Theatre In Japan Research Articles

A Research on the Origins of Ritual Theatre in Eastern Asia: The Associative Development of Chinese Nuo Theatre and Japanese Noh Theatre

As a region with a significant agricultural industry, the ritual theatre of East Asia played an important role in the early drama of its origins. In addition, the trajectory of the early agricultural and religious cultural interactions in East Asian countries was decisive in shaping their national cultural roots, so exploring the different developments of ritual theatre among different countries on the basis of the history of early cultural interactions can help to provide a more explicit understanding of the cultural development of ritual theatre in East Asia. This research explores the trajectories of Nuo theatre in China and Noh theatre in Japan, broadly in terms of both agriculture and religion, summarises the similarities and differences between the developmental routes of Nuo and Noh theatre, and analyses the causes of the contemporary phenomenon of Nuo and Noh theatre moving along different developmental routes.

The theatre of the confused: Tokyo

This article focuses on a production in July 2021 entitled Waiting for Will, written and directed by Shoichiro Kawai. This play, in Japanese, is presented in the spirit of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and features two aging Shakespearean actors trying to recover their memory of Shakespearean lines and scenes they once acted, while they wait for ‘Will’, a pun on William Shakespeare as well as on one's last will and testament. Waiting for Will is part of a genealogy of alternative theatre in Japan. Though the production echoes Western forms, it is still distinctly Japanese in nature.

"A New Path to the Future": Women Producers of Border-Crossing Musical Theatre in Japan, South Korea, and China

"A New Path to the Future": Women Producers of Border-Crossing Musical Theatre in Japan, South Korea, and China

Covid-19 and Theatre in Japan: an Immediate Report

Covid-19 and Theatre in Japan: an Immediate Report

A History of Japanese Theatre ed. by Jonah Salz

Reviewed by: A History of Japanese Theatre ed. by Jonah Salz Kathy Welch A History of Japanese Theatre. Edited by Jonah Salz. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Cloth $155.00, Paper $34.99, eBook $28.00. 589 pages. Jonah Salz’s award-winning book, A History of Japanese Theatre, will prove helpful to theatre generalists, Asian theatre specialists, and college instructors in search of a comprehensive text for a Japanese theatre course or supplementary materials for a more general course. In his foreword, the late eminent Asian theatre scholar James R. Brandon, to whom the book is dedicated, states that since the only other complete history of Japanese theatre in English is over two decades old, “This is the right book at the right time” (xxviii). One need only scan the book’s final list of reading recommendations and note that 24 of the 38 entries were published since 1990 to realize how critically this volume was needed. A History of Japanese Theatre is comprised of holistic essays by over 50 specialists, presenting diverse perspectives in an expertly edited format. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 covers traditional theatres, including ancient and medieval genres such as kagura, noh, kyogen, kabuki, and bunraku. Part 2 covers theatre that began in the modern era, defined as starting in 1868 with Emperor Meiji’s reign and the subsequent Western influence on Japanese culture. Part 3 is comprised of several sections examining topics crossing historical and stylistic boundaries such as theatre architecture, criticism, and interculturalism. Interludes, as well as short “Spotlight” and shorter “Focus” pieces, are peppered throughout the three main parts, highlighting important artists, significant productions, and minor or related art forms. Theatre in Japan has retained its potency due to the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and even physical pleasure it stimulates [End Page 132] in audiences. Despite a great depth of critical and historical scholarly investigation, A History of Japanese Theatre never loses sight of theatre’s aptitude for pleasure. Descriptions of representative plays, interviews with theatre practitioners, and scores of production photos and prints elicit an appreciation for this in the reader. A great strength of the book is its structure. Salz is a leading scholar of kyogen and Japanese interculturalism as well as a theatre practitioner, and he has gathered an impressive international cadre of contributing editors and over fifty authors, each a specialist with a unique perspective on their topic. The authors are a mix of established and early career scholars; for some, this is their first publication in English. Each author has penned a standalone article on their topic. This is a useful feature for teachers looking for supplementary course readings. It also means that occasionally introductory concepts are repeated, which might seem tiresome for someone reading the book cover to cover. This, however, is not the case. The authors’ unique approaches to the material result instead in greater insight. For example, several articles describe the hanamichi, a pathway that runs from the stage through the audience in kabuki theatres. Alison Tokita, a scholar of Japanese music traditions, discusses its use as a device for dramatically depicting a character’s journey, while Japanese theatre specialist Julie Iezzi describes the intimacy the hanamichi creates between the audience and the actor performing on the pathway. Professor of architecture Shimizu Hiroyuki traces the hanamichi’s development, giving historical and cultural context to the relationship between actor and audience that it promotes. Revisiting the hanamichi in each of these articles deepens the reader’s understanding of this particular staging feature. In Salz’s chapter “Traditional Meta-Patterns,” he describes how traditional Japanese theatre divides visual and audio elements into separate channels. Bunraku audiences, for example, “receive the simultaneous, multi-channel performances by storytellers, musicians, puppets and manipulators, comprehending the visual and aural codes according to their own proclivities and competencies” (378). Salz has arranged the articles in A History of Japanese Theatre in a comparable way to create a similar gestalt. Each expertly written article illuminates the others and the reader is empowered to discover connections and trends throughout the collection. Among the final chapters of the book, David Jortner’s “English Language Scholarship: A Critical Overview” demonstrates the necessity for...

