond the research of its immediate members: it is already helping to create connections between scholarly communities that do not always have sustained opportunities for direct exchange.
Selected bibliography
【Co-authored】
“Chapter 4 Plays: Their Conventions and Backgrounds” (co-edited and co-authored with Reiko Yamanaka et al.). In Reiko Yamanaka et al. eds. A Companion to Nō and Kyōgen 1. Leiden: Brill, 2024: 384-485.
【Single author】
“Nishikigi kara Izutsu e: kako to genzai no konkō toiu kanten kara [From Nishikigi to Izutsu: The Intermingling of Past and Present].” Nōgaku kenkyū 50, 2026: 3-25. (Japanese)
“Tasha to shite no nō: Chikamatsu monzaemon Horikawa nami no tsuzumi niokeru nō to nō yakusha [Noh as an Other: Noh and Noh Performer in Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s Horikawa nami no tsuzumi (Wave Drum of Horikawa)].” Ibunka 26, 2025: 6-15. (Japanese)
“Nō Hakozaki kō: honzetsu no kentō to shohon keitōzu wo tsūjite [Nō Play Hakozaki: Its Sources and the Genealogy of Texts].” Zeami 5, 2021: 113-130. (Japanese)
“The Fusion of Narration and Character Voices in Noh Drama: A Narratological Approach to Zeami’s God Plays and Warrior Plays.” Narratological Perspectives on Premodern Japanese Literature (BmE Special Issue 7), 2020: 113-149. (English)
“Katari to serifu ga konkō surutoki: Zeami no kaminō to shuranō wo kangaeru [When Narration and Characters’ Lines Merge: Zeami’s Deity Plays and Warrior Plays].” Nōgaku kenkyū 41, 2016: 1-30. (Japanese)
“Sanemori: Departure from Oral Narrative.” In Elizabeth Oyler and Michael G. Watson eds. Like Clouds or Mists: Studies and Translations of No Plays of the Genpei War. Cornell: East Asia Program Cornell University, 2013: 137-145. (English)
“General Introduction to Nō,” “Lady Aoi,” “Stupa Komachi,” “Matsukaze,” “Takasago,” “Atsumori,” “Kiyotsune,” “Sumida River,” “Shrine in the Field,” “Ataka,” and “Kagekiyo,” In Haruo Shirane ed., Anthology of Premodern Japanese Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 2007: 917-1036. (English)
Conference Papers (Selected)
【Co-authored】
Casato, Vanessa, and Akiko Takeuchi. “Introducing the Comparison between Greek Lyric and Japanese Nō” in the international symposium “Cross-Glances: Greek Lyric and Japanese Nō” at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy (September 2026). (English)
【Single Author】
“Time and Transtemporality in Noh Tōru: Seasonals, Emotions, and Transcendency” in the panel “Performing Polychronic Timescapes in Nō Theatre” at 2026 Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS) in Poznan, Poland (August 2026). (English)
“From Mandala to Stage: Transtemporal Sacred Space in the Noh” in the panel “Intercultural Dialogues” at 11th Congress of the European Society of Comparative Literature in Leeds, UK (24-28 August 2026). (English)
“Narratological Approach to Noh Drama: Narration, Fusion of Voices, and Representations of Salvation” in the panel “Revisiting Narratology: From East Asian Perspectives” at 2025 Annual Conference of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) in Seoul, Korea (July to August, 2025). (English)