The Japanese Onion

The best way to communicate the idea of the “Japanese Onion” (as I have termed it) is to offer a passage from J Thomas Rimer’s essay, “Japanese Literature: Four Polarities” in which he discusses the role of the waka poem in Noh theater:

“At the heart of many of those plays lies a famous waka poem, often one already known to the audience from a previous familiar source. The events of the play and the characters who meet or reenact them are woven around this poem like layers of an onion. As the drama begins, a secondary character, often a traveling priest or monk, is, like the audience, at the outer...