Performing Shakespeare in Japan

Description

Shakespeare has an astonishingly rich and varied performance tradition in Japan, stretching from the westernising and modernising ferment of the nineteenth century Meiji era to the postmodern performance culture of today. How has the tradition evolved? Where is it going? How is it to be accounted for in theatrical and cultural terms? What does it mean to perform Shakespeare in Japan? Such questions are raised in the book's introduction and pursued in fourteen essays on key aspects, moments and personalities in the performance tradition. These are followed by provocative interviews with four leading directors (Deguchi Norio, Ninagawa Yukio, Suzuki Tadashi and Noda Hideki) and with one leading performer (Hira Mikijiro). Unlike the very few existing books on Japanese Shakespeare, this book concentrates on modern and postmodern theatre, from c.1970, and contains contributions from both Japanese and Western scholars and theatre practitioners.

Minami Ryuta is Associate Professor of English at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies. He has co-edited, with Ian Carruthers and John Gillies, a CD-ROM on Deguchi Norio's productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Department of Theatre and Dance, La Trobe University. He also compiled a chronology of Shakespearean performances in Japan for Shakespeare and the Japanese Stage published by Cambridge University Press in 1999. Ian Carruthers is Lecturer at La Trobe University, Melbourne. As Visiting Professor at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan, he taught traditional Japanese theatre and in 1994 won a Japan Foundation Fellowship to research the theatre of Suzuki Tadashi. He has since co-written a book, with Yasunari Takahashi, entitled The Theatre of Suzuki Tadashi which will be published by Cambridge University Press. John Gillies is an Australian Research Council Research Fellow at the School of Arts & Media, La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has published numerous articles and book chapters. He is also the author of Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference published by Cambridge University Press in 1994 and, with Virginia Mason Vaughan, Playing the Globe (1998).

'This excellent book ... makes you want to board the next flight to Tokyo and take up the challenge.' Times Literary Supplement