Natt Wojas

My research explores the intersections of performance, politics, and embodiment in post-war Japan. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hanada Kiyoteru, as well as my background in literary studies, I examine the evolution of conceptions of subjecthood — from kokutai and nikutai to shintai — and how these shifting corporeal terms found expression both in literature and on stage. My broader interests include the entanglement of theatre and the political upheavals of 1960s Japan, particularly in the experimental angura troupes such as Kara Jūrō’s, as well as Hijikata Tatsumi’s butō, and in the literary explorations of embodiment by figures like Sakaguchi Ango and Abe Kōbō.

My current projects investigate theatrical corporeality and spatiality in the work of Jerzy Grotowski and Suzuki Tadashi, and examine the formation of the sexual self across the I-novel tradition and popular advice columns of the Taishō era. I also explore the affordances of Kang-baek Lee’s allegorical theatre in exposing the strictures of the sayable under Park Chung Hee’s regime, as well as Lee Kun-yong’s attempts to capture the corporeal.