Contemporary Japanese Theater: Symbolism In Shvsaku Endo's Ogon No Kuni

Abstract

THE TIMEWORN IMAGE OF THE fumie (a representation of Christ or of the Blessed Virgin to be trampled on, used by persecutors of feudal Japan to discover hidden Christians), figures forth in a strikingly original way the intense dramatic conflict of forces-moral, political, racial, religious and psychological-that clash violently against one another in Shilsaku Endo's dynamic three-act tragedy ironically entitled ogon no Kuni (Land of Yellow Gold.) The play, which marked the well-known novelist's first excursion into drama, was first published in Bungei magazine's May, 1966 issue and produced by the Kumo players under the direction of Hiroshi Akutagawa from May 13 to 23 at Tokyo Municipal Centre Hall. With the adept use of symbolic realism reminiscent of Graham Greene's novels, particularly of The Heart of the Matter with its problem of pity versus moral obligation, and Th,e Power and the Glory with its hunted priest and Judas figure, near Nagasaki on K yilshil island, Mr. Endo places his drama of the human soul against a setting suggestive of corruption and death in a boggy strip of land (an epitome of seventeenth century Japan) surrounded by an oppressively silent sea, a land once dreamed of by Francis Xavier as a promised land of yellow gold, but where transplanted seedlings of foreign culture quickly decay in the lukewarm mire. The scene is set two years after the revolt of Shimabara (1637-8) during the Christian persecution under Iemitsu, the third Tokugawa shogun who ruled from 1623 to 1651. Although the main action of the play (the apostasy of Father Ferreira) is based on actual fact, Mr. Endo himself has stated (in a radio broadcast over NHK, May 29, 1966) that the scarcity of recorded historical data available left ample room for the full play of imagination. Thus the play is largely a creative work involving a study of mixed motives, depth psychology and situational morality.