Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 15, no. 2 (Fall 1998)

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR, pp. iii-v

PLAYS

Takatoki: A Kabuki Drama
Translated by Faith Bach, p. 155

Although there are well over 250 plays in the kabuki repertory, barely three dozen are available in English translations. One more can now be added to the list with Faith Bach’s version of Kawatake Mokuami’s katsureki masterpiece, Takatoki. As she notes, such plays were originally created during the Meiji era to bring kabuki a step closer to the realism of the modern theatre believed to exist in the West. What remains of the play itself, however, is replete with enough of kabuki’s traditional emphasis on dance and fantasy to make it something of an anomaly in the category of which it is considered representative. Dr. Bach’s translation is based on the production book of the March 1992 production at the Kabuki-za.

Faith Bach has her D.Phil. in kabuki history from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and an M.A. in Manyoshu poetry from the University of Minnesota. She is a translator/commentator at the Kabuki-za and National Theatre in Tokyo and teaches kabuki at Kanto Gakuen University. Dr. Bach is the author of Bravo Kabuki: Bravo Japan (1993), published in Japanese.

Kanadehon Hamlet: A Play by Tsutsumi Harue
Translated by Faubion Bowers with David W. Griffith and Hori Mariko
Introduced by Tsutsumi Harue, p. 181

In the spring of 1997, the editor of ATJ witnessed a production of this play at New York’s La MaMa E.T.C. and was immediately interested in publishing it. The play is interesting on several levels: it has a strong dramatic action, concerns an important problem in the transition of Japanese drama from traditional forms to modern ones, reveals the kind of serious misunderstandings that occur when cultures collide, allows for exciting "fusion" scenes in which Shakespeare is produced kabuki-style, and brings to the stage several real-life kabuki figures, notably Morita Kan’ya XII, the progressive Meiji-era producer. The playwright also makes an interesting case for explaining Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the kabuki company when, as suggested by her title, she uses the Japanese classic Kanadehon Chushingura as a point of comparison.

Tsutsumi Harue is a doctoral student in East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University. As a student of theatre history in the master’s degree program at Osaka University, she studied under the distinguished playwright and scholar Yamazaki Masakazu. She was interested in playwriting as well as in the comparative natures of traditional Japanese and Western drama. When she subsequently moved from Japan to the United States she was prompted to focus on the clash between the two cultures. Her four full-length plays are Kanadehon Hamuretto (Kanadehon Hamlet), Rokumeikan Ibun (Strange Tales of the Rokumeikan), Tsukiji Hoterukan Enjo (The Burning of the Tsukiji Hotel), and Seigeki Osero (Othello in Japan), as well as two one-act plays.

Faubion Bowers, the chief translator, is one of the best-known Western authorities on Japanese theatre. His books include Japanese Theatre (1952) and Theatre in the East (1956)

ARTICLES

Elite Culture for Common Audiences: Machiiri No and Kanjin No in the City of Edo
Gerald Groemer, p. 230

In ATJ 15/1, Gerald Groemer’s article "No at the Crossroads" presented a pathbreaking look at the widespread activity of no and kyogen among commoners during the Edo period--when, according to most accounts, these forms were reserved almost exclusively for the samurai class. In the present essay Groemer continues on the same theme, focusing on two specific types of performances witnessed by commoners, kanjin no and machiiri no.

Gerald Groemer holds the DMA in piano performance from Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. He is associate professor of ethnomusicology at Yamanashi University, Kofu, Japan. Dr. Groemer has published in both Japanese and English and is presently preparing a book-length study in Japanese of the koshibai or "small theatres" that produced kabuki and bunraku in Edo.

REPORTS

Kabuki: Changes and Prospects: An International Symposium
James R. Brandon, p. 253

From time to time ATJ publishes accounts of major symposia dealing with Asian theatre. In the present case, James R. Brandon provides an excellent account of an international kabuki-related conference held in Tokyo in 1996. Numerous scholars from around the globe attended this important event, and we are proud to have this detailed record of their contributions in our pages.

James R. Brandon needs little introduction to readers of ATJ, of which he was the founding editor. Professor of Asian Theatre at the University of Hawai‘i, Manoa, he is the author or editor of many books on Asian theatre and is the preeminent scholar of kabuki in America. His productions of kabuki and kabuki-influenced plays (some from his own hand) are among the finest to be seen in the West.

This report first appeared, in Japanese, as "Kokusai Shinpojium: Kabuki, Hensen to Tenbo no Naiyo to Seika" (Substance and Results of the International Symposium: Kabuki, Changes and Prospects), in Gekkan Bunkazei (Cultural Properties Monthly) 401 (2) (1996):19-25

Tamasaburo in Elizabeth
Faubion Bowers, p. 270

Bando Tamasaburo V, the tall, beautiful kabuki star famed for his portrayal of female characters, is respected not just for his kabuki roles but for his frequent activity in other theatrical genres, bot Japanese and Western. Tamasaburo is celebrated for such Shakespearean roles as Lady Macbeth and Desdemona, so what could be more appropriate than that he be cast as Queen Elizabeth in a play that questions the monarch’s gender? Faubion Bowers’s report on Tamasaburo’s performance in Francisco Ors’s Elizabeth gives us the background to this production.

Faubion Bowers is a renowned expert on Japanese theatre whose simultaneous translations of Japanese theatre productions have been familiar to American theatregoers for four decades. His translation of Kanadehon Hamlet also appears in this issue.

Kabuki Paintings by Takahashi Sachio: A Note
Samuel L. Leiter, p. 275

BOOK REVIEWS, pp. 276-308

VIDEO REVIEWS, pp. 309-313