• サド侯爵夫人 (Madame de Sade)

1/18/26 (Sun), Tokyo

Mishima Yukio’s typically talky drama has its fans: it was selected by Japanese critics back in 1994 as the nation’s best play of the postwar era. (Mishima tied as best writer with the equally prolific Inoue Hisashi of Living With Father fame.) It was written in 1965, just five years before the author’s shocking seppuku – which I mention only because director Miyamoto Amon has decided to include this irrelevant fact as the first line in this production, spoken portentously by the actor who will play the servant (after he has stood facing us on the dark stage for several minutes of utter silence). A starry West End production some years back put critics to sleep, though a Swedish rendering by Ingmar Bergman, available on YouTube, is held in some esteem.

This production had two selling points. One, the six-woman show is played by an all-male cast, a technique that Japanese directors turn to occasionally. Second, the lead, Narimiya Hiroki, is making his comeback after abruptly quitting show business several years earlier over horrific media bullying regarding his private life. (As it happens, Higashide Masahiro, who plays the horny countess, is himself coming off an adultery scandal, which somehow feels appropriate for this piece.)

The author based the work on the historical fact that the Marquise de Sade waited devotedly for 12 years for her famously demented husband to be released from prison, only to refuse to see him ever again once he was finally out. The play examines this through the lives of six women, each representing a different side of French society (wifely devotion, social status, religion, etc). His behavior has scandalized society, forcing his mother-in-law (a very good Kato Masaya) to petition the king to pardon him in order to avoid the stain on their family name. She urges the wife (Narimiya) to break from him, but the wife sees it as her duty to stick by him despite his orgies with underage prostitutes, deviant sexual practices, and his tryst with her own sister. She even encourages his actions: on one of his brief periods out of jail, she had been spotted in one of his orgies being whipped and hanging naked from a ceiling surrounded by five young hookers and a man who licked the blood, sweat and, well, other fluids from her body. Other characters – the younger sister, a saintly baroness, a sexually uninhibited countess (who enters with a riding whip), and a servant – bring their own views to bear. Though de Sade himself never appears, he is very much the center of events. The three-act play covers the years 1772 to 1790, spanning the French Revolution.

In the end, the characters go their own ways. The horny countess has been trampled and killed on the streets, where she was taken for a mere prostitute; the younger sister runs away to Venice, where her husband has purchased a palace; and the mother refuses to leave as long as the king remains in power, unwisely attempting to hold on to her privilege as long as possible. The wife has decided to join a convent, which on the surface makes it sound like her refusal to meet her husband could be a religious matter. From the dialogue, however, the suggestion is that she wanted to preserve her ideal of her imprisoned husband rather than the reality of the freed man, who has reportedly become dirty and much like a peasant himself. The theme thus echoes the more famous Kinkakuji, where the crazed acolyte offers a similar justification for burning down Kyoto’s ancient Golden Pavilion. But the play doesn’t offer any firm conclusions.

Miyamoto aggressively eschews glamour. Costumes are all solid black outfits except for the wife’s white dress (and the countess’ brief red scarf), the actors avoid wigs or other feminine touches, and they smartly use their own voices without trying to sound feminine. The simple set was an abstract rendering with no attempt to recreate upper-class France at the time, featuring six columns and an oval opening in floor (into which characters move freely) mirroring a similar opening in the ceiling. Lighting effects were used minimally, particularly in a recreation of a mass in which the countess serves as the table (it’s complicated). This kept the focus on the dialogue, which may have worked had the dialogue been more interesting (see below). But it felt underwhelming. Mishima himself had expressed hope in the printed text for more glamour on stage to offset the lack of action, and I see now what he means.

As with most Mishima plays, this is a dialogue-driven show. The text is highly stylized and often beautiful but makes no attempt to sound like normal conversation, frequently telling rather than showing. It amounts largely to diatribe, each character staking out her position in extended monologues, which can get tiresome regardless of the poetic flourishes. Mishima often gets carried away in his words and fails to make much sense. For instance, the countess notes that de Sade has “only a whip, a knife and a rope,” which she says is not much different from a woman’s lipstick. What does that even mean? My favorite line is the reference to de Sade’s “back stairway to heaven”, which is pretty eye-raising given the show’s content and what we know about Mishima’s proclivities. The show would benefit from pruning.

The director mainly had the actors walking around the stage, doing his best to keep things looking like they’re moving. At one point, he has the countess expose her breast (the actor, don’t forget, is a man) as she describes a wild mass, which is recreated in dim red lighting behind her. Then she remains undressed through the rest of the scene, which seems a strange way for a woman to carry out a conversation in an aristocratic home. The ending was also curious as the wife strips off her clothes and stands fully naked (derriere to audience). I have no idea what that was about outside the shock value, but it did enliven the proceedings.

The cast is almost uniformly good, especially Kato as the aristocratic mother-in-law. Narimiya is an appealing actor and does very well within the limits of his character. Nice to have him back on stage. While the use of men didn’t necessarily add anything to the show, it was handled well enough. The only negative note was Higashide, whose monotone approach failed to mine the comic possibilities of the countess, though that might have been the director’s doing.

The production overall was fine for a low-budget rendering. The play feels like Mishima showing off, with views that were much better expressed in Kinkakuji. I’m not sure what those 1994 critics saw in it.