Author Archives: Sekenbanashi

Hedda Gabler (Hungarian State Theatre Cluj)

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  • Hedda Gabler, Hungarian State Theatre Cluj, 12/10/16 (Sat), Tokyo
  • Hedda Gabler, BBC film (1963), 12/11/16 (Sun)

This was a production by a Romanian group performing a Norwegian show in Hungarian in Japan – how’s that for globalism? This was part of the annual Ibsen Festival and one of three productions of Hedda (the others were in Japanese and Norwegian). The actors are from a Hungarian-speaking part of Romania, one of those oddities resulting from one war or other. I brought along a Hungarian friend among others to critique the translation.  Continue reading →

Noh: Mochizuki (望月)

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Noh: 望月 (Mochizuki)

11/20/16 (Sun), Tokyo

Mochizuki belongs to a class of Noh works that actors aren’t allowed to do until they are deemed ready by their elders. As such, the lead’s performance was a big honor for him. In a lecture on the show a week earlier, he noted that the story was basically scratched out some centuries ago to give young performers a chance to do the popular lion dance from an even-higher ranking show called Shakkyo. Here it’s presented as a show within a show, so technically doesn’t violate the hierarchy keeping the unworthy actors from the lions, a very Japanese compromise — though the fact that this show is now itself a ranked show is ironic.  Continue reading →

Palestinians can have their future but not our past

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I found this long-ago essay on my PC while rummaging through my files. I had submitted this to the Japan Times in response to some typical twaddle they had featured on Israel; they really should learn to stick closer to home. In any event, the response was never printed, so I thought I’d throw it in here. I must have written this around 2006, when Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat were still on the scene, but it still holds up pretty well:  Continue reading →

Humanity and Paper Balloons (人情紙風船)

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人情紙風船 (Humanity and Paper Balloons)

4/26/14 (Sat)

A much acclaimed film from 1937. It’s the last of only three surviving works from director Yamanaka Sadao, who was evidently drafted into the army the day the film was released and died soon thereafter in Manchuria. I was interested in it mainly because it draws from the Kabuki play Shinza the Barber, which I saw earlier this month. (That was in turn based on the Bunraku play 恋娘昔八丈 that I saw late last year.) It had a string of Nakamuras and Ichikawas in the cast, which sounded suspiciously Kabuki-like, and it turns out that they were disaffected young Kabuki actors who had formed their own left-wing troupe, the Zenshinza, to pursue a more naturalistic acting style. I had assumed the movie would be a standard period piece, but that turned out to be not quite the case. Continue reading →

Electoral system and the united states

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I’ve noticed in my travels that when people are asked where they’re from, most will respond “Japan” or “France” or “Kenya” or such. The big exception, as usual, is Americans, who rarely say “America”; instead, it’s New York or Ohio or Tennessee. That is, their identity is tied up in their states. That makes perfect sense, of course, given the huge distances, both geographic and cultural, in a continent-size nation. No one says “Asia” or “Europe” or “Africa”, so Americans are in that sense in line with the norm.

It occurs to me, then, that all this talk of jettisoning the electoral college system for the popular vote is, regardless of last month’s results, missing the point. Continue reading →

Hamilton and Pence

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11/30/16

I’m a bit late to the Hamilton brouhaha after an out-of-town trip, but: These guys just don’t get it, do they? The actor who called out the vice president-elect seems to think he was being respectful. He is lecturing the new administration not on its actions — it’s not even in office yet — but on information presumably taken in his case from the NY Times and Facebook news posts. What are the chances that he’ll be fair in judging the administration once in office? This is why voters outside New York and California have just stopped listening. I’m sure I’ll see Hamilton eventually, but it’s telling that the creators and others in the show’s bubble don’t think the show itself is sufficient to convey the message. So tiresome.

Kung Fu

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Kung Fu

3/20/14 (Sun), New York

Kung Fu, a portrait of Bruce Lee’s rise to fame, was a guilty pleasure. Other than the wonderful M Butterfly, I’m not wild about the author David Henry Hwang, who is obsessed with the tired theme of second-generation Asians struggling to adapt to America. (Bruce Lee, though raised in Hong Kong, was born in San Francisco and tried for years to make a life in the US.) I wish he’d go find his identity and come back with other ideas. And the reviews were lukewarm, which wasn’t encouraging. Still, the idea of a kung fu musical seemed so obvious that it immediately grabbed my attention.  Continue reading →