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Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance
A compelling ethnography of traditional dance and bodily knowledge
Winner of the 2008 Alan Merriam Prize, given by the Society of Ethnomusicology
How do music and dance reveal the ways in which a community interacts with the world? How are the senses used in communicating cultural knowledge? In Sensational Knowledge, ethnomusicologist and dancer Tomie Hahn uncovers the process and nuances of learning nihon buyo, a traditional Japanese dance form. She uses case studies of dancers at all levels, as well as her own firsthand experiences, to investigate the complex language of bodies, especially across cultural divides. Paying particular attention to the effect of body-to-body transmission, and how culturally constructed processes of transmission influence our sense of self, Hahn argues that the senses facilitate the construction of "boundaries of existence" that define our physical and social worlds. In this flowing and personal text, Hahn reveals the ways in which culture shapes our attendance to various sensoria, and how our interpretation of sensory information shapes our individual realities. An online companion provides visual examples.
Winner of the 2008 Alan Merriam Prize, given by the Society of Ethnomusicology
How do music and dance reveal the ways in which a community interacts with the world? How are the senses used in communicating cultural knowledge? In Sensational Knowledge, ethnomusicologist and dancer Tomie Hahn uncovers the process and nuances of learning nihon buyo, a traditional Japanese dance form. She uses case studies of dancers at all levels, as well as her own firsthand experiences, to investigate the complex language of bodies, especially across cultural divides. Paying particular attention to the effect of body-to-body transmission, and how culturally constructed processes of transmission influence our sense of self, Hahn argues that the senses facilitate the construction of "boundaries of existence" that define our physical and social worlds. In this flowing and personal text, Hahn reveals the ways in which culture shapes our attendance to various sensoria, and how our interpretation of sensory information shapes our individual realities. An online companion provides visual examples.
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 7, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 16, 2025
I was able to find chapters 1-3 for free via google. It's a detailed view of Japanese dance, through which one can view Japanese culture and history.
April 15, 2010
I first learned of this book from Reginald Jackson's review in the Journal of Asian Studies. Reggie gave this book a glowing review. However my review is more in line with Carole's review on Amazon. I originally wanted to give the book 2 stars but seeing that she gave it 3 and said things I also felt in reading it, I followed her model and gave the book 3 stars.
The book attempts to do two things: 1.) provide a description of nihon buyo and 2.) analyze the mode of transmission involved in nihon buyo . Hahn is successful in the first task. The book provides us, especially in the fourth chapter, with descriptions, pictures, and videos of lessons at the Tachibana school of nihon buyo . Nihon buyo has almost nothing scholarly written about it and Hahn's book starts to address the absence. However, her analysis of the transmission leaves much to be desired from a scholarly point of view.
Hahn begins her introduction with a move that undermines scholarly analysis. She considers drawing on scholarly perspectives "blinding" and instead wants to draw out the titular "sensational knowledge" that is present in nihon buyo by examining the body and the senses involved in this form of dance. But the resulting description is weak since Hahn doesn't really draw on prior discussions of the issues. The notion of "sensational knowledge" Hahn tries to develop has ties to Edward Casey's concept of "body memory" or Mikel Dufrenne's discussion of the sensuous and dance in The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, both of which provide more insight to the issue than Hahn's work does.
Furthermore, Hahn throws around terms like "culture" without ever defining them. Hahn's argument behind that is she is trying to "dis-orient" things via her study. However Hahn never considers that the approach is a perilous one, as it equally disorients any scholarly study by weakening the terms and the discussion themselves. She speaks of "framing" but in reading the book it is hard to understand what the framework is as she never makes it specifically clear. Where I think this comes from is that Hahn herself has conflated the two points of view involved in this study: participant and observer. Hahn seems over the course of the book neither willing to fully engage in a study of nihon buyo from a critical observer's point of view nor realizes that the two positions are separate in nature. When one is participating one's focus in wrapped up in doing the dance; one can only make observations after the action is completed. Hahn's description of the notation systems developed by students is a prime example. Students cannot make such notations during a lesson as they are preoccupied with learning the movements of the dance. They make notation after class on the way home. Within nihon buyo there is a separation of participant and observer and Hahn for some reason seems to have overlooked this.
