Category Archives: Japan

Kabuki: Sogoro the Fishmonger, The Sword Thief (魚屋宗五郎、太刀盗人)

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  • Kabuki: 魚屋宗五郎、太刀盗人 (Sogoro the Fishmonger, The Sword Thief)

10/17/20 (Sat), National Theater

I haven’t been to Kabuki since January because of this dumb pandemic as well as the ridiculously foreshortened offerings at the Kabukiza since their August reopening – they really expect us to spend ¥8,000 for shows lasting  little more than half an hour?? They’re out of their minds. The National Theater restart is short by its standards but still a full 2.5 hours, making it a much more attractive option.* The morning show featured a newly written skit about a pandemic in Edo where actors sneak into a closed theater during a long shutdown and perform their favorite roles. I saw Koshiro, today’s performer, do something similar in Las Vegas years ago and am still traumatized. In contrast, the afternoon show featured the audience favorite Sogoro the Fishmonger as its main offering with the reliable Kikugoro, who’s been playing the role for decades. I haven’t seen it in years, so I decided to go for it. Continue reading →

Noh: Mitsuyama, Shokun (三山, 昭君)

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  • Noh: 三山, 昭君  (Mitsuyama, Shokun)

10/11/20 (Sun), Tokyo

I’ve seen shows at the Kanze and Kita schools in recent weeks, so now it’s Hosho’s turn (partly because I couldn’t get tickets for the sold-out Kanze performance). The shows today were both relative rarities. Each has the unusual feature of two characters entering after the break rather than just the star. The tickets were 70-80% sold, meaning 35-40% of the theater. I’m not sure how they make money on these, but I’m glad they’re pushing ahead. Continue reading →

A Cornered Rat Dreams of Cheese (窮鼠はチーズの夢を見る)

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  • 窮鼠はチーズの夢を見る (A Cornered Rat Dreams of Cheese)

10/5/20 (Mon), Tokyo

Yukisada Isao’s adaptation of a best-selling BL (boy’s love) manga. For the uninitiated, BL are comic series written by women and for women focused on love affairs among males, not necessarily gay. The former sub-genre is now a genre of its own and a full-fledged phenomenon. The idealized portrait of men falling for each other allows the overwhelmingly female readership to fantasize about sex while remaining apart from it. It shares that quality in a way with the all-female Takarazuka and all-male Kabuki theaters, where the knowledge that all characters are being played by performers of the same gender (and the restrictions that places on intimate scenes) ensures that love affairs remain in the realm of fancy. (A recent NHK television series featured a fervent BL fan who becomes disgusted when she discovers that her supposed boyfriend is gay – she can accept male-on-male sex only on the page. She eventually sees the error of her ways, of course, and they live happily ever after as best friends.) I was dragged by a friend to the theater, where I was the only male in the house as well as the only non-Asian. I pulled my mask up tight.

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Noh: Teika, Sesshoseki (定家、殺生石)

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  • Noh: 定家、殺生石 (Teika, Sesshoseki)

10/3/20 (Sat), Tokyo

It was encouraging to see a nearly full house for live theater — that is, the available tickets (50% of capacity) were nearly sold out. People are definitely hungry for entertainment. Tokyo actually now allows shows to perform at full capacity, which some productions (such as the sold-out Japanese version of the musical Billy Elliot) are taking full advantage of. But the Noh world remains conservative and cautious, maybe because of the higher average age of the audience. Continue reading →

Bunraku: Komochi Yamamba, Gonza the Lancer (嫗山姥, 鑓の権三)

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  • Bunraku: Komochi Yamamba, Gonza the Lancer (嫗山姥, 鑓の権三)

9/13/20 (Sun), National Theatre

These are the first Bunraku performances since the pandemic hysteria began six months earlier, and they’re still in ultra-cautious mode: taking temperatures, requiring masks, asking us to tear off our own ticket stubs, and, most consequentially for them, cutting the seat count drastically by leaving every other seat open (even for those seeing the show together) and closing off the entire section in front of the narrators, presumably to prevent virus-filled spit from hitting the audience. It was all extremely grating, but I guess we should be grateful that at least there was a show. There were unusually no English earphone guides this month for some reason, so my companions had to rely on the detailed summary provided in the program.

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A look back: Rent (2012 Japanese version)

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（日本語版はページ下部にあります)

I came across an article I wrote for GQ Japan on a Japanese production of the musical Rent in the 26 October 2012 edition. The article was in Japanese and significantly cut (I wrote way too much as usual), so I’m including both the English and unedited Japanese versions here. Rent is hugely popular in Japan, and there have been other productions since. This is the view as of 2012. 

