A Woman’s Madness in Dojoji

1103 Words3 Pages

The plays of a crazed person are renowned enough to be one of the five categories in Noh plays. Noh play does not mean that a crazed person has a mental disorder clinically, but it means that he or she becomes insane because of a mental shock from a certain situation. Several cultures as well as Japan have the theaters that portray mad women. Ancient Greece and Elizabethan England presented the plays about mad women such as mother and crones (Bainbridge). Of all crazed person plays, it is popular that crazed women lose her mind by the grief and resentment of losing her child or loved one in Japan. Dojoji is about a crazed woman who was betrayed by loved one. The daughter of the lord who became a crazed woman later believed that she would get married to a priest who stayed her house every year, but the priest had no mind to marry her. Thus, she got upset and turned into a snake, and she killed him who hid in the bell in Dojoji temple. Even though long time passed, she felt resentment and changed to snake again. However, she disappeared for the pray of priests. I will analyze crazed woman’s madness in Dojoji: why she becomes insane and how the madness is expressed in Noh play.
To understand why she loses her mind, we need to know how people’s mind is formed. A woman dancer who is the main character of this play was a normal person, but she became angry and had an urge to get back at the priest who she loved after she knew that the priest got the runaround about marriage. And then, she changed to a horrible snake because she could not manage to hold back the rage. According to psychoanalytic theory, people’s minds are not created fixed states, but minds are formed depending on how minds develop as people grow (Fortier 85). In additio...

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.... A mad woman makes the audience feels her emotion acutely, and the dance of a mad woman is one of section that leads the audience to fascinate Noh play.

Works Cited

Bainbridge, Erika. “The Madness of Mothers in Japanese Noh Drama.” U.S.- Japan Women’s Journal English supplement No.3 (1992): 84-104. PDF file.
Bainbridge, Erika. “Women’s madness in three major dramatic traditions: Greek, Elizabethan, and Japanese Noh.” Abstract. Diss. U of Illinois, 1991. Web. 04 May 2014.
Brazell, Karen. Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. Print.
Fortier, Mark. Theory/theatre: An Introduction. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Savas, Minae. "Feminine Madness In The Japanese Noh Theatre." Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Ohio State University, 2008. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 11 Mar 2014.

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