Another thing Hahn has overlooked is the history involved. One instance of this is her brief gesture towards Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish in Chapter 4. Foucault's concept of biopower is useful in discussing the arts of the Edo period as the arts were one of the many ways in which the Tokugawa shogunate controlled the populace. So nihon buyo emerges out of this moment and many of its practices are ripe with biopower. Yet Hahn, having dismissed this philosophical analysis away at the start, never picks up on this. Another instance is in her frequent citations of the Noh playwright Zeami Motokiyo. Hahn finds in Zeami a precedessor and a supporter of her approach, but in reading the quotes I got the feeling that Zeami would not be as much of a supporter of Hahn or nihon buyo as Hahn thinks. Zeami is writing about his art of noh and more specifically the art of noh before it became a tool of biopower for the Tokugawa shogunate. Between the time Zeami wrote his treatises and the time nihon buyo appeared there were changes in noh and the question of whether Zeami would agree with the changes stands out in my mind. If he wouldn't then he most certainly would not agree nihon buyo citing his thoughts on Noh in defense their art. But yet again this is something Hahn never even considers.
In essence, Hahn's work seems to be unwilling to look critically at nihon buyo. In this way it is perpetuating much of the established tropes of "traditional Japanese culture" rather than challenging them and putting nihon buyo in a different setting. Carole on Amazon proposes that Hahn wrote the book "with a Japanese mindset;" I would have to agree with that observation rather than Reggie's observations on the book. The information on nihon buyo that Hahn presents is good and informative; the scholarly analysis, however, is extremely lacking in my opinion. This is my take on the book.
The book attempts to do two things: 1.) provide a description of nihon buyo and 2.) analyze the mode of transmission involved in nihon buyo . Hahn is successful in the first task. The book provides us, especially in the fourth chapter, with descriptions, pictures, and videos of lessons at the Tachibana school of nihon buyo . Nihon buyo has almost nothing scholarly written about it and Hahn's book starts to address the absence. However, her analysis of the transmission leaves much to be desired from a scholarly point of view.
Hahn begins her introduction with a move that undermines scholarly analysis. She considers drawing on scholarly perspectives "blinding" and instead wants to draw out the titular "sensational knowledge" that is present in nihon buyo by examining the body and the senses involved in this form of dance. But the resulting description is weak since Hahn doesn't really draw on prior discussions of the issues. The notion of "sensational knowledge" Hahn tries to develop has ties to Edward Casey's concept of "body memory" or Mikel Dufrenne's discussion of the sensuous and dance in The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, both of which provide more insight to the issue than Hahn's work does.
Furthermore, Hahn throws around terms like "culture" without ever defining them. Hahn's argument behind that is she is trying to "dis-orient" things via her study. However Hahn never considers that the approach is a perilous one, as it equally disorients any scholarly study by weakening the terms and the discussion themselves. She speaks of "framing" but in reading the book it is hard to understand what the framework is as she never makes it specifically clear. Where I think this comes from is that Hahn herself has conflated the two points of view involved in this study: participant and observer. Hahn seems over the course of the book neither willing to fully engage in a study of nihon buyo from a critical observer's point of view nor realizes that the two positions are separate in nature. When one is participating one's focus in wrapped up in doing the dance; one can only make observations after the action is completed. Hahn's description of the notation systems developed by students is a prime example. Students cannot make such notations during a lesson as they are preoccupied with learning the movements of the dance. They make notation after class on the way home. Within nihon buyo there is a separation of participant and observer and Hahn for some reason seems to have overlooked this.
Another thing Hahn has overlooked is the history involved. One instance of this is her brief gesture towards Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish in Chapter 4. Foucault's concept of biopower is useful in discussing the arts of the Edo period as the arts were one of the many ways in which the Tokugawa shogunate controlled the populace. So nihon buyo emerges out of this moment and many of its practices are ripe with biopower. Yet Hahn, having dismissed this philosophical analysis away at the start, never picks up on this. Another instance is in her frequent citations of the Noh playwright Zeami Motokiyo. Hahn finds in Zeami a precedessor and a supporter of her approach, but in reading the quotes I got the feeling that Zeami would not be as much of a supporter of Hahn or nihon buyo as Hahn thinks. Zeami is writing about his art of noh and more specifically the art of noh before it became a tool of biopower for the Tokugawa shogunate. Between the time Zeami wrote his treatises and the time nihon buyo appeared there were changes in noh and the question of whether Zeami would agree with the changes stands out in my mind. If he wouldn't then he most certainly would not agree nihon buyo citing his thoughts on Noh in defense their art. But yet again this is something Hahn never even considers.
In essence, Hahn's work seems to be unwilling to look critically at nihon buyo. In this way it is perpetuating much of the established tropes of "traditional Japanese culture" rather than challenging them and putting nihon buyo in a different setting. Carole on Amazon proposes that Hahn wrote the book "with a Japanese mindset;" I would have to agree with that observation rather than Reggie's observations on the book. The information on nihon buyo that Hahn presents is good and informative; the scholarly analysis, however, is extremely lacking in my opinion. This is my take on the book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews