6/27/26 (Sat), London
An historical drama by Richard Nelson reimagining the visit of newly crowned King George IV and his wife to FDR’s home in upstate New York in 1938. That, the first US visit ever by a British monarch, was intended as an extension of the king’s coronation tour to Canada, but as war loomed in Europe, he was tasked with winning FDR’s sympathy for England’s cause – a delicate task he was neither mentally nor diplomatically prepared for.
6/25/26 (Thurs), West End
There was little fanfare over David Hare’s latest show despite the presence of Ralph Fiennes (who I last saw years ago on a train in Harajuku just an hour before his Coriolanus in Akasaka). The reviews were more respectful than inspiring, and the clumsy title was no help. But the timing worked for me, so I went for it.
6/24/26 (Wed), West End
This is one of my favorite plays of all time and features one of my favorite actors, Adrian Lester, so it was high on my list of shows to see on this trip. Sadly it fell victim to all the bad habits that London theater has fallen into. I had assumed when Lester was announced that Cyrano’s issue would be not with his nose but with his black skin. That is, I could imagine lily-white France being scandalized by a black soldier at the time à la Othello, and Cyrano, for all his bluster, being super self-conscious about his skin, convinced that Roxanne could never accept him as he is. That would have been a trenchant comment on our times and given the show an entirely new relevance. The scene where the rude man comments unwisely on Cyrano’s nose could have been transformed into something more shocking – and imagine the quips that Cyrano could have come up with. (Peter Dinklage did something similar in the role with his diminutive size.)
6/14/26 (Sun), London
I caught this acclaimed London revival of Arthur Miller’s 1967 work on its final day. Victor, who gave up his scientist dreams to take care of his late father, is selling off the father’s furniture. The father was once wealthy, employing chauffeurs and rowing, but fell into hard times with the Depression and never recovered. Their prior wealth is symbolized by a large harp that hovers in the back, which their long-gone mother used to play. A furniture broker, an elderly Jewish man from the old country fittingly named Solomon, agrees to buy the entire lot for a fixed price. Just as he is about to pay Victor, the latter’s estranged younger brother Walter enters. Walter abandoned the father and family and became a successful doctor. He has not seen his elder brother in 18 years. Fireworks emerge as the brothers challenge each other over the paths that they have taken, the lies that have sustained them – and the price that each has paid.
5/30/26 (Sat)
Terry Gilliam’s 1991 film, based for his first time on another’s writer’s work, is not my cup of tea. Continue reading
5/26/26 (Tues)
The late Inoue Hisashi’s 1987 comedy was being performed by his theater group Komatsuza for the first time in 22 years. It’s another of his plays obliquely criticizing events surrounding the war. He said in a program note that for all the patriotic cheering from all sides during the war, he could find no one afterwards who would admit responsibility for it. The title is a pun on the Japanese idiom hana yori dango (rice cakes before flowers), that is, prioritizing the practical over the aesthetic. The substitution of tango for dango rice cakes suggests that he sees culture or spirit as necessary sustenance to make it through the war-driven devastation.
8/21/26 (Fri)
The Japanese title of Minamoto Takashi’s entertaining period flick, based on a best-selling book, translates to Revenge at Kobikicho, referring to a former district that boasted one of Edo’s three great Kabuki theaters, the Moritaza (near today’s Kabukiza). I was taken by the odd spelling of the word “revenge” in the title, only later realizing its significance. The English title as usual throws in “samurai” for marketing purposes, but the only real samurai swordfight in the film is not what it seems. This is, in fact, less a warrior bloodfest than a comedy-mystery.
The setting is 1810. A woman coming out of a crowded performance at the Moritaza – playing, as it happens, the ultimate vendetta drama Chushingura (The 47 Ronin) – is suddenly approached in the snowy streets by a ruffian. The “woman” turns out to be a samurai, Kikunosuke, in disguise, and the ruffian, Sakubei, is the one who killed the man’s father back in rural Mino (today’s Gifu). Kikunosuke throws off his bright red kimono to reveal a warrior’s outfit and sword underneath. People quickly gather to watch a real-life revenge drama, and the theater obliges by turning its spotlights (did those exist in 1810??) onto the fighters. After a vigorous battle, Kikunosuke emerges with the attacker’s head and declares loudly that he has achieved his vendetta. It seems odd that the hunted would seek out his hunter or that they would coincidentally meet on the streets in faraway Edo, especially given Kikunosuke’s disguise. But that doesn’t seem to occur to anyone amid all the excitement. When this scene repeats itself at the end of the film, we see it in a whole new light (shades of One Cut of the Dead).