Route Choice and Flow Rate in Theatre Evacuation Drills: Analysis of Walking Trajectory Data-Set

This study analysed evacuees’ movements in three sequentially announced evacuation drills in a theatre to clarify evacuees’ route choice mechanism in an auditorium and to obtain a data-set for the validation of evacuation simulations and egress time calculations. The drills were conducted in a multi-purpose theatre in Japan over consecutive years, involving approximately 400 –540 occupants aged 6–90. The coordinates of every occupant in the auditorium during the drills were accurately obtained every 0.5 s using the authors’ original software programmes, so that evacuees’ trajectories and walking speeds at each point could be obtained. Thereby, we obtained more than 100,000 data points in total to analyse. The drills were also compared from the point of view of the flow control of the facility’s staff during the evacuation. The results revealed that, while the evacuees in the centre blocks chose the closest aisle from their seats, most of the evacuees in the side blocks chose the wall side aisles. The occupants did not create queues in aisles between seat blocks. They tended to walk along seatways, the narrow spaces between seat rows to get closer to their target exit, rather than stacking in the aisles. In addition, the specific flow at exit doors from the auditorium in a congested situation was ca. 0.96 pers./m/s.

A History of Japanese Theatre ed. by Jonah Salz

Reviewed by: A History of Japanese Theatre ed. by Jonah Salz Peter A. Campbell (bio) A History of Japanese Theatre. Edited by Jonah Salz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xli + 550 pp. $155.00 hardcover. As the first major text to cover the length and breadth of Japanese theatre since Benito Ortolani's The Japanese Theater in 1991, this ambitious work is successful in providing a comprehensive history of theatre in Japan while introducing various historiographical and performative methodologies that help the reader understand how the dozens of authors came to know what they know. It is also an engaging and enjoyable read, filled with strong prose and useful visual materials, including time lines and genealogies as well as depictions of costumes, masks, and performances. Despite its many authors, the structure and tone is clear and contains an engaging survey of Japanese performances from the origins of Japanese civilization to contemporary plays and theories of performance. The structure is not strictly chronological: while the first two sections move in a linear fashion to discuss traditional theater in part 1 and modern theatres (Meiji and post-Meiji) in part 2, the last third of the book moves across time and space to discuss themes and patterns of Japanese theatre arts, the architecture of spaces, criticism from within and outside of Japan, and intercultural aspects of Japanese theatre. However, even the linear history is interrupted with short sections that create opportunities for case studies and discussions of specific cultural traditions, performances, or biographies of significance. For example, during the forty-page chapter on Noh, brief one-to-two-page "Spotlights" focus on the Noh stage, Zeami's writings, and women in Noh; and "Focus" sections of similar length discuss Kurokawa Noh, Noh's first appearance in Europe, at the Venice Bienniale in 1954, twentieth-century Noh actor Kanze Hisao, and the repertory of Noh plays. There are also more extended "interlude" sections that discuss larger issues. At the end of the Noh chapter, there is an interlude that discusses the history and function of Noh and Kyogen masks and costumes. This is effective in preventing the reader from falling into a singular narrative and helps fulfill the promise of such a collaborative work by creating a complicated, varied, and entertaining landscape of different types of Japanese theatre. The most salient and unique part of the book is part 3, "Arcs and Patterns," which sets up helpful frameworks for discussing elements of Japanese theatre in ways that are directly useful for an undergraduate classroom. By having brief sections of different themes and issues that the study of Japanese theatre brings up, it allows for the reader, teacher, or student to see different approaches that can complement and even replace a strictly chronological course of study. This part also provides a bridge to those more accustomed to literary historical [End Page 317] studies. Especially in J. Thomas Rimer's section, "Modern Plays as Literature," and Salz's, "Traditional Meta-patterns," we are encouraged to see the intertextuality of different kinds of performances across literature and other cultural traditions. While the text as a whole valorizes the study of performance and production, this part creates a linchpin that demonstrates how this focus on performance does not diminish the works as literature. Instead, by providing such fundamental materials about the larger cultural and performative contexts in which the texts were created, it allows us to better comprehend how the texts have worked in their historical or contemporary contexts. Perhaps the smartest thing about this text is that it does not attempt to pretend that it is not created for an English-speaking audience. The egalitarian sensibility of the authorship allows for a clear diversity of voices, but at the same time it enables the reader to regularly recognize the perspectives that are offered by those voices. Salz makes sure that the kinds of issues and concerns that come from non-Japanese students and scholars are addressed in clear ways, including a very useful overview of English language scholarship provided near the end of the book by David Jortner and two excellent chapters (by Nakano Masaaki and Salz) discussing the use of Japanese training practices around the...

