Performance, memory and cultural heritage in the UK and Japan

日本和英国在神圣和世俗的前现代表演方面有着特别强大的、国际公认的传统。这种表演实践既反映和回应了当代文化规范和价值观，也有助于塑造当代和后代的文化规范和价值观。在21世纪，某些前现代表演传统，从莎士比亚和马洛的舞台剧到能的古典音乐剧和歌舞伎的舞剧，继续在两种文化中发挥着重要的影响。然而，更广泛的表演实践，从街头盛典和节日活动到宗教戏剧周期、仪式和仪式，也深深植根于前现代文化中，并在今天仍然存在。这个项目调查了这些表演艺术传统在发展两国独特的文化认同感方面所起的作用，以及这些表演实践和模式是如何传播的（作为文本、物质文化和基于技能的实践）。在联合国教科文组织世界遗产坎特伯雷和日本最神圣的伊泽神道神社，研究小组将利用丰富的宗教和世俗特定地点的表演传统，在特定地点使用表演研究研讨会，以及其他形式的体验式学习和发现，调查表演如何影响当地和国家社区。该项目建立并扩展了肯特大学和国馆大学的研究人员之间已有的研究合作，以寻找关于在当代多元文化社会中表演在社区过去感中的作用的紧迫问题的答案。它建立了一个更大的项目，开发一种方法来分析遗产在文化和民族认同中的作用，以及文化遗产如何在一个很大程度上世俗的时代在多元文化环境中传播。此外，它还考虑了当今前现代材料的性能如何与持久和现有的文化和宗教习俗有关，以及现在如何看待它。我们将比较这些实践是如何在历史上、文化上和经济上被重视的，由谁、何时、何地以及如何使前现代表演对不同的观众有意义。研究小组确定了四个关键主题——(1)传播，(2)信仰，(3)空间，(4)性别——我们希望通过在这个范围界定项目中的表现来分析这些主题。参与研究的研究人员试图考虑像肯特大学和国馆大学这样的大学在文化意义和神圣的遗址中所扮演的角色，在文化遗产的传播和分析中发挥作用。

Japan and the UK have exceptionally strong and internationally-recognised traditions of sacred and secular premodern performance. Such performance practices both reflected and responded to contemporary cultural norms and values and helped to shape those for present and future generations. In the twenty-first century, certain of these premodern performance traditions, from the stage plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe to the classical musical drama of Noh and dance drama of Kabuki, continue to exert significant influence in both cultures. Yet more wide-ranging practices of performance, from street pageantry and festive events to religious play cycles, rituals and ceremony, were also deeply embedded within both premodern cultures and have a strong residual presence today. This project investigates the role these performing arts traditions played in developing a sense of distinct cultural identity in both countries, and how these practices and modes of performance were transmitted (as text, material culture and skills-based practices) into the present day. Drawing upon the rich religious and secular site-specific performance traditions at a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Canterbury and at Japan's most sacred Shinto shrine in Ise, the team of researchers will use performance-as-research workshops at site-specific locations, as well as other forms of experiential learning and discovery, to investigate how performance has impacted upon local and national communities. This project builds upon and extends pre-existing research collaborations between researchers at the University of Kent and Kogakkan University to find answers to pressing questions about the role of performance in communities' sense of the past in contemporary multicultural societies. It sets up a much larger project, developing a method to analyse the role of heritage in cultural and national identity, and how cultural heritage transmission occurs within multicultural environments in a largely secular age. Furthermore, it considers how the performance of pre-modern material today relates to enduring and existing cultural and religious practices and how it is now perceived. We will compare how these practices have been valued historically, both culturally and economically, by whom, when, and where, and how pre-modern performance has been made meaningful to different audiences. The team of investigators have identified four key themes-(1) transmission, (2) faith, (3) space, and (4) gender-that we wish to analyse through performance in this scoping project. The researchers involved seek to consider the role universities like Kent and Kogakkan, relatively embedded in culturally-significant and sacred sites, play in both the dissemination and analysis of cultural heritage.