Category Archives: Japan

メンフィス (Memphis)

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  • メンフィス (Memphis)

12/12/17 (Mon), 新国立劇場

An original Japanese production of the hit Broadway musical from some years back. A white music lover in Memphis in the 1950s overcomes prejudice by persuading (1) a white record store to play black music in the shops, (2) a white radio station to play black music on the air, (3) a black singer to become his girlfriend, (4) his suspicious mother and the girl’s suspicious brother to accept his relationship with the girl, and so on and so forth. He fails to convince TV executives to accept mixed-race shows and ultimately loses the girl to reality, ending his days as DJ at a second-rate Memphis radio station while she goes on to New York and stardom. But never fear: it all comes to an upbeat ending that sends everyone out dancing. The maudlin plot was impeccably PC and nothing new, even for Japanese audiences, but it offers a harmless framework for some energetic singing and dancing against a nice pastiche of 1950s R&B.

The impressive physical production, directed and choreographed here by Jeffrey Page, was on a Broadway scale in every way. Continue reading →

Battles Without Honor and Humanity (仁義なき戦い)

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  • 仁義なき戦い (Battles Without Honor and Humanity)

11/9/17 (Thurs)

Duty is the great theme of traditional Japanese Kabuki theater, with characters typically forced to choose between their all-important loyalty to their lord or society and a betrayal of that duty with an act of compassion or emotion. Compassion often wins out but only at great cost, usually death. The best known example of a pure loyalty tale is the ever-popular The 47 Loyal Retainers (忠臣蔵), where duty to a murdered lord leads to a meticulously planned, suicidal act of revenge by his former retainers. That sense of loyalty carries over as well into typical samurai and yakuza dramas, where duty is often itself the point.

The 1973 film Battles Without Honor and Humanity (the name would be punchier without the “humanity”’; also known by the much better title The Yakuza Papers) doesn’t just puncture that ideal but renders it a useless relic of a lost age. Continue reading →

Welcome Back, Mr McDonald (ラジオの時間 )

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  • ラジオの時間 (Welcome Back, Mr McDonald)

11/4/17 (Sat)

The prolific stage/film writer Mitani Koki has his good days [The Last Laugh (笑いの大学), Twelve Gentle Japanese (12人の優しい日本人)] and bad (most of his output), and this 1997 film, based on his 1993 stage show, is one of the latter. Continue reading →

Kabuki: The Cuckoo…, Murder of a Foreign Envoy (沓手鳥孤城落月, 漢人韓文手管始)

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  • Kabuki: 沓手鳥孤城落月, 漢人韓文手管始  (The Cuckoo, the Solitary Castle and the Sinking Moon; Murder of a Foreign Envoy)

10/17/17 (Tues), Tokyo Kabukiza

The Cuckoo, the Solitary Castle and the Sinking Moon is a piece in the modern Shin Kabuki (New Kabuki) genre by the 20th-century playwright Tsubouchi Shoyo surrounding the historic destruction of Osaka Castle in 1615. Hideyori was supposed to have inherited the mantle of leader after his father’s death but was outwitted by the wily Ieyasu, who is now moving in for the coup de grâce. With the enemy outside the gates, Hideyori’s family and forces debate whether to go down with dignity or run for their lives. The one ace they have is Ieyasu’s granddaughter Princess Sen, who is in a political marriage with Hideyori. They hope that her presence will help waylay an outright massacre by her grandfather. Ieyasu has sent a spy to kidnap her back, but she is being watched vigilantly by Hideyori’s suspicious mother Yodo. The drama concentrates on the emotional toll that the pressure takes on the characters in the besieged castle, most notably a descent by the frantic mother into madness.

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Double Suicide (心中天網島 )

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  • Film: 心中天網島 (Double Suicide)

10/12/17 (Thurs)

Double Suicide (1969) is Masahiro Shinoda’s highly stylized take on Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s 18th-century Bunraku (puppet theater) masterpiece The Love Suicides at Amijima. Chikamatsu does not emerge from this well.

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Taira Jo: The Blind Minstrel Orin (はなれ瞽女おりん)

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  • Taira Jo: はなれ瞽女おりん (The Blind Minstrel Orin)

10/1/17 (Sun), New National Theatre, Tokyo

The eclectic puppeteer Taira Jo is back with a series of three adult-oriented shows performed over three days. All the dramas highlight women, making for a theme of sorts, though that’s the only thing in common among them. Yesterday was Medea, a revival of the excellent production I saw some years back, and tomorrow is a piece by the aggressively avant-garde Terayama Shuji. Today’s sounded like a safer bet. This story was originally a 1974 play, which was novelized the following year and made into a film by Shinoda Masahiro in 1977 under the name “Ballad of Orin”, which I have not seen. Taira again played all the roles, helped by three hooded kurogo stagehands.

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Kabuki: Hade Kurabe Ise Monogatari (競伊勢物語)

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  • Kabuki: 競伊勢物語 (Hade Kurabe Ise Monogatari)

9/15/15 (Tues), Kabukiza

Hade Kurabe Ise Monogatari (A Colorful Rivalry: Tales of Ise) is another convoluted but entertaining piece by Nagawa Kamesuke, the same guy who wrote the classic Meiboku Sendai Hagi (which is playing in the afternoon). The program noted that this is the 1,200th anniversary of the birth of one of the show’s main characters, Ki no Aritsune.

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Aladdin (アラジン)

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  • アラジン (Aladdin)

8/8/15 (Sat), Tokyo

I had heard good things about this production of Aladdin, which is completely sold out for nearly a year in advance. I’m always wary of the Gekidan Shiki group because of its Kabuki-like acting style, but as a fan of the movie and still not having seen the show on Broadway, I accepted quickly when a friend came up with a last-minute ticket. His tickets came apparently from a fan from Shizuoka who is seeing this for her seventh time and had two extra seats. I was surprised at the relative lack of children in the audience, but I suppose normal families have no chance against the many rabid Shiki fans like her who are willing to travel an hour and a half on the Shinkansen dozens of times to see the same show. A sad fact for theater fans, but Disney (whose The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid are also successfully managed in Japan by Shiki) must be laughing all the way to the bank.

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Drum Tao

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  • Drum Tao

7/24/15 (Fri), Tokyo

A performance of Japanese taiko drums dressed up in a dramatic frame. Drum Tao is a group of young well-built drummers and athletes from Oita Prefecture in Kyushu that has apparently been around a while – the program (unusually distributed free) says they’ve performed in 400 cities in 20 countries. But they were new to me.

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Hana-Bi

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  • Hana-Bi

6/24/15 (Wed)

I wasn’t wild about the idea of a Kitano (“Beat”) Takeshi film given its reputation for over-the-top violence, but Hana-Bi is one of several flicks by him – “by” in a big sense, meaning directed, written and starring – that are widely considered modern classics, especially overseas. So I figured it was about time to check it out.   Continue reading →