About

Katherine Saltzman-Li is an Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with affiliated appointments in the Program in Comparative Literature and the Department of Theater and Dance. Her academic focus includes Japanese performing arts, Japanese literature, and folklore. She has published extensively on kabuki plays, including professional and commercial materials related to kabuki, as well as Japanese woodblock theatre prints. Her translations include two early kabuki plays: 'Shibaraku' and 'Sanemori Monogatari.' She authored the book 'Creating Kabuki Plays: Context for Kezairoku, “Valuable Notes on Playwriting,”' which examines Edo-period treatises on kabuki play creation and the interactions among various artistic groups of the time. Additionally, she co-edited volumes addressing war and memory in the samurai age and theatrical realism in East Asian performance, expanding scholarship on these topics. Saltzman-Li has also curated exhibitions of theater prints at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and is involved in the Japanese Performing Arts Research Consortium, developing online resources on Japanese performing arts.

Research topics

• History
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Archaeology
• Sociology
• Art
• Philosophy
• Anthropology
• Ancient history
• Literature
• Epistemology
• Law
• Aesthetics

Selected publications

• Reflections of China and Foreign Encounters in Japanese Stage Art

  2024-07-08

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Realisms in East Asian Performance

  University of Michigan Press eBooks · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  We are fortunate to be colleagues at the same institution, where Realisms in East Asian Performance developed out of our mutual interest in theatrical realism and shared observations about its many manifestations in the performance forms we study.Our early conversations resulted in the conference Realisms in East Asian Performing Arts, originally scheduled for May 2020 and reorganized in an online format in October 2020.In this volume's journey from preliminary discussions to conference to book, we are grateful for the generosity of a number of parties along the way.We first extend our gratitude to the scholars and performers who participated in the 2020 conference; their presentations and our discussions were critical in shaping the volume.We also thank the many people and UCSB campus units involved in the details of organizing and supporting the conference: East Asia Center academic coordinator Lisa McAllister and graduate student assistant Rebecca Wear for their problem-solving acumen and energy in planning and running a virtual conference and Eric Mills and Severo De La Cruz of our respective departments for coordinating finances during the lengthy process from conference through publication.

  PublisherDOI

• Realisms in East Asian Performance

  2023 · 3 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • History

  We are fortunate to be colleagues at the same institution, where Realisms in East Asian Performance developed out of our mutual interest in theatrical realism and shared observations about its many manifestations in the performance forms we study.Our early conversations resulted in the conference Realisms in East Asian Performing Arts, originally scheduled for May 2020 and reorganized in an online format in October 2020.In this volume's journey from preliminary discussions to conference to book, we are grateful for the generosity of a number of parties along the way.We first extend our gratitude to the scholars and performers who participated in the 2020 conference; their presentations and our discussions were critical in shaping the volume.We also thank the many people and UCSB campus units involved in the details of organizing and supporting the conference: East Asia Center academic coordinator Lisa McAllister and graduate student assistant Rebecca Wear for their problem-solving acumen and energy in planning and running a virtual conference and Eric Mills and Severo De La Cruz of our respective departments for coordinating finances during the lengthy process from conference through publication.

  PublisherDOI

• :<i>Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World</i>

  Early Modern Women An Interdisciplinary Journal · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Art
  • Ancient history
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction Remembering the Samurai in Medieval and Early Modern Japan

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2022-02-15

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Performing Trauma and Lament

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2022-02-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter compares the ways in which male and female samurai characters express and perform their reactions and resolve in the face of dire situations. It particularly looks at two of the performance sections, <italic>monogatari</italic> and <italic>kudoki</italic>, as they were adapted for kabuki. The <italic>monogatari</italic> draws on memory to pull past, present, and future together, placing characters in a pan-temporal anguish, while <italic>kudoki</italic> more clearly situates the character in a misery that is focused fully in the present. As found in puppet-derived <italic>jidaimono</italic> (period plays) of the mid-eighteenth century, <italic>monogatari</italic> and <italic>kudoki</italic> dramatize the extreme consequences of samurai action and duty resulting from the unbending codes that characterize the conditions for kabuki samurai-class heroes. The chapter analyses the role of memory in these important eighteenth-century scenes and the gendered reactions to terrible choices and circumstances arising from past events, and addresses further developments in the nineteenth century.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2022

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • History

  This chapter focuses on war, war memory, and the field of memory studies. Animated in part by what memory studies has brought to cultural historiography, the chapter offers a rethinking of the long-term historical and cultural significance of the samurai. It investigates how experiences of war are presented through our imprints, each a signpost in the ongoing formation of a collective memory with Japan's warriors at its center. The chapter also draws our attention to the role of the past in constituting our world through dialogue and intercommunication, and it analyses the forms in which the past presents itself to us as well as the motives that prompt our recourse to it. Ultimately, the chapter aims to break down the ahistorical, monolithic idea of the warrior through an examination of the changes and iterations of samurai existence over time as expressed by members of the warrior class itself, as well as by nonwarrior members of society.

  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 7 Performing Trauma and Lament Gendered Scenes of Samurai Anguish on the Eighteenth-Century Kabuki Stage

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2022-02-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• From Ataka to Kanjinchō: Adaptation of Text and Performance in a Nineteenth-Century Nō-Derived Kabuki Play

  Mime journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Nō techniques and play borrowings provided important infusions into kabuki throughout its history, but in the nineteenth century, a genre of kabuki plays in close imitation of nō or kyōgen wasadded to the kabuki repertoire. The genre came to be called matsubamemono, meaning “[nō/kyōgen-derived kabuki] plays [performed] on a stage with a pine painted on the back wall” or “pine-boardplays.”1 These plays are the focus of this article, in which I first introduce the genre and its place in kabuki history, and then discuss its most famous example, the play Kanjinchō (Hattori 17–40; Meisakukabuki zenshū 181–197; Brandon, The Subscription List 205–236). Many matsubamemono are derived from fourth-category genzaimono nō plays. Kanjinchō is one such example, based on the genzaimono Ataka. Analysis of Kanjinchō will focus on the methods used to transform Ataka into Kanjinchō, methods that were used in other nō-to-kabuki matsubamemono adaptations and that resulted in a sophisticated amalgam of nō and kabuki techniques, borrowings and newly-created sections and passages. In addition, through an examination of the role of Benkei in performances by three great modern actors, I will briefly consider different ways of playing Benkei and how different interpretations affect our engagement with Benkei’s heroism, grandeur, and humanity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Just a Minute! Shibaraku

  University of Hawaii Press eBooks · 2017-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Elizabeth Oyler

  2 shared

• Jessica Nakamura

  2 shared