Yoshiwara

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  • Yoshiwara, 4/7/18 (Sat)

A French-language piece of Japonisme made in 1937 (when Japan was already well at war in Asia) by Max Ophüls. The film is set in Tokyo in the Meiji years, when foreigners have become a not-uncommon presence. Kohana, born into an aristocratic family, is forced humiliatingly by circumstances to sell herself to a brothel in the still-active red light district Yoshiwara, where the girls are now being taught how to give greetings in English, French and such to welcome foreign business. The servant Isamu (spelled Ysamo in the subtitles, but that’s too ridiculous), who delivers her by rickshaw to the brothel, loves her and is desperate to win her over despite the impossible difference in social status, even with her decline into prostitution. Unfortunately a rival emerges in the form of a Russian officer, who begins an intense affair with Kohana. Much to Isamu’s misery, she and the officer are soon deeply in love. The jealous servant gets involved in a scheme by the authorities to entrap the officer, who, it turns out, is in Japan on a secret military mission. Isamu’s actions, however, unwittingly put the girl herself in danger, and things quickly spiral out of control.

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Ballad of Orin (はなれ瞽女おりん)

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  • はなれ瞽女おりん (Ballad of Orin)

10/4/17 (Wed), Tokyo

I was curious about this 1977 movie after seeing the excellent puppet version, which was based on this source rather than the original play or novel. The director, Shinoda Masahiro, was also behind the muddled curiosity Double Suicide.

The story revolves around a lonely wandering blind singer who falls in love with a soldier. While he is clearly devoted, he refuses strangely to engage with her sexually, a source of great frustration to her. Still, she takes happiness where she can. The reasons for his unusual behavior are revealed in a tragic ending.

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Mary Poppins comes to Tokyo (メリーポピンズ)

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  • メリー・ポピンズ: Mary Poppins comes to Tokyo

More than a dozen years after its debut in London, the stage production of Mary Poppins is finally making its way to Tokyo in an all-Japanese version this month. The show ran only around three years in London, a considerable disappointment given the potency of the title and the pedigree of mega-producers Disney and Cameron Mackintosh. It posted a stronger and profitable run of over six years on Broadway, but never became the iconic hit that many had envisioned.

My review of the London production from September 2005, when the show was still in its first year, says it all, so I’ll repeat that here.

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My Not-So-Fair Lady: Those dangerous old musicals

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  • My Not-So-Fair Lady: Those dangerous old musicals

The New York Times has decided that old musicals are a danger to society. A recent article, “The Problem With Broadway Revivals: They Revive Gender Stereotypes, Too”, complains that revivals of Carousel, My Fair Lady and Kiss Me, Kate present women as inferior beings who endure abuse from their male counterparts: “Billy Bigelow hits Julie Jordan. Henry Higgins molds Eliza Doolittle. Fred tames Lilli.” It claims unsurprisingly that these revivals are a “huge conversation” among the #MeToo movement. (It also discusses Pretty Woman, a new musical based on the film that is scheduled to open this year.) The article quotes worried musician Georgia Stitt as saying, “In 2017 is the correct message really ‘women are there to be rescued’?”

Well, no. That’s not the message at all, and the problem isn’t the musicals but the shriveled viewpoint of those perpetual victims who turn everything they touch into proof of their own suffering. Stacy Wolf, an academic (naturally) who has written a feminist history of Broadway, calls the characters in such musicals “pathetic”, and Stitt asks rhetorically, “Are these the shows I’m going to take my 12-year-old daughter to?”

Depends on how you look it, doesn’t it? Continue reading →

Kabuki: Kumagai’s Battle Camp, Kojo, Gion Ichiriki Teahouse (熊谷陣屋、祇園一力茶屋)

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  • Kabuki: 熊谷陣屋 (Kumagai’s Battle Camp)、木挽町芝居前（口上） (Kojo Name-Announcing Ceremony)、忠臣蔵七段目（祇園一力茶屋）(Gion Ichiriki Teahouse)

2/16/18 (Fri), Tokyo

A friend was suddenly unable to attend and asked me to escort his date. It didn’t take much to convince me: this was the second month of a two-month name-taking celebration for three generations in the Matsumoto acting family, the first such occurrence in 37 years, and tickets had been sold out well before the show opened. The atmosphere was electric. Koshiro has taken the name Hakuo, Somegoro has become Koshiro, and Somegoro’s 12-year-old son Kintaro is now Somegoro. It’s going to take a while to get used to that.

