• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.25
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• pp.291-312
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• 2011

The academic world in Korea demands internationally competitive researches at the moment. However, there is a lack of understanding on research trends of Western countries. This research aims to understand how discussions on early modern Japanese plays are developed in Western countries such as America. Also, it aims to consider and compare the present situation of researches on early modern Japanese plays in Western countries, Japan and Korea. In Western countries, modern Japanese plays such as Kabuki and Joruri is accepted and enjoyed as universal plays of the world. It is not only because there is a background of enjoying plays such as Shakespeare's but also researches and translations are accumulated continuously from the early 20th century. In the early 20th century, the main theme of researches was about Kabuki actors in Ukiyoe which was collected because of an interest in orientalism. After 1930s, Japanese arts and handcrafts were sent to art museums in America in order to promote Japanese culture. Also, many Japanese books were donated to university libraries in order to form institutes of Japanology. The war was started when the foundation of Japanology was about to be laid. Students who were interested in Japan were mobilized to the war as agents to understand Japan. After the war, those students started to do researches on Japan on a full scale. There were researchers such as Donald Keen who did researches on Kabuki and Joruri. In western countries, there are researches on patterns of behavior and thoughts of Japanese people, comparison with Shakespeare's plays, dramaturgie, theatricalism as well as censorship of Kabuki during the war and mobilization of Kabuki to the war. It is necessary to understand where my researches are positioned in those research trends. It is also necessary to break away from overlapped and repeated researches of the same point of view and find out new research paradigms.