Paper short abstract:

In 2021 Toshiki Okada directed the Japanese Opera Yuzuru and brought a contemporary perspective to the classic. He focused on actual influence of capitalism by putting Yohyo in the main role. This paper analyzes the dramaturgy of Yuzuru by comparing Junji Kinoshita's original to recent production.

Paper long abstract:

During the second world war, Junji Kinoshita (1914-2006) wrote plays based on Japanese folklore. Yuzuru is one of these plays based on the Japanese folk tale Tsuru no Ongaeshi (The Grateful Crane). He added a critique of postwar capitalism to the original by contrasting people obsessed with money with a crane who do not understand money. In 1947 he formed the Budo-no-kai theatre group with a shingeki actress Yasue Yamamoto, and she played the role of the main character Tsu (crane) in the play. It has been performed more than 1,000 times throughout Japan since its first performance in 1949. Ikuma Dan (1924-2001) composed the same name opera based on Kinoshita's script. This Japanese opera has been performed more than 800 times since its first performance in 1952 and is the most frequently performed Japanese opera in Japan. This opera was invited to Zurich Music Festival as the first Japanese opera in 1957, and it has been performed more than 50 times in 17 countries as a cultural ambassador to the world since then. Although the opera has been performed many times, most productions have been staged traditionally and have not been modernized. In 2021, after the COVID-19 pandemic, Toshiki Okada (1973-) directed the opera at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre and brought a contemporary perspective to the classic. He focused on the actual influence of capitalism by putting Yohyo, Tsu's husband, in the central role instead of Tsu. In the production, Yohyo is unaware of capitalism's progress, and Okada intends the audience to overlap with the husband. This paper analyzes the dramaturgy of Yuzuru by comparing Kinoshita's original to Okada's recent production.

Paper short abstract:

Ghosts are part of everyday life in Okinawa while US military planes with their ghost-like invisibility invade sonically. I explore how listening instead of seeing destabilises theatre-making in uncanny ways in the latest work by the Peru-born Japanese playwright and director Yudai Kamisato.

Paper long abstract:

In Okinawa ghosts and monsters are said to be part of everyday life. At the same time the US military planes with their ghost-like invisibility invade the sonic environments of Okinawan residents daily by breaking sound barriers and reminding them of wars past and present. This is mirrored in the way Robin Hanson (2016) conceptualised the ghosts as something heard more than seen. Conversely, Hiroki Azuma (2017) discussed the ghostly bodies in theatre through the notion of yubinteki (postal) multitude to counteract against the Empire (nation-states and globalism).

Yudai Kamisato, Japanese playwright and director born in Peru has been exploring the aurality in theatre ever since winning Kishida Kunio Prize for Drama in 2017. His latest work Immigrant Ghost Stories or Imigre Kaidan (2022) based on ghost stories from Thailand, Laos, Bolivia and Okinawa takes us on an auditive journey of discovery about the origins of famous Japanese alcoholic drinks and the history of migration and wars in the Asia-Pacific. Kamisato's aesthetics focus on the potential of aurality in theatre to enable the spectators to read performative images across borders, time and space. Accordingly, the present/absent voices of the performers uttering Kamisato's polyglossia both on stage and the video screen, transform the theatre experience from "a place of seeing" to "a place of seeing through listening".

Combining my notes from the online and offline rehearsals of Immigrant Ghost Stories which I attended in September and October 2022, Kamisato's own writings and the performance analysis of the premiering performances in Okinawa, I will explore the different ways the sound and aurality are used in Kamisato's production to highlight the issues of war and displacement. I will also examine how listening instead of seeing can destabilise the relationship between the performance and the audience in uncanny ways just as wars have destabilising effects on the societies.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on the working mechanism of world fairs and colonial exhibitions, shows throught the example of two Japanese truopes that the Western audience and theatrical people how misunderstood these performances and the East.

Paper long abstract:

World fairs and colonial exhibitions were organised of the second half of the 19th century with the same purpose: to showcase foreign traditions and to legitimate the superiority of Western powers. For ordinary people, these open-air exhibitions were the only opportunity to learn and see something about distant and “magical” cultures, such as that of the East. On several occasions, besides the valuable artefacts not only foreign-style buildings but whole villages were exhibited. In these special spaces (heterotopia), where foreign people were also exhibited, the gaze was directed to the body of the Other (Fischer-Lichte 2009). This situation can also be considered as theatrical: while carrying out their daily routines or traditional ceremonies, villagers involuntarily transformed themselves into performers of a theatrical kind in the eyes of those who were watching them. At the same time, world fairs also staged theatrical plays. These were performed by professional actors who made audiences believe that their acting was authentic, while it was not. Several Japanese actors became catalysts of significant European theatrical movements by appearing at the 1900 Paris Exposition and the Marseille Colonial Exhibition in 1906, at a time when European theatre was trying to overcome its crisis of logocentrism. The Kawakami troupe and Hanako showed a new solution with performances that were almost devoid of speech and emphasised the body. Their ways of using the body seemed to be as unique and natural as those of “exhibited” human beings performing ceremonies, amazing the Western audience. In my presentation, I will examine the different ways of “performing” that were considered authentic by the viewers. I will show that the artists (Edward G. Craig, Auguste Rodin) who thought that these troupes justified their belief that Eastern ”naturalness” could provide the solution to their crisis, fell victim to a productive misunderstanding. Thus the “colonisers” were misled, on the one hand, by those who they thought they had ”colonised”, and on the other hand, by their own preconceptions and desires.