Suehirogari (The Fan of Felicity)
Translated and introduced by Andrew T. Tsubaki, 1
Suehirogari (The Fan of Felicity) is one of twenty-three Auspicious Plays (waki kyōgen) in the current kyōgen repertory. This play uses the relationship of a servant to his master, contrast of country simplicity and city trickery, misunderstandings of language, and dance for humor.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 24, no. 1 (2007)”
Editor’s Note, iii
Primary Colors: A Play by Mishima Yukio
Introduction and translation by Christopher L. Pearce, 223
Primary Colors (Sangenshoku) is a 1955 play by Mishima Yukio that brings up issues of homosexuality and bisexuality. Its positive treatment of homosexual themes contrasts with the darkness of Forbidden Colors, the author’s novel of the same period. While the play has received only a few professional productions, its poetry and theme help us understand Mishima’s developing aesthetic.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 23, no. 2 (2006)”
Editor’s Note
Kathy Foley, iii
Myth and Reality: A Story of Kabuki during American Censorship, 1945–1949
James R. Brandon, 1
American censors during the occupation of Japan after World War II unsuccessfully attempted to eliminate feudal themes and foster new democratic plays in kabuki. Contrary to popular myths, kabuki flourished under the Occupation, “banned” plays were rapidly released, the infamous “list of banned plays” was not significant, most American censors were captivated by kabuki, and credit for Occupation assistance to kabuki should not limited to one man, Faubion Bowers. Using archival records, I show that the Shōchiku Company, the major kabuki producer, successfully resisted the democratic aims of the Occupation. Shōchiku’s “classics-only” policy protected Japanese culture from American contamination and inadvertently fashioned the fossilized kabuki we know today.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 23, no. 1 (2006)”
Editor’s Note
Kathy Foley, iii
Topeng Sidha Karya: A Balinese Mask Dance
Performed by I Ketut Kodi with I Gusti Putu Sudarta, I Nyoman Sedana, and I Made Sidia in Sidha Karya, Badung, Bali, 16 October 2002
Transcribed by I Ketut Kodi; translated by I Nyoman Sedana and Kathy Foley; and introduced by Kathy Foley, 171
After a terrorist bomb exploded in the Sari Club at Kuta Beach, Bali, in October 2002, a topeng performance of Sidha Karya (literally “completing the ritual work”) was presented by I Ketut Kodi and other faculty members from STSI-Denpasar, the Indonesian University of the Arts. The mask dance performance, held at the village of Sidha Kaya in Badung, Bali, was an exorcistic response to the terrorist attack and probed Balinese responses to the event. The introduction gives background on the story and analyzes the way the narrative reflected both current social issues and traditional Balinese philosophy.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 22, no. 2 (2005)”
Editor’s Note
Kathy Foley, iii
Shūshin Kani’iri (Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell): A Kumi Odori by Tamagusuku Chōkun
as staged by Kin Ryōshō translated and annotated by Nobuko Miyama Ochner
Introduction and stage directions by Kathy Foley, 1
Kumi odori is an aristocratic dance-drama developed in 1719 by Tamagusuku Chōkun as part of Okinawan court performance for the ritual investiture of the monarch. Shūshin Kani’iri (Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell) was written for this court presentation and has remained one of the most frequently performed works. The all-male form, which combines music, dance, and narrative, has Okinawan, Chinese, and Japanese roots. Kumi odori’s most important performances for 250 years were in the context of ukwanshin entertainments for the official envoys sent by the Chinese emperor. With the demise of court in 1879, the genre languished until it was designated as an important cultural asset by the Japanese government in 1972. This article gives an introduction to kumi odori based on the practice of Kin Ryōshō, an important twentieth-century practitioner of the form. A translation of the 1719 classic Shūshin Kani’iri (Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell) with stage directions reflecting Kin Sensei’s choreography gives an example of this important art. Shūshin Kani’iri has been a consistent part of the repertoire and was recently presented at the opening of the new National Kumi Odori Theatre (Kokuritsu Kumi Odori Gekijō) in Urasoe-shi near Naha in 2004.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 22, no. 1 (2005)”
Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, iii
MORAL: A Play by Kisaragi Koharu
Introduction by Colleen Lanki; script translated by Tsuneda Keiko and Colleen Lanki; original director’s notes translated by Colleen Lanki and Lei Sadakari, 119
Tokyo playwright Kisaragi Koharu (1956-2000) wrote fast-paced, imagistic plays about consumerist society and the challenges of urban life. She and her theatre group NOISE created performances that used words as rhythms and sounds, and the actors’ bodies as parts of some systematic machine. This translation of MORAL, her most expressionistic and perhaps most well-known play, is the first English language publication of her work.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 21, no. 2 (2004)”
Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, p. iii
The Three Hagi Sisters: A Modern Japanese Play by Nagai Ai
Translated and introduced by Loren Edelson, 1
