Early encounters

Abstract

This essay discusses two early encounters of theater that took place in different parts of the world at approximately the same time: in the German-speaking countries in Europe and on the islands of Japan in Asia during the second half of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century. In both cases a particular kind of “national” theater emerged from these developments, which was able to embrace elements of highly diverse origins: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Weimar theater plays and devices from different European performance cultures, and Izumo no Okuni’s kabuki elements stemming from a range of genres, including the Christian mystery plays. These new forms, recognized as a national theater, came into existence by way of intercultural performances. Ultimately, what came into being out of an “intercultural” encounter was later deemed genuinely “intracultural.”