Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan David Jortner Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan. By Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei . Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005; pp. vii + 335. $48.00 cloth. For the past several years, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei has been tempting conference attendees with excerpts from her forthcoming book, presenting alluring fifteen-to-twenty-minute snippets of the life and work of one of Japan's most enigmatic theatrical figures, Terayama Shūji. Although several scripts and essays about Terayama exist in English (see, for example, "Knock: Street Theatre," in Robert T. Rolf and John K. Gillespie, ed., Alternative Japanese Theatre: TenPlays), this volume is the first major English work about this fascinating and controversial playwright and director. In this text, Sorgenfrei uses theoretical and historical models to provide a comprehensive scholarly analysis of Terayama's life and career, and illustrates both the Japanese and Western cultural influences on his work. The book also contains translations of three Terayama plays as well as selections from his writings on theatre. Sorgenfrei's Unspeakable Acts is a scintillating work of research that greatly adds to current scholarship on modern Japanese theatre and the work of avant-garde theatre artists. For many years Terayama Shūji was one of the leading figures of the Japanese 1960s avant-garde theatre movement known as shōgekijō (little theatre). Terayama and his troupe, Tenjō Sajiki, performed numerous avant-garde plays throughout Japan and internationally. He was so influential on the Japanese avant-garde that several scholars, both in Japan and the West, mark his death in 1983 as the end of the shōgekijō movement. Despite this influence, there has (until now) been no book-length study of Terayama, and only a few of his performance pieces have been translated. Sorgenfrei's work remedies this situation. Her first four chapters present a scholarly overview of Terayama's life and work. The analytical patterns follow a loose biographical chronology, examining the major themes, influences, and styles of Terayama's [End Page 142] theatre. The first chapter presents a broad biographical overview of Terayama's life, which includes historical and cultural influences upon the playwright. The next three chapters examine different periods in the playwright / director's development, as well as provide theoretical tools for a greater understanding of his work. In the second chapter, Sorgenfrei discusses Terayama's theatrical explorations of psychology and family. Here, the author provides an interesting and useful tool for psychoanalytic theorists. In discussing Terayama's maternal relationship, she suggests Kosawa Heisaku's "Ajase complex" as a "culturally appropriate substitute in Japan for the father-centered Oedipus complex" (60). The Indian story of Prince Ajase tells of a child whose mother kills in order to conceive him, and upon birth, attempts to kill the child out of guilt, until she finally accepts her role as a mother. The son, upon reaching adulthood, learns of his history, attempts to kill his mother, and is deserted by all but her, eventually leading to reconciliation and forgiveness. Not only is the Ajase story mirrored in the personal history of Terayama and his mother, but this idea provides scholars with new ways of approaching traditional psychoanalytic theory. As Sorgenfrei deftly shows, the ideas contained within the Ajase complex can be used to analyze familial, gendered, and sexual relationships in literature. In the third chapter, Sorgenfrei explores Terayama's interest in the removal of traditional theatrical boundaries, including his (sometimes) controversial uses of mobile audiences and nontraditional theatre spaces. In this chapter, she also looks at how this nontraditional staging reflected the thematic content of Terayama's work, with its emphasis on shifting identities, trickster figures, and cultural (and familial) dependency. The fourth chapter looks at the cult of Terayama and explores the nostalgic and postmodern effects of his life and work. One of the more interesting aspects of this chapter is Sorgenfrei's comparison of the cultural roles played by Terayama and Mishima Yukio. Although Mishima was the political antithesis of Terayama, the author illustrates how both of them (as well as the singer Misora Hibari) created a cult-like...