Category Archives: Japan

Kabuki: The Blood Revenge at Kameyama (霊験亀山鉾)

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  • Kabuki: 霊験亀山鉾  (The Blood Revenge at Kameyama), Tokyo Kabukiza

One of the prolific Tsuruya Nanboku’s typical madcap stories making its Kabukiza debut. I was mainly interested in seeing Kataoka Nizaemon, a National Living Treasure, in an evil role, where he’s pretty much unequaled on the Kabuki stage.

It’s as impossible to sum up the full story as it was to follow it, with its huge cast of characters, interlocking stories, and numerous twists and turns, not to mention the double-casting of key roles. The Kameyama vendetta is a famous example of the genre (though not one of the Three Great Vendettas as the program claims), and that story lies at the heart of this complex play. Basically, the evil Mizuemon has killed a man in a surprise attack, then poisons the man’s brother in a cowardly trick without fighting the official vendetta honorably. Their adopted brother then vows to avenge their death.

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A Colt Is My Passport (拳銃は俺のパスポート)

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  • 拳銃は俺のパスポート (A Colt Is My Passport), 1/9/23 (Mon)

If Sergio Leone had made a yakuza flick, it would probably look a lot like Nomura Takashi’s fine A Colt Is My Passport, including its no-talk-all-action star Shishido Joe in the Clint Eastwood role, the final shootout in a deserted landscape, and Ibe Harumi’s superb Morricone-like score. (The film was released a year after the completion of Leone’s Dollars Trilogy.) It also borrows a moment from Hawks’ Rio Bravo when Joe’s erstwhile companion, played by half-British pop singer Jerry Fujio, is handed a guitar that just happens to be sitting there (“It’s been a while. Sing something”) and croons a ballad. Itami Juzo’s 1980s comedy Tampopo is famous as a takeoff on a spaghetti Western, but this film beat that by two decades, though as homage rather than parody. Others have noted touches of the French New Wave in the detailed way that Joe puts together his weapon for the initial kill and later carefully builds the bomb for the climactic scene.

Still, the creative and confident way these elements are used gives the film a vibe all its own. Continue reading →

Assassination (暗殺)

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  • 暗殺 (Assassination)

1/1/23 (Sun)

The Edo government, aiming to make peace with rival forces in Kyoto, hires a local ronin (unemployed samurai) for protection as its representatives travel to forge an agreement. The ronin agrees to help but turns on the government once in Kyoto. He is subsequently assassinated for his betrayal.

That’s the simple version of the story underlying Shinoda Masahiro’s ever-shifting 1964 kaleidoscope of a biography of Kiyokawa Hachiro, the two-timing ronin who played a minor role in Japanese history. Continue reading →

My Neighbor Totoro (stage version)

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  • My Neighbor Totoro

10/27/22 (Thurs), Barbican

You have to be brave to take on a piece as beloved as this 1988 film, one of the most famous of all Japanese anime. I wonder if the Japanese creators preferred a foreign production so as to avoid dealing with overheated domestic expectations. The Tokyo production of Spirited Away was spectacular but simply put the movie on stage (think Beauty and the Beast), and the question here is whether Totoro would take a more theatrical approach (think The Lion King).

The results were magical. Continue reading →

A Man (ある男)

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  • ある男 (A Man)

11/26/22 (Sun)

Ishikawa Kei’s multi-tiered exploration of identity. Rie (Ando Sakura), traumatized after losing her youngest child and divorcing her husband, has moved back with her small son to her hometown in Kyushu, where she works in the family’s stationery store. She comes to know a shy young customer named Daisuke (Kubota Masataka), who gradually opens up to her after showing her his sketches. Now working as a lumberjack, Daisuke tells her that he comes from a family that runs a well known inn in Ikaho Hot Springs (great place) not far from Tokyo. They fall in love, marry and have a child of their own, and he proves a wonderful husband and father. Some time later, however, tragedy strikes when Daisuke is killed in a work accident. That shock hardly prepares Rie for the next one: at his memorial service a year later, she is visited by Daisuke’s older brother, who upon seeing the dead man’s photo on the altar, reveals that the person in the photo is not in fact Daisuke – that is, Rie’s late husband was not who he pretended to be. Rie, stunned, asks her lawyer, Kido (Tsumabuki Satoshi), to find out just who it was she married.

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Inn of Evil (いのちぼうにふろう) (stage version)

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  • いのちぼうにふろう (Inn of Evil) 

10/3/22 (Mon)

This 1997 stage adaptation was written specifically for this theater, an outdoor venue in a small town on Noto Peninsula that was built for screen legend Nakadai Tatsuya and his Mumeijuku theater group. The group has been performing there for years, concentrating primarily on Western classics. Miyazaki Kyoko, Nakadai’s late wife, seems to have based the play less on the original novel than on her screenplays for the film and subsequent television version. The stage show proved to be her final work. The film, a small masterpiece, largely takes place in or around a tavern, so a stage version made sense on paper. I was eager to see what they had done with it, especially with Nakadai revisiting his old film in a new role.

Nakadai, who will be 90 next month, is ageless. His voice carries to the back of the theater with no strain or mannerisms, and his acting remains powerful. He has shifted from his film role of the heartless smuggler Sadashichi to the equally important role of the tavern keeper, who seems somewhat more prominent here. Much older than everyone else on stage, he brings gravitas to the role in a natural performance. Though celebrating his 70th anniversary in show business, he remains in full command of his powers. It is an impressive performance regardless of his age.

