Category Archives: Japan

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 →

An Osaka Tale (大阪物語)

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  • 大阪物語 (An Osaka Tale)

10/13/18 (Sun), Tokyo

A highly entertaining piece of 1957 devised by Mizoguchi Kenji from a 17th-century tale and ably taken over after his death by Yoshimura Kozaburo. It was reminiscent of Mizoguchi’s Chikamatsu Story: the lead was a stingy businessman ultimately undermined by his own stubbornness, and Kagawa Kyoko was a put-upon daughter who gets the poor clerk in the end. But this was a comedic approach to the material, which, though not as deep, worked wonderfully on its own terms.

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Every Day a Good Day (日日是好日)

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  • 日日是好日 (Every Day a Good Day)

10/12/18 (Sat), Tokyo

A beautiful meditative film of 2018 whereby the tea ceremony (“the way of tea”) serves as a metaphor for several zen-based ideas: that the meaning of things becomes evident only over time, that we should feel rather than analyze, that we should enjoy every instant in life as an experience that will never occur again.

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Carmen Comes Home (カルメン故郷に帰る)

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  • カルメン故郷に帰る (Carmen Comes Home)

10/11/18 (Fri), Tokyo

Kinoshita Keisuke’s hit film of 1951 was Japan’s first full-length color film, and the director reportedly created the plot around the need to film much of it outside for technical reasons. Continue reading →