Identity Politics in Women's Performance in Japan

In Japan, it was in the mid-1970s when women artists started to create their own professional theatre companies. This period also saw the development of the women's liberation movement in Japan, but there was no exchange between women theatre artists and activists. While the women artists explored a variety of issues in their work, with some few exceptions feminism was not their primary concern. This trend continues to this day, and accounts for why Tadashi Uchino argues that there has been no feminist theatre in Japan.

Chinese Street Opera in Singapore (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese Street Opera in Singapore Grant Shen Chinese Street Opera in Singapore. By Tong Soon Lee. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2009, 218 pp. Cloth, $40. This book aims to "examine the cultural perspectives of nationalism in Singapore since its independence in 1965 through a study of Chinese street opera to understand the impact of changing cultural aesthetics on music and society" (p. 1). The author has collected substantial data from historical records, scholarly publications, and his own fieldwork. He has made a timely contribution to a relatively little-known field and a declining genre. One of the historical records, for instance, is the register of actors, artists and musicians found in the 1881 Census of Singapore, conducted by the British colonial government. The document shows that 240 out of the 285 registered arts professionals were Chinese, while all the rest, comprising Europeans, Americans, Eurasians, Malays, Indians, and other minorities, numbered only 45 (p. 21). This finding helps confirm the popularity and significance of Chinese opera among immigrants from China, in absolute and relative terms. The references Lee makes to prior scholarship are extensive. At one point, studies on amateur musicians in Afghanistan, recreational participants in nō theatre in Japan, and the avocational performers of kunqu opera in China are cited to place the Singaporean Chinese opera amateurs in perspective (p. 93–94). The author's protracted field research in the late 1990s represents probably one of the last attempts to study at close hand the shrinking professional troupes and their aging performers. Supported by his comprehensive data collection, Lee is able to chronicle the genre's development in Singapore since the 1840s, from its social and religious functions for nostalgic early immigrants to its heyday when Chinese street opera had a huge following and on to its gradual decline in recent decades. The author then provides a political-ideological backdrop against which the rise of amateur groups may be understood. He has painstakingly pieced together evidence of the state's anxiety over being the smallest and [End Page 198] most dependent (thus vulnerable) country in Southeast Asia, the dilemma it faced in matching the economic development of the West while resisting the perceived negative influences of materialism and individualism, and its solution in promoting and modifying Confucianism in order to propound "traditional Asian values." Interestingly, Lee draws a clever parallel between the Confucian ideals of the arts in human life and the amateurs' practice of Chinese opera. Just as Confucianism values education and promotes the arts as a means of self-cultivation for, and manifestation of, the gentleman, but not as a means of livelihood, so too do amateur groups, comprising mostly educated members of the middle class, conform to these Confucian criteria by learning Chinese opera for personal refinement and performing it for leisure and charitable events. Consciously and openly pursuing Confucian goals in the arts, four amateur groups—Er Woo, Lak Aik, Han Hwa, and Thau Yong—no less have named themselves ruyue she (Confucian musical/dramatic associations). Lee provides sufficient documentation for the conditions under which the professionals in Chinese opera have survived. With little formal education, they perform solely for functional reasons, for rituals associated with custom or religion, and personally to make a living. As such, the professionals have a low social status, at least partially, because they are unable to embody or convey the Confucian ethos as the amateurs do. These findings provide convincing proof that it is the Chinese opera amateurs, rather than the professionals, who better serve the purposes of the state in its endorsement of Confucianism, as well as in promotion of cultural nationalism and tourism. As is to be expected, this predominantly sociological study focuses on, and succeeds in clarifying, the historical and cultural aspects more than the art form per se. However, to attribute the rise of amateurs and the decline of professionals almost entirely to non-artistic causes is less than accurate. Moreover, the impression of the artistic supremacy of professional troupes over amateur ones is created through three problematic methods. (1) Lingual Connotation. The terms "professional" and "amateur," owing to their conventional definitions, imply the technical or artistic supremacy of the former over the...

