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Accepted Paper:
Spectacles of evacuation and absence in contemporary Japanese theatre
Peter Eckersall
(The Graduate Center CUNY)
This paper explorers what spectacles of evacuation and absence look like in performances by Okada Toshiki and Takayama Akira.
Paper long abstract:
“Japan feels empty” is a phrase that gained in currency in Japan during the Covid era. The Mainichi Shinbun reported that “around 40% of people in Japan are feeling lonely amid reduced opportunities for interaction” (Mainichi Shinbun, February 28, 2022), noting that a considerable proportion of these people were in their 20s and 30s. In general terms, alienation has increased, and a sense of vitality and community has gone, evacuated to a place who knows where. The pervading sense of hollowness and the absence of opportunity is existential and seems to cast over the future of Japan as a post covid fog.
Thinking about this situation for the arts, what are some of the aesthetic tactics and cultural perspectives that are coming forward? For example, Takayama Akira/Port B have literalized the idea of evacuation in a series of works that explore mobility, diaspora and inequality in Japan and its relations to the world. Meanwhile, Okada Toshiki explores the idea of absence and disappearance in reference to the Fukushima disaster and climate change. What are the new forms of aesthetic strangeness evident in their work and is this part of a wider trend? Is evacuation the new paradigm? This paper explorers what these spectacles of evacuation and absence look like in their work and asks how far it will go.