Textual Heritage Embodied: Entanglements of Tangible and Intangible in the Aoi no ue utaibon of the Hōshō School of Noh

In the first section of this article, I proposed the idea that processes of heritage embodiment can be understood in a double and reciprocal way: from intangible practices and ideas into tangible objects, and from tangible objects into living performances and people. The example of utaibon and their relationship with the living practice of nogaku in the Hōshō school confirms this theory. The plays’ performance is informed and regulated by the (tangible) presence of a specific canon of texts, whose contents—the story, the characters, the dialogue, the songs, the dances, and so on—are embodied by the actors onstage. At the same time, the living and intangible experience that comes from the everyday practice of performing the plays may be eventually embodied in new annotations that, in turn, will inform again the next generation of actors and their performances, in a sort of spiral between text and actors, an entanglement of things and humans. The paradigm of textual heritage proposed in this article has the potential to allow a wider view on a complex set of cultural practices, like the transmission and preservation of a traditional performing art such as nogaku. In so doing, it stresses the role and the interdependencies—the entanglements—that texts intended as things and as practices have with the people.