A Subject of Inquiry to Enhance the Creativity of Regional Theatre in Japan

A Subject of Inquiry to Enhance the Creativity of Regional Theatre in Japan

Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance. Edited by David Jortner, Keiko McDonald and Kevin J. WetmoreJr. Lanham and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006. Pp. vii + 289 + illus. $85/£56/€88.20 Hb. - The Traditional Theatre of Japan: Kyogen, Noh, Kabuki, and Puppetry. By John Wesley Harris. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. Pp. vi + 253 + 11 illus. £69.95/$109.95 Hb

Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance. Edited by David Jortner, Keiko McDonald and Kevin J. WetmoreJr. Lanham and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006. Pp. vii + 289 + illus. $85/£56/€88.20 Hb. - The Traditional Theatre of Japan: Kyogen, Noh, Kabuki, and Puppetry. By John Wesley Harris. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. Pp. vi + 253 + 11 illus. £69.95/$109.95 Hb

Frozen Moments: Writings on Kabuki, 1966–2001. By Samuel L. Leiter. East Asia Series No. 111. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2002; pp. xx + 360; 210 illustrations. $21 paper.

This lavishly illustrated collection covers a period of time that has seen tremendous growth in English-language kabuki scholarship. In 1966, there were in print but three introductory books on kabuki in English—Faubian Bowers's Japanese Theatre (1952), Earle Ernst's The Kabuki Theatre (1956), and A. C. Scott's The Kabuki Theatre of Japan (1966)—along with a handful of plays in translation and a few journal articles. Today, thanks to the work of such researchers as Samuel L. Leiter, James R. Brandon, Leonard Pronko, Donald Shively, Lawrence R. Kominz, Andrew C. Gerstle, and others, kabuki scholarship can boast of dozens of books and book chapters, as well as scores of articles covering a range of topics from music, theatre architecture, and dramatic text to actors, acting, and audience. Furthermore, with the recent publication of the four-volume series Kabuki Plays on Stage (edited by Brandon and Leiter, 2002–3), fifty-one previously untranslated plays are now available in English. No longer is it necessary to spend years learning the Japanese language in order to carry out research into kabuki theatre.

A Guide to Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's 'Classic Noh Theatre of Japan'

A Guide to Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's 'Classic Noh Theatre of Japan'

Intercultural Problems and the Modernization of Theatre in Japan

Shakespeare was first produced in Japan in a version fairly faithful to the original when, in 1903, the actor-manager Kawakami Otojiro, who came from outside the Kabuki world, directed Othello. Some reviewers were quite critical of the production, saying that it would make no sense to call this genuine Shakespeare since the serious drama was played so badly as to become comic. Others were more sympathetic and said that one had to be satisfield with this brave undertaking since the audience seemed to have enjoyed it very much. However, most critics did not see the entire performance, either arriving late or leaving before the end. Yet they seem to have felt no need to apologize: they had simply followed the usual custom of theatre-going practised by Kabuki audiences.

A Guide to Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's `Classic Noh Theatre of Japan'

A Guide to Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa's `Classic Noh Theatre of Japan'

Describing Performance in the Theatre: Kabuki Training and the Western Acting Student

From September 1978 to April I979, the University of Hawaii at Manoa conducted a special program in kabuki theatre known as Kabuki-Hawaii I978-1979. Either Nakamura Matagoro II, Chief Instructor in kabuki at the National Theatre ofJapan, or his assistant, Nakamura Matashiro, was in residence from September to March to teach kabuki acting techniques. Other well-known Japanese artists came to Hawaii for varying lengths of time to teach kabuki music and to assist in technical theatre. Nakamura

Children's Theatre in Japan

Seldom does theatre for the young break the invisible barrier that separates it from the larger theatre world, but recently a brilliantJapanese company has done just that. It is called Kaze-no-ko (Children of the Wind), a name drawn from an ancient legend depicting children as the offspring of the wind and a fitting title for a group dedicated to the liveliness and free spirit of the young. Kaze-no-ko was conceived in the early 1950s in a wave of idealism after the devastating Pacific war. A direct line to that idealistic origin continues today through the son of the founder, Toru Tada, who is now their resident playwright, and through Sekiya Yukio, their chief dramatist.

The Traditional Theatre of Japan

The Traditional Theatre of Japan

Theatricality in Japan

Space, time and character, all heavy with consequence, come immediately to mind when one thinks of theatricality in the particular context of theatre in Japan. In this paper, I shall discuss briefly the way in which these three elements are articulated.

The Tradition of Modern Theatre in Japan

Western-style modern theatre has already become a tradition in Japan. In the following article, critic and director Tsuno Kaitarō examines why Western theatre managed such a strong foothold in the last 80 years. He then suggests a number of fascinating reasons why many Japanese theatre artists in the last decade have begun to attempt to transcend this Western influence by tapping not only their own imaginations but their own history and traditions as well.