Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei

Deadly Love: Mothers, Whores, and Other Demonic Females in Japanese Theatre

Co‐existing with the traditional Japanese view of woman as docile, self‐sacrificing, and nurturing is an equally ancient image of woman as powerful shamaness, terrifying demon, sexual enchantress, or suffocating mother. Misogynistic and gynophobic tendencies in traditional and contemporary Japanese culture represent to certain male artists an authentic, pre‐Buddhist, pre‐Shinto Japanese soul. Fear of female sexuality and female power is traced in selected works of Shuji Terayama, Juro Kara, Tadashi Suzuki and Shogo Ohta. These contemporary Japanese male playwrights derive themes, images and characters from the rich traditions of Japanese classical literature, folk culture, Western mythology, and personal experience. They share a preference for psycho‐sexual fantasies which are often disturbingly sado‐masochistic in their depiction of women.

Countering ‘Theoretical Imperialism’: Some Possibilities from Japan

When scholars of any nation become so proud of their mastery of alien concepts that they forget or suppress their own cultural identity, they willingly succumb to ‘theoretical imperialism’. The flip side is the arrogant and wholesale imposition by Western scholars of theories created in the crucible of one culture on other cultures, subcultures or historical eras with divergent philosophical foundations. This article introduces several key Japanese critical theories that modify or fuse Japanese and Western psychoanalytic and aesthetic concepts, arguing that they can be fruitfully applied by theatre and performance scholars to works originating either in Japan or elsewhere. The article proposes a ‘both/and’ perspective that respects cultural differences without exoticizing the Other.

Remarks from a Workshop on Fusion Theatre for Playwrights

The playwright inspired by Asian styles or genres of performance faces a dilemma of conscience. Is appropriation of cultural artifacts for the enrichment of ones own art ethically correct? The debate regarding political correctness and multi‐culturalism in the United States raises disturbing questions. Is censorship by the culturally sensitive for the purpose of promoting social equality any different than censorship by the religious right for the purpose of promoting fundamentalist Christian values? What is the role of the artist in society, and how can the artist be open to all stimuli without offending members of other cultures? Ultimately, the artist must be free of all societal constraints in order to express her personal vision.

Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theatre, Gender, and Nationalism (review)

chanting of the TAKEMOTO narrator. The page, (therefore), contains NAMES in capital letters, (italics within parentheses for the stage action [with JAPANESE terms such as (hontsurigane) not in italics]), and finally / lines divided by the slash symbol / for narration. I may be wrong, but a densely packed page of this mélange is likely to be intimidating for most readers. This is an area of obvious interest to this journal. In most cases the introductions to individual plays are helpful in setting the historical context and giving a sense of the major themes as well as the background to the particular scenes. This approach is crucial because all the translations are scenes from much longer plays. What we need to know is the provenance of the scenes translated—crucial for understanding kabuki dramaturgy. Julie Iezzi’s introduction to Summer Festival gives the reader a clear sense of the strands in the play’s development: from Osaka puppet play to Kyoto/Osaka kabuki and then to Edo. Finally, she traces the modern development of the different Osaka and Edo styles still in the repertoire. The relationship between “character” and certain actors is important in kabuki because plays were written, adapted, and rewritten for the skills of specific actors who then created the roles in their own image. Mathew Johnson’s introduction to The Skylight shows the development and also a reason for important role changes when the play moved from the puppet theatre to kabuki. In bunraku it is not uncommon for old women to have major, even dominating, roles. But in kabuki this has never been the case because of the system of role types (yakugara) in which old woman roles are not played by the star onnagata (female role specialist). Paul Griffith in The Tale of Shiroishi gives us the insights we need to understand the context of a woman’s revenge. In summary, then, these two volumes give us a magnificent collection of exciting plays and represent an important contribution to our understanding of kabuki—both its historical development and its contemporary stage practice. The work and leadership of Brandon and Leiter over many decades to promote an appreciation of Japanese theatre and to deepen knowledge of kabuki as a living tradition come to fruition in these volumes.

Inugami: A Play for Masks in One Act, by Shuji Terayama

Dead poets never die, they just metamorphose. Their lives become legends. Poet-playwright-filmmaker-essayist-director-photographer and enfant maudit Shuji Terayama (1935-1983) continues to exert a cult fascination on Japanese youth. The tenth anniversary of his death from peritonitis occasioned a flurry of exhibits, stage productions, books, documentaries, and retrospective film showings. Sanctified and demonized, more popular in death than in life-and certainly more accepted by the Japanese arts establishment-Terayama remains the quintessential avant-garde playwright of the late 1960s and 1970s. Born in the remote northeastern prefecture of Aomori, Terayama identified with outsiders and outcasts. He maintained that bumping his head during a fall down the stairs at age three had transformed his thinking process. He referred to himself as fat (he was hefty, but hardly a sumo wrestler) and emphasized his origins in the superstition-laden Tohoku region. Like Federico Fellini (whose 8 1/2 and Amarcord clearly inspired Terayamas finest film Denen ni shisu), he was entranced by the liminal world of traveling circus performers and cheap carnivals. Criminals, prostitutes, dwarfs, hunchbacks, rebellious students, magicians, mediums, superstitious old women, transvestites, itinerant actors-all were characters in his plays and in his life. Although he studied the history and literature of kabuki while a student at Waseda University and at the age of eighteen won a distinguished literary prize for his book of classical-style tanka poetry, Terayama claimed to be ignorant of the cultural traditions of

The Chickencoop Chinaman and the Year of the Dragon: Two Plays@@@Broken Promises: Four Plays@@@Kumu Kahua Plays

When first produced in 1972 and 1974, these two plays created an enormous stir. Some critics condemned the playwright, others praised him. In susequent years his work has had a profound impact on a generation of young Asian American writers. With the publication of this volume, the plays can now be read and debated and enjoyed by a larger audience.