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What is the Japanese word meaning play

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Silene | 16:17 Mon 16th Feb 2009 | Arts & Literature
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What is the Japanese word meaning play
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Noh?
A simple question with a complex answer since the actual term used would depend entirely on the context... a general term, rakugo would work... but it means more than an actor on stage... a specific genre' if you will...
This is a clue in today's DT quick crossword - 3 letters.
In that case, prezza, Im reasonably sure the answer is indeed Noh, but Silene, we need the CLUE and the number of LETTERS! Otherwise it's as imponderable as the q in: Daily Record

If it had been a cryptic, something like 'Japanese play on cold turkey for horse' would have been all right. Otherwise the q to the q is what Japanese word meaning play? Or what play?
btw clanad. Rakugo is not a play, but a sit-down version of stand-up comedy.
Pedantically, mallam, it was presented as one word that could be translated play from Hiragana, Kanjii, or Katakana styles of writing. You are correct in that Rakugo is a style of stand-up comedy, but one wherein the "actor" recites a memorized script, often times quite lengthy... It resembles a one man play in our Western context...
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thank you all of you. Nor was the required answer, it was not cryptic! One confusing factor was an incorrect anagram on their part.
It's not clear whether you mean I am being pedantic or you are, but it is clear to me at least that you are trying to be even more so.

I do have virtually native competence in Japanese, you know.

I can't see for the life of me what Hiragana, Kanjii, or Katakana have to do with it. Rakugo, like any Japanese word, can be written in any of them, though for every Japanese word one of the three is the correct conventional orthography, being the most appropriate on the basis of its etymology and morphology and/or semantics. In the case of Rakugo that one of the three is Kanji.

You too are correct in that Rakugo involves a memorized script, but the 'style of stand-up comedy' is as I said before, a sit-down style of stand-up comedy. Rakugo is never delivered standing up, but only in the formal Japanese 'seiza' sitting posture, which you may know from Zazen (in both words za is a Kanji meaning 'sit') or the Tea Ceremony.

But you are not correct in calling the 'Rakugoka' an "actor", even in inverted commas. No properly informed Japanese would ever agree that he was any sort of "actor". No Japanese word translatable as 'actor' could possibly be used of a Rakugoka, tho some do moonlight as actors.

Similarly no Japanese word translatable as 'play' could possibly be used of Rakugo, and that is because it by no means "resembles a one man play in our Western context". It is a highly elaborate anecdotal comic monologue, and an acceptable expression for your "actor" would be 'comic story teller'.

That was off the top of my head. Wikipedia is better:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakugo
Sorry, I thought i had addressed my latest screed to you, clanad. Not that it isnt obvious!
Suimasen! for that thorough explanation, mallam-sensei... greatly appreciated. (The referenced pedanticism was intended commentary to my observations).

Hello again, Clanad. Always good to chew the fat with you. Didnt see your little envoi as I was being snatched back from the jaws of death in hospital - the upper jaw being a medical emergency, and the lower jaw being the rigours of imprisonment without leave of appeal by control freaks in the DISorganized chaos of the NHS, with its non-existent systems and lines of communication, death dances of junior doctors and harassed pharmacists, and dashing young nurses being dashed into the ground by the dashing - all of them at odds with one another and the patient, not to mention his multiple medications, which have to be confiscated and thrown to the four winds to see where they fall.

So thanks for the honorific title, and the thanks (or apology, since I am intrigued to see that you use a word which may be either, as opposed to arigato etc, as used by the hoi polloi of anecdotal Japonaiserie!)
So did I do a word search just now, inspired by the great cleverness of your witticism about my palindromic pen name....Apparently you can't even do a search right:

983 hits for my pen name (but I didnt confuse the site seqrch by going all palindromic), though that of course will only feed your malice about my prolixity, rather than alert you to the possibility that for a despicable newbie I may have been making a respectable number of conscientious and well-meaning attempts to help questioners.

And the second of those hits was for an exchange with you! ( http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Arts-and-Litera ture/Question709271.html ).

It so happens that this very search result for the criteria you claim to have been using to zero effect (I will eschew any further perusal of the search results as my nerves are too shot by your uncouth attacks) shows that we did in fact sail fairly close to the wind on that occasion. I remember I suspected you of being the pompous one, glibly laying down the law about half-understood web gleanings, but it seems I kept those suspicions very close to my chest, and we seemed to be having a perfectly good-humoured exchange.
You even seemed to be expressing UNsarcastic appreciation for my attempts to put the record straight THERE. But what you will not have seen then (because the thread was dead when I next posted to it, in the ridiculous way that threads usually are on this site because of the �zerosity� of its software), and still will not have seen, because you were too arrogant to see your search results, never mind read them, is that I thanked you for your apparently UNsarcastic appreciation for my attempts in the following post, which I will copy for you since you don�t follow links:

Hello again, Clanad. Always good to chew the fat with you. Didnt see your little envoi as I was being snatched back from the jaws of death in hospital - the upper jaw being a medical emergency, and the lower jaw being the rigours of imprisonment without leave of appeal by control freaks in the DISorganized chaos of the NHS, with its non-existent systems and lines of communication, death dances of junior doctors and harassed pharmacists, and dashing young nurses being dashed into the ground by the dashing - all of them at odds with one another and the patient, not to mention his multiple medications, which have to be confiscated and thrown to the four winds to see where they fall.

So thanks for the honorific title, and the thanks (or apology, since I am intrigued to see that you use a word which may be either, as opposed to arigato etc, as used by the hoi polloi of anecdotal Japonaiserie!)

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