Spelling: Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, etc.

[Jim Breen <jimbreen@*********>]

Greetings,

There is a heap of entries relating to 能 awaiting editing, and before
I push on with them I want to raise the issue of spelling it and
other Japanese theatrical names in English.

I favour noh over no or nou or nō. The question I want to raise
here is whether it should be Noh or noh, Kabuki or kabuki, etc.

The OED is no help. It has headwords of Noh, Bunraku, and
(inconsistently) kabuki and kyogen.

Currently our counts are:

Noh: 38  noh: 27
Kabuki: 9 kabuki 58
Bunraku: 0 bunraku: 4
Kyogen: 0 kyogen: 11

The new entries lined up all have Noh.

I looked at Kodama Shouko's "The
Complete Guide to Traditional Japanese
Performing Arts", and there the translators
all use noh, kabuki, etc.

In English for European art forms we usually use
lower case: opera, ballet, etc. Should Japanese
terms be treated differently in the dictionary.

I'm of two minds on this. Certainly settling on lower
case would be a less of change (fewer entries to fix.)

I'd certainly like to hear what others think.

Cheers

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen
Adjunct Snr Research Fellow, Clayton School of IT, Monash University
Webmaster: Hawthorn Rowing Club, Treasurer: Japanese Studies Centre
Graduate student: Language Technology Group, University of Melbourne