Over the past decade, Nagai Ai has become one of Japan’s most beloved and respected playwrights. Her award-winning play The Three Hagi Sisters, first produced in November 2000, won critical and popular acclaim for its humorous depiction of relations between the sexes and its playful satire of academics using their bedroom frustrations as material for gender research. Nagai’s theatrical portrayal of three Japanese sisters living in a small town will remind readers of Chekhov’s Three Sisters while departing in an entirely new direction.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 21, no. 1 (2004)”
Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, iii
Umbuik Mudo and the Magic Flute: A Randai Dance-Drama
Introduction by Kirstin Pauka; translated by Ivana Askovic, Barbara Polk, Kirstin Pauka, et al., 113
This first English-language publication of a randai play from West Sumatra is based on the script prepared for a student production staged in 2001 at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, by one of the translators, Kirstin Pauka, who also introduces the play and its staging.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 20, no. 2 (2003)”
Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, iii
On Shimizu Kunio’s Play: May Even Lunatics Die in Peace
Inoue Yoshie; translated by Mari Boyd, 1
Inoue Yoshie’s article, “On Shimizu Kunio’s Play: May Even Lunatics Die in Peace” (Shimizu Kunio “Kyöjin naomote Öjö o togu—Mukashi Bokutachi Aishita”) is published in Twentieth-Century Japanese Drama II (Nijusseiki no Engeki II—Nihon Kindai Gikyoku no Tenkaii), edited by the Japan Modern Theatre History Research Group (2001). This comprehensive collection of criticism by twenty-eight critics covers fifty-one playwrights and their plays written between 1946 and 1973. Beginning with playwright Hotta Kiyomi and his play Untenkö no Musuko (The Son of a Machine Operator, 1947), the book treats works by noted playwrights such as Mishima Yukio, Abe Köbö, Tanaka Chikao, Kishida Kunio, Kubo Sakae, Betsuyaku Minoru, and Terayama Shüji. It also discusses playwrights who are not so well known overseas such as Yamada Tokiko, Suzuki Masao, Mafune Yutaka, and Nakano Minoru. Inoue Yoshie is professor of theatre, literature, and women’s studies at Kibi International University. She has written Kindai Engeki no Tobira o Akeru (Opening the Doors to Modern Theatre: The Sociology of Dramaturgy, 1999) and Kubo Sakae no Sekai (The World of Kubo Sakae, 1989), which received the thirty-second Kawatake Award ( Japan Theatre Association). Her coauthored publications include Higuchi Ichiyö o Yominaosu (Rereading Higuchi Ichiyö, 1994) and Arishima Takeo no Sakuhin [ge] (The Works of Arishima Takeo, Part II, 1995). She is an editor of the three-volume Twentieth-Century Japanese Drama series.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 20, no. 1 (2003)”
Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, p. iii
At this moment, when Asian Theatre Journal is about to enter its twentieth year, it seems appropriate to pause and look back on its achievement. After years of unrelenting determination James R. Brandon succeeded in launching ATJ in 1983 under the auspices of the University of Hawai‘i Press, which has remained its publisher. Jim (and his later co-editor Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak) turned the editorship over to me in January 1991, and my first issue came out a year later. The present year completes my tenth as editor. During this decade I have benefited from the assistance of several razor-sharp associate editors. Robert Bethune was followed by Diane Daugherty and Susan Pertel Jain. Susan recently moved on to other interests, and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei joined the team with ATJ 19.1. When I needed a breather, Kathy Foley handled a guest editorship for an issue on Asian puppet theatre (18.1).
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 19, no. 2 (2002)”
Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, p. iii
Tokyo Notes: A Play by Hirata Oriza
translated and introduced by M. Cody Poulton, p. 1
Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes, which has had some forty productions since it won the thirty-ninth Kishida Kunio Award, Japan’s highest prize for new drama, in 1995, toured North America in the fall of 2000. In its focus on the understated and ordinary, the play is an exemplary work of the shizuka na engeki (quiet theatre) movement prevalent in Japan in the past decade. In his introduction, translator M. Cody Poulton argues that while Hirata’s theatre recalls the naturalism of early-twentieth-century shingeki (new theatre), the playwright’s aversion to dramatic convention and overt expressions of emotion or ideological messages, as well as his use of colloquial Japanese, make him a significant voice in contemporary Japanese theatre.
Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 19, no. 1 (2002)”
All back issues of Asian Theatre Journal more than three years old are available online in the Arts & Sciences III Collection within the JSTOR archive of electronic facsimiles of key academic journals.
All of the items listed in the Comprehensive Index (PDF) to Asian Theatre Journal vols. 1-19, compiled by David V. Mason, can thus be found in JSTOR, even if the issue in which the original item appeared is now out of print
Volumes 10, no. 2 (1993), 7, no. 1 (1990), 5, no. 2 (1988), and 1, no. 1 (1984) are currently out of print
