Paper short abstract:

A recent theatrical attempt at the Japanese-Korean conflict was a shinsaku nō play by Tada Tomio entitled "Bōkonka" (Longing Song). The drama focuses on the traumatic inheritance of the occupation. The author will examine two recent stage realizations of the play by the Tessenkai Nō Theatre.

Paper long abstract:

It is incredibly challenging to make balanced judgments about the colonial wars and conflicts that shook the Asian continent in the 20th century. One of these conflicts was the war and Japanese colonial domination of Korea (1910-1945). One of the theatrical attempts on this subject is the play by Tady Tomio (1934-2010), a Japanese immunologist and playwright writing mainly shinsaku nō theatre dramas, entitled "Bōkonka" ("Longing Song"), which premiered in 1993. The drama focuses on the traumatic inheritance of war, occupation and related memories. The principal role (shite) in the "Longing Song" is the wife of a young Korean man who was forcibly taken to Japan in the 1930s when Korea was a Japanese colony and died during forced labour at a coal mine on the Kyūshū island. The years pass, and the wife, now an older woman, reads a letter by the young Korean man brought to her by a Japanese Buddhist monk… The letter becomes essential memorabilia, triggering the process of coming to terms with the loss of a family member and the trauma of colonial domination. The figure of a Japanese monk going on a trip to Korea can also be interpreted as an endeavour, in the general social sense, to compensate the victims of war and the inhuman system of forced labour established by the Japanese state. In terms of the current politics, it may also be an attempt to speak on behalf of the Japanese society in the face of the policy of abandonment of the Japanese political elite, which for many years aimed to minimize the scale of the crimes committed in Korea.

The author will examine two recent stage realizations of the play, both produced by the renowned Tessenkai Nō Theatre members. The 2019 Bōkonka production starred actress Uzawa Hisa, and the 2021 one was staged by Shimizu Kanji shite kata actor playing the central part. The latter blended the Japanese nō theatre convention with Korean nongak, rural and ritual performance. The author would also like to examine how gender relations, war and occupation memories are represented on the nō stage.