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Paper short abstract:

This paper, through character and language analysis, explores how in the contemporary noh play Genbakuki (Anniversary of the Bomb) the playwright and immunologist Tada Tomio conveys the horror experienced by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the classical structure of noh.

Paper long abstract:

When the immunologist and playwright Tada Tomio visited the Hiroshima Peace Museum and Memorial Park for the first time in 1995, he was shocked by the horrendous and frightening consequences that the bomb blast had unleashed. Immediately he thought that all that horror had to be witnessed and noh theatre offered him the right dimension and language to fulfil his purpose. Genbakuki, staged for the first time in 2005, is the result of his effort to reconcile the rawness of the event and the minimalism of noh.

In classic shuramono, war constitutes both the backdrop against which individual tragedies unfold and the matrix of a code based on loyalty and honour in whose name the heroes are ready to sacrifice their lives. However, the tragedy staged in this play is collective. War is perceived as timeless and without nationality: it is death looming over all humanity. If the desperate cries of the survivors, begging us not to make the same mistakes, were not convincing enough, Tada uses hellish images, evoked in the second part, to shake the conscience. In a pouring rain, the spirit appears and describes the horror and suffering characterising the last moments of his existence. The heat and thirst that the victims suffered, before they died, seems relentless. Even the rain seems unable to give the spirits any relief.

The author presents the war from two perspectives. Through the words of a survived woman, he succeeds in condemning the use of nuclear weapons and issuing a warning to future generations. Simultaneously, with the tale of a victim's spirit, he can give voice to the dead, whom he calls the witnesses to history.

Analysing how characters and their roles are built, this presentation highlights Tada’s ability to address modern themes while adhering, as faithfully as possible, to the classical structure of noh, in this case specifically mugen noh; likewise, attention will be paid to the language adopted, which reflects, in its alternation of classicism and modernity, the discourse that the author believes is still possible with an ancient form of art like noh.