Our newly expanded Center for Professional Communication (CPC) has hosted its very first seminar for 2016. The topic was the Japanese performing art known as noh and how this fascinating type of theater constitutes a form of Japanese leadership training and a medium for networking.

CPC’s Japanese Language Section, as part of its commitment to fostering leaders able to find solutions to global policy problems, invites speakers active in various fields to lead seminars in which they speak from their particular points of view on topics related to Japanese culture and cross-cultural communication.

Patrick Schwemmer, Ph.D., a scholar of 16th- and 17th-century Japanese performing arts currently in residence at the Department of Japanese Literature, Sophia University, was invited by the CPC to give a seminar about noh to interested GRIPS students, Thursday, 7th January 2016.

In what was a very entertaining ninety minutes, GRIPS students were taken through the basics of noh, including the staging, (consisting of actors, orchestra and chorus), the structure of a noh play, and the political history of the art form.

Dr. Schwemmer also gave students an opportunity to sing some famous Noh verses including ‘Takasago’ often sung at Japanese weddings, and showed YouTube excerpts of Noh tutorials.

For students wanting to get more involved in Noh, Dr. Schwemmer introduced a number of Noh theaters across Tokyo which warmly welcome participants to learn more about this fascinating art form.

Article : Public Relations Team, GRIPS.