8/15/26 (Sat)
Photographer/artist Sugimoto Hiroshi commissioned this provocative Noh piece, which debuted last year, about Itagaki Seishiro, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army who oversaw the occupation of Manchuria and its conversion to a puppet state. He was later convicted of war crimes and executed as a Class A criminal at Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison. The performance is being held on the 81st anniversary of the war’s end.
Sugimoto had some time ago discovered an extended poem written impressively in ancient Chinese by Itagaki during his postwar imprisonment that provided an insight into his motivation and actions, with a healthy dose of self-justification. Itagaki contends that Japan took over Manchuria in order to save it from the corrupt Chinese government, which was bringing the people only misery. He aimed to build a US-type federation under his ideal of Five Races Under One Union (五族共和) in which the region’s five major ethnic groups (Manchus, Han Chinese, Japanese, Mongols, Koreans) could live in harmony. That is, the Japanese colonization of the region and establishment of Manchukuo was an act of altruism on behalf of the Manchu people.
That may very well be true, but Lenin and Mao could make the same claim on behalf of their actions. Continue reading
8/5/26 (Wed)
Kurosawa Kiyoshi makes a rare venture into period pieces with this detective story posing as a samurai drama, based on a Naoki Prize-winning novel of 2021. The creative Japanese title translates as “Black Prison Castle”, referring to the dungeon in which one character is held, the castle itself that the lord has effectively made a prison, and the dark mindset in which the lord resides. I thought this might be an historical nickname for the real-life structure, which is actually named Arioka Castle, but it’s apparently an invention by the book’s author and is not mentioned in either the book or screenplay. It’s been noted that “kuro” (black) is part of the hostage’s name (Kuroda) and thus may be a subtle reference to him as well. Whatever. I assume that US distributors felt it necessary to throw “samurai” in as a marketing ploy, but I really wish they’d use some imagination. (For one thing, the lead is a daimyo, not a mere samurai, though I’m sure the distributors will argue that it’s a comment on the role reversal in the story.)
7/28/26 (Tues)
I put Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s 2025 film on my must-see list when I learned it was about a woman who dies and comes back as a vacuum cleaner. I had thought that the last word in reincarnation was My Mother the Car, a short-lived TV series in the 1960s about a woman who returns as her son’s automobile. (It’s now ranked one of the worst TV shows ever made, but I remember enjoying it as a kid – maybe I have a thing for haunted appliances.) In the Thai tale, however, what starts as a deadpan comedy turns into something deeper, if a bit convoluted.
7/5/26 (Sun)
I decided to watch Fukasaku Shinji’s 1968 film of Mishima Yukio’s nutty detective comedy upon the death of its star, the cross-dressing Miwa Akihiro, just last week at the age of 91. The part in the original 1962 stage show was played by an actual female, the venerable Mizutani Yaeko, but Miwa (reputedly Mishima’s lover) became closely associated with the show over the years. Despite claims to the contrary, Miwa was not playing the role in drag, which implies some sort of parody, but in utmost seriousness as a woman in a Japanese tradition going back centuries. That fits the hall-of-mirrors free-flow of identities throughout, not least when Miwa disguises himself as a man – a Victor Victoria touch that highlights the moment in a way that actresses can’t touch. (Miwa performs here under his real name Maruyama, but I’ll refer to him below by his much better known stage name.)
7/4/26 (Sat)
A gender-bending piece of 1974 by Fujisawa Isao, his only feature movie after stints as assistant director to Hiroshi Teshigahara (on Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Another, no less) and on yakuza films. I can see the influence of the former in the slipperiness of identity, and Bonnie and Clyde is an obvious inspiration (others frequently mention Pierrot le Fou, which I haven’t seen). It’s not the first Japanese film with an overtly gay character – the wild Funeral Parade of Roses beat it by five years – but it has an arresting take on the subject. While the film was apparently a relative success at the time, it had been thought lost for years and was only rediscovered in 2022.
sekenbanashi 