Performing The Politics of Translation in Modern Japan: Staging The Resistance by Aragorn Quinn

Abstract

Reviewed by: Performing The Politics of Translation in Modern Japan: Staging The Resistance by Aragorn Quinn David Jortner PERFORMING THE POLITICS OF TRANSLATION IN MODERN JAPAN: STAGING THE RESISTANCE. By Aragorn Quinn. London and New York: Routledge, 2020. 169 pp. Hardcover, $128.00; paperback, $39.16. "Political theatre" is a term loaded with a variety of meanings. In the history of Japanese theatre, especially in the Meiji and Taishō eras, political theatre is often used in conversations about the Jiyū Gekijō (Free Theatre, 1909–1919) and the Tsukiji Shōgekijō (Tsukiji Little Theatre, 1924–1928) as well as the work of playwrights and artists such [End Page 421] as Hijikata Tatsumi and Kubo Sakae. Inherent in this discussion is the connection between political, modern, and "Western;" for many of these artists modernity was inimically linked to political activism and new forms of theatre. As Aragorn Quinn aptly demonstrates in his work Performing the Politics of Translation in Modern Japan, during the early Meiji Restoration era performance and memory was deeply connected with explorations of term such as liberty (jiyū) and revolution (kakumei). The text demonstrates how the engagement of these words and the world of performance extends from the Restoration through the Proletarian Theatre movement and into the postwar world. With this book Quinn has done a deep dive into the intersections between performance, politics, and language. In doing so, he has created an important resource for scholars of Japanese and political theatre. Quinn's book is divided into 5 chapters, but it is better seen as an exploration of three different periods in Japanese theatre: The Freedom and People's Rights Movement, the Proletarian Movement, and the Occupation/postwar period. What connects all of these periods in Quinn's argument is the connection between their performances and the differing ideas (and translations) of political/cultural terms such as "liberty" and "revolution." The first chapter looks at how "liberty" was translated in the early Meiji period and how that manifested itself through productions of William Shakespeare's plays and the performances of Kawakami Otojirō. One of the highlights in this chapter is the translation, publication, and production histories of works such as Tsubouchi Shōyō's The Amazing Story of Caesar: The Legacy of the Sharpness of Liberty's Sword (Jiyū no tachi nagori no kireaji: Shiizaru kidan), his translation of Julius Caesar, as well as Kawashima Keizō's The Rise and Fall of Rome (Rōma seisuikan), his translation of the same play. This chapter also includes how these translations were connected with the Association for Theatre Reform (Engeki kairyō kai). In addition, Quinn illustrates how this terminology was used by Kawakami Otojirō and by other political theatre (shōshi shibai) performances. The second chapter explores plays of the Meiji Restoration. One of the more interesting elements of this chapter is a reclamation of Sasaki Takamaru's place in theatre history. Sasaki was involved with the Forerunner Theater (Seunkuza) as well as the Avant-Garde Theater (Zen'eiza). Much of the chapter is devoted to an analysis of his play The Secret Account of Tsukuba (Tsukuba hiroku). One of the delights of Quinn's text is his inclusion of segments of the play in both Japanese and in his translation; one wishes for a complete translation of the play. Quinn's analysis of Sasaki gives an interesting reading as to why the Proletarian Theatre movement failed to foment revolution and can prove as an interesting model for other leftist writers of this period. [End Page 422] Chapter Three looks at plays which take the attempted assassination of Itagaki Taisuke in 1882 as their primary subject matter. For Quinn, "these plays sit at important transitions in performance conventions in modern Japanese theater and are uniquely situated to highlight the inter-relationship of … seemingly disparate performance modes" (p. 81), such as kyūgeki (old theatre), sōshi, and shingeki (new theatre). In this chapter Quinn raises many interesting possible readings of leftist theatre while looking at the texts of one night pickle plays (ichiyazuke) by Kawakami, Sudō Sadanori, and Sasaki. This chapter argues for several interesting ideas about expanding Japanese theatre scholarship—he argues for a "long nineteenth century" approach to...