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Bunraku: Shinju Yoi Goshin, Gappo’s Daughter Tsuji (心中宵庚申, 摂州合邦辻)

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Bunraku

  • 心中宵庚申 (Shinju Yoi Goshin), 2/12/18 (Sun), Tokyo
  • 摂州合邦辻 (Gappo’s Daughter Tsuji), 2/13/18 (Mon), Tokyo

Shinju Yoi Goshin (Double-Suicide on Koshin Eve): The penultimate show in the great Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s long career and his final sewamono (home drama), staged in 1722. It was based on an actual double-suicide that occurred, according to one source, only two weeks (!) earlier, though as usual interpreted creatively by the author. It apparently competed with another show staged simultaneously by his erstwhile rival Ki no Kaion on the same theme – they worked fast in those days. (Another source puts the actual suicide in the previous year, which would make more sense.) The production today didn’t include the curious first act, where Hanbei chooses a suitor for his younger brother – all males lusting after a male companion with surprising words of passion. The suitors point out that the castle town in the play doesn’t have any laws against this as exist elsewhere, and neither brother seems to have a problem with the boy becoming effectively a male wife. Hanbei chooses one who is willing to make a noble sacrifice. An interesting footnote in gay Japanese theater, if such a genre exists.

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Takarazuka: South Pacific (宝塚: 南太平洋 )

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  • 宝塚: 南太平洋 (Takarazuka: South Pacific)

4/10/13 (Wed), Tokyo

At first glance, South Pacific seemed the least likely of the big Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals to be given the Takarazuka treatment given the high macho factor: “There’s Nothing Like a Dame” has a whole chorus of men grumbling about the lack of women, “Younger Than Springtime” calls in the script for a shirtless guy (implying some off-stage fun), and “Honey Bun” features a man in drag with coconuts for boobs. Also, the theme of racial discrimination wouldn’t resonate whatsoever with this group’s core audience. More than that, the text states explicitly that the soldiers are there to fight the Japanese, which no one in this country wants to hear about. (In the last version I saw in Tokyo, an import from London, the subtitles used katakana, the alphabet used for foreign words, for all references to the Japanese military (ニホン軍) as if Japan were a foreign country.) But, of course, it’s a big romantic story with two juicy male leading roles, an ideal combination for these guys (girls), and the super-maleness was certainly a prime attraction for me. There was no way I was going to miss this opportunity to catch some high camp.

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Twenty-Four Eyes (二十四の瞳 )

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  • 二十四の瞳 (Twenty-Four Eyes), 1/16/11 (Sun), Tokyo

With the death of the great Takamine Hideko at year-end, I gathered friends to watch one of her most successful films. It is an unabashedly sentimental piece from 1953 about a new teacher and her 12 charges in a poor village in Shodoshima over a 20-year span from 1928-1948, i.e., before, during and after the war.

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The Exterminating Angel (Met Live)

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  • The Exterminating Angel (Met Live)

1/29/18 (Mon), Tokyo

British composer Thomas Adès’ new opera, based on the 1962 Buñuel film, was a big popular and critical success in Salzburg, London and New York, and I was eager to catch this Met Live production from last November. The source film, which I had somehow never seen, happened to be playing in Tokyo at a retrospective of Buñuel’s Mexican works, so I caught that the night before.

The story, a Beckett-like setup where fancy guests at a dinner party find themselves mysteriously unable to leave the room, didn’t seem a promising subject for a full opera. For one thing, it’s largely an ensemble piece with no real leads, less about individual characters than the breakdown of the social order and how people behave in extreme situations. The film wraps up in a brisk 90 minutes or so, suggesting that a one-act opera might be more appropriate. (That appears to be the approach that Stephen Sondheim and David Ives are taking in their musical version, which will combine this film with that other Buñuel dinner-party piece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.) The fact that this all takes place largely within the confines of a single room with the same costuming throughout also doesn’t suggest much in the way of scale or glamour. In any event, I was curious to see what Adès and his co-librettist Tom Cairns would make of this.

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Conflagration (炎上)

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  • 炎上 (Conflagration), 1/23/11 (Sun), Tokyo

Ichikawa Kon’s 1958 film version of Mishima’s then-recent novel Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavilion), a fictionalization of the notorious incident just a few years earlier when a crazed monk burned down the centuries-old structure. The novel is filled with ruminations about the nature of beauty versus reality by a narrator isolated from society by his own insecurities over his crippling stutter. His image of Kinkakuji (called here by a different name), described by his father as almost other-worldly, sets him up for a devastating letdown when he encounters the actual dilapidated structure. The temple in his mind represents an ideal that, when violated, prompts him to destroy the former to protect the latter.

The film can’t begin to compete at that level, but it is a dutiful recounting of the main events and is highly effective on its own terms. Continue reading →