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A look back: Madame Butterfly (Nikikai)

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(While this Japanese-directed production last year had its issues, it had its fans in Tokyo, and I was interested to see how it would fare overseas. Unfortunately its foreign debut in Dresden was cancelled due to the pandemic. I had written the article below for the international run, so I’m reprinting that here.)

The iconoclastic Japanese stage director Amon Miyamoto has a problem with Madame Butterfly. The stereotypical image of a spurned geisha? The sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old girl? A warped Western view of his country?

No, he feels that the opera mistreats the American.

That would be Pinkerton, the US naval lieutenant who purchases Butterfly’s temporary companionship for 100 yen, speaks blithely on their wedding day of one day taking a “real American wife,” leaves Japan almost immediately after marrying and impregnating her, and returns unannounced three years later with a new bride to retrieve his son and take him back to the US. He is typically portrayed as a villain, and it’s not hard to see why – the opera has even been criticized by some as anti-American.

Miyamoto, as usual, takes his own path in a co-production of the Semperoper Dresden, Tokyo Nikikai Opera, Royal Danish Theatre and San Francisco Opera that debuted in Tokyo in October. Continue reading →

Silence (沈黙) (1971 film)

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  • 沈黙 (Silence) (1971 film)

4/30/20 (Thurs)

Shinoda Masahiro’s film adaptation of 1971, just two years after the novel was published, was supposedly co-written by the novelist Endo Shusaku, but I have to wonder how much he contributed given the way the movie veers from the book in some important respects, especially the ending. It follows the general contour of the story fairly straightforwardly, but gives precedence to the drama over the religious and philosophical themes at the heart of the tale. That makes an interesting contrast with Scorsese’s 2016 remake, which had greater sweep (and clearly a budget to match) and delved more deeply into the priest’s struggle with his beliefs.

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A Story of Floating Weeds (1934); Floating Weeds (1959)

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  • Floating Weeds (浮草, 1959), 12/1/19 (Sun)
  • A Story of Floating Weeds (浮草物語, 1934), 12/10/19 (Tues)

I was set to see Ozu Yasujiro’s 1934 silent version of this film, so I figured I’d first check out his 1959 remake, which adds not only sound but color. They both proved very fine films, and despite a nearly identical composition and story progression, seeing them side by side was instructive. Continue reading →

Noh: Hanjo, Yugyo Yanagi (班女、遊行柳)

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  • Noh: 班女、遊行柳  (Hanjo, Yugyo Yanagi)

11/17/19 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater (Tokyo)

The pamphlet for today’s two shows say that they share an ambiguous ending that is supposed to make us wonder what happens to the characters thereafter. Both are also steeped in references to Chinese poetry, and I noted that they each refer in passing to the ancient Shirakawa Barrier in Fukushima, an oft-used place name in poetry and Noh plays that is associated with autumn.

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The Ball at Anjo House (安城家の舞踏会)

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  • 安城家の舞踏会 (The Ball at Anjo House)

10/27/19 (Sun)

Having recently seen the fun An Osaka Tale, I wanted to check out more of director Yoshimura Kozaburo’s work, and this was an obvious first stop. It is often held to be one of the finest of all Japanese films of the 1940s.

The 1947 film is a Chekhovian portrait of an aristocratic family unwilling to face their decline in postwar society. This is not a traditional Japanese household: it is a formerly titled family living in a palatial Western-style home with a father who studied painting in Paris, a son who plays classical piano and a daughter who (at least in the course of the film) wears only Western clothing. The family appears to have lived in the past mainly off its inherited wealth and property. But times have changed: it survived the war by borrowing money from a slimy businessman who profited in the munitions trade by using the family name, and is now facing collapse in the wake of land reforms, the abolition of the aristocracy and new taxes enforced by the Occupation government (still in power when the movie was made). Continue reading →

Rage (怒り)

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  • 怒り (Rage)

10/17/19 (Wed), Tokyo

Lee Sang-il’s 2018 film opens with the murder of an innocent couple in their own home by a drifter, who paints the character for “rage” (怒) on their wall before escaping. This is followed by three unrelated stories in Tokyo, Chiba and Okinawa featuring drifters who could all conceivably be the killer. The film is on the surface a suspense tale keeping us guessing which one is the villain, but its real theme involves the nature of trust and mistrust – “Doubt” would actually be a better title than “Rage”, which doesn’t quite make sense in context. Continue reading →