Taro Yokoyama, Professor of Theatre Studies at Rikkyo University, took part in the New Directions in Noh workshop in 2025 and 2026, presenting work in progress each time. Feedback from the members helped both projects move forward a great deal. One became a Japanese article, “Waki tōjōdan no kinō: Mugen nō no monogatariron josetsu” (The Function of the Waki’s Entrance: An Introduction to the Narratology of Dream Nō), Nōgaku kenkyū 50 (March 2026). The other became the paper “Nō for Waka: How the Stage Restages the Lyric Moment,” presented at the symposium “Cross-Glances: Greek Lyric and Japanese Nō” at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (September 2026). A volume based on the symposium is now being planned. 

For a scholar who had always been based in Japan, the workshop was also a catalyst for starting to present his research in North America. At the 2025 workshop, members arranged a lecture series for him, “The Body History of Nō: From Demons to Cyborgs,” at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh (November 2025). They also encouraged him to attend the annual meeting of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies (AJLS) at the University of Chicago. Through these lectures and the conference, he built a wider network of colleagues, and the lectures led to a Japanese article, “Nō no shintaishi: Oni kara saibōgu e” (The Body History of Nō: From Demons to Cyborgs), Shisō 1222 (February 2026). 

The 2025 workshop was also where plans for a panel at the AAS Annual Conference in Vancouver (March 2026) took shape. Out of these discussions, he proposed the panel “Narrative Transformations: Wrinkles in Time and Space in Noh” together with fellow members Elizabeth Oyler, Susan Klein, and Matthew Chudnow. This was his first time at AAS. His paper there, “Theatre as Dream: The Narrative Magic of Mugen-Noh,” is now being prepared for publication as an article in Japanese. 

The workshop provides as a hub that connects nō scholars in Japan and the United States, and he and Akiko Takeuchi, a fellow Japanese member, have been actively building a hub in Japan as well. For example, he introduced fellow members Vyjayanthi Selinger and Nathaniel Gallant to Yūsuke Takahashi, one of the leading specialists in Japan in their fields. He hopes that the workshop will make international exchange among scholars even closer, and he is sure that this itself is a new direction for nō studies. 

 For more of his work, please see: