Anglophone research into noh theatre has tended to focus upon the translation and analysis of performance texts and treatises. Whilst the title of this study, Dancing the Dharma, suggests insight into the religious efficacy of noh dance, it still follows this dominant mode of enquiry. That said, this reader found the volume to be a rich, authoritative and compelling study, presenting numerous insights into the circulation of ‘secret’ allegorical commentaries on poetry, and how an understanding of these commentaries manifested in the writing of noh texts. This, Klein argues, enabled authors to offer veiled allusion to contemporaneous events that only the initiated could comprehend. By revealing the text to be even more multi-layered than was previously assumed, the study offers new richness to our appreciation of noh.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section (chapters 1–3) outlines the development of secret poetic commentaries in meticulous detail, demonstrating how they facilitated an elite understanding of poetry which, nevertheless, became something of an open secret once the material was included in performance texts. Klein draws together commentaries on the Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise) and Kokin wakashū (Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems) to convincingly demonstrate how widespread etymological analysis was, and how quotations and allusions from commentaries were quoted in noh performance texts. To precisely evidence the connection between these commentaries and noh, Klein observes how Fujiwara Tameaki's (1240s–1290s) Kokin wakashūjo kikigaki (Lecture Notes on the Preface to the Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems) was referenced in Rikugi (Six Poetic Modes), a treatise handwritten by the centrally important noh artist Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443). Zeami gave this document to his son-in-law Konparu Zenchiku (1405–70) as a wedding gift. As documented in chapter 3, Zenchiku subsequently developed these ideas in his treatise Meishukushū (Collection Illuminating the Indwelling Deity), where the significance of allegory as part of the ritual efficacy of noh was emphasized. In a significant concluding section, Klein argues that allegory – at least as it was understood and utilized in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – has been downplayed in the twentieth century by both Japanese and Western scholarship as a means to dehistoricize and universalize noh. Klein clearly situates her contribution as agitating for wider recognition of the contemporaneous sociopolitical and cultural contexts that underpinned the writings of noh.

The second section (chapters 4–7) focuses on performance texts that draw upon commentaries about the Ise monogatari. Across the chapters, Klein explores how Maigurama (The Dancing Carriage), Kuzu no Hakama (Arrowroot Trousers), Unrin'in (Unrin Temple), Oshio (also called Oharano hanami (Blossom-viewing at Oharano)), and Kakitsubata (a variety of iris) construct the court poet Ariwara Narihira (825–50) in the Ise monogatari as a honji suijaku, a Buddhist deity manifested as a Kami spirit.

In the final section (chapters 8–9) Klein explores how commentaries concerning the Kokin wakashū are used in noh allegoresis. She analyses the texts Ominameshi (The Damsel Flower) and Haku Rakuten (the Chinese poet Bai Juyi, Haku Rakuten in Japanese), methodically taking the reader through the hidden layers of meaning, which cumulatively build to give the work symbolic unity.

In agitating for a new kind of historicism in the analysis of noh, Klein has produced an exemplary piece of scholarship. She has, in effect, written a new contemporary poetic commentary of the kind explored in the study, even acknowledging the subjective nature of interpretation as a means to invite further revised analysis. If I have a criticism, it concerns the absence of a glossary of key terms. Although the index includes translations of titles and so on, non-Japanese-speakers will find repeated reference to Japanese authors, titles, kinds of commentary and romaji words very heavy going. An easily accessible glossary might have improved accessibility. This is particularly salient because the study enriches our understanding of noh on so many levels that it has much to offer general readers. Nevertheless, such a minor qualm should not distract from the fact that Klein has produced a robust and important piece of scholarship.