Which is a good thing, because no one else on stage is remotely in that category. Continue reading →

Hairspray (ヘアスプレー)

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  • ヘアスプレー (Hairspray)

10/1/22 (Sat)

I figured this show would be impossible to stage in Japan since it has a female lead, which by itself makes most musicals a losing proposition here, and one at that who can sing, dance and dominate the show. What I didn’t count on was Watanabe Naomi, a highly likeable plus-sized comedienne who made her mark imitating dancing stars like Beyoncé. She is the only face on the poster for the show – the first time I can ever remember that for a big musical, which would usually put as many faces on the poster as possible whether relevant or not in order to sell even one extra ticket to the performers’ fans. So a lot was riding on her shoulders. This is her first stage show, meaning she’s going to be very physically tested over the multi-month run.

Happily she lived up to her billing and then some. Continue reading →

Inn of Evil (いのちぼうにふろう)

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  • いのちぼうにふろう (Inn of Evil)

9/25/22 (Sun)

Kobayashi Masaki’s 1971 black-and-white film about smugglers on an island just off Edo who decide for once in their lives to do a good deed. I wanted to see it ahead of next week’s stage version featuring the film’s star Nakadai Tatsuya, who at 89 is still very much active with his Mumeijuku theater group and celebrating his 70th anniversary as an actor.

The official English title, Inn of Evil, is rather odd. For one thing, the facility referred to is neither an inn nor evil. The frequenters are basically just random misfits rejected by society; it is the police who prove evil, such as spontaneously killing a random man for being too talkative. Also, the “inn”, Anrakutei (安楽亭), is in fact a tavern, translated in some essays as Easy Tavern but more like Tavern of Comfort. The Japanese title Inochi Bo ni Furo, literally “let’s give up our lives”, better sums up what’s at stake and appears in the dialogue (twice). The phrase usually refers to wasting one’s life or giving up one’s chances in life, but the active tense here suggests a suicidal act, presumably for a higher cause, a well-worn theme in Japan.

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Intimidation (ある脅迫)

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  • ある脅迫 (Intimidation), 9/6/22 (Tues)

Kurahara Koreyoshi’s accomplished 1960 flick (the Japanese title is “A Certain Blackmail”) is sometimes referred to as the first Japanese noir, and while I doubt that’s true, it does seem to be the first to have made a real impression. Kurahara is best known for the Takakura Ken vehicle Antartica (南極物語), which reigned for years as Japan’s highest-grossing domestic film (and remains second for non-anime works). This film, worlds away from that epic, is a tightly wound suspense piece that manages to lay out a carefully plotted story and nicely delineated characters in just over an hour. Talk about efficiency. It’s based on a story by Takigawa Kyo, who gave his villain the similar name Takita Kyosuke.

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Pippin (ピピン）

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  • ピピン (Pippin), 9/3/22 (Sat)

This is a reproduction of Diane Paulus’ imaginative Broadway revival of a few years back with a mix of Japanese actors and foreign acrobats. The Paulus rendering was a big success in both its touring version and the Japanese adaptation two years ago, so it’s no surprise to see it revived. The leading player is again played by half-black pop singer Crystal Kay, thus keeping the basic idea of a black lead. (The role in the first Japanese production years ago was taken by Suzuki Papaya, a comedian whose only black connection is his trademark afro wig.) They’ve also managed, intentionally or not, to find another performer with foreign blood for the title role, with the half-Spanish Shirota Yu replaced by the Japan-raised Burmese musical actor Morisaki Win. An American woman reviewing the Kay-Shirota version marveled that biracial performers were cast in both of the main roles, seeing this as an earth-shattering sign of growing diversity in Japan. She seems unaware of the many popular mixed-race or mixed-nationality performers that have appeared on Japanese stages over the years, such as Kusakari Masao, Miyazawa Rie, Okada Masumi and so on; the majority of the cast in a production of Rent some years back was half-Japanese. Japanese don’t make a big deal of it, and I wish Americans in particular would follow their lead.

The production still looks great. Paulus has managed to take a creaky show that was known mainly for Bob Fosse’s iconic staging and give it a new take that reinvigorates it. It’s still a relic of the flower-power generation, but it plays beautifully. Continue reading →

Baby Broker (ベイビーブローカー)

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  • Baby Broker (ベイビーブローカー)

7/23/22 (Sat)

Koreeda Hirokazu’s latest offering, filmed in Korean, is a reexamination of themes on the notion of family that he explored to such great effect in Shoplifters. (The actual English name appears to be simply Broker, which may also be an attempt to play on the word’s meaning of poor. But that’s a terrible title, so I’ve gone with the Japanese, which uses the English wording.) It involves a “baby box”, a place set up at churches or hospitals allowing women to drop off unwanted newborns safely and anonymously. The concept was developed in Japan but has not taken real hold – only one box exists in the entire country, and only a bit over 100 children have been left there since it opened in 2007. (The situation wasn’t helped by a scandal soon upon opening when one father left a three-year-old boy, prompting censure from the prime minister.) It proved much more popular in Korea, where thousands of women have taken advantage of it, leaving the facility to find adoptive homes or orphanages for the toddlers. That situation could reflect the greater spread of Catholicism in Korea, which might put greater psychological pressure on women having to choose between abortion and abandonment. In any case, I had assumed that this was the reason the director chose to set the film in Pusan rather than Japan, but it turns out that he mainly wanted to work with Song Kang-ho, the actor best known for Parasite. Which, it turns out, is a good reason.

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