A Chronicle of the Times: Politics
and Modern Japanese Theatre
Guohe Zheng
Modern Languages and Classics
March 19, 2012
Quotes
• “[T]he drama is a chronicle and brief abstract
of the time, revealing not only the surface but
the whole material and spiritual structure of
an epoch.” --Eric Bentley, The Playwright as
Thinker
• “The New Theatre movement provides such a
chronicle for Japan, and every confusion of
the modern period is mirrored in its
activities.” –Thomas Rimer, Toward a Modern
Japanese Theatre
Definitions of Key Words
• Politics: from Greek “πολιτικός, politikos” “of,
for, or relating to citizens,” a process by which
groups of people make collective decisions.
Used in Japanese literature/theatre, it refers
to an ideology or control of the government.
• Modern Japanese theatre: shingeki 新劇 in
Japanese, literally “new theatre”
Origin of Shingeki
-Literary Society (Bungei Kyokai , 1906-1913), by
Tsubouchi Shoyo (1859-1935) and Shimamura
Hogetsu (1871-1918). Matsui Sumako (18861919), A Doll’s House, Resurrection, Katyusha's
song
Origin of Shingeki
• Free Theatre (Jiyu gekijo, 1909-1919) by
Osanai Kaoru (1881-1928) and Ichikawa
Sadanji II (1880-1940), Ibsen’s John Gabriel
Borkman
Official Start of Shingeki, 1924
Kanto Earthquake (September 1, 1923)
Official Start of Shingeki
• Hijikata Yoshi (1898-1959) and Tsukiji Little
Theatre, the theatre and the company
Declaration of shingeki: May 1924
• Shingeki developed not as an extension of
traditional Japanese theatre forms but
through a deliberate rupture with them. It
aims at producing a thoroughly realistic
theatre in the spirit of Ibsen and Chekhov, and
at eschewing the “irrationality” of premodern
Japanese theatre forms.
Kabuki, Noh, and Puppet Threatre
Shingeki: Realistic drama
Opening of Tsukiji Shogekijo
June 13, 1924
• Tomoda Kyosuke (1899-1937), Maruyama
Sadao (1901-1945), Yamamoto Yasue (19061993)
Two Years of Translated Plays
1924-1926
• Reinhard Goering’s Sea Battle, antiwar
• Georg Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight
How a cashier’s life is corrupted by money
• Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard
Rise of the middle class after the abolition of
serfdom in the mid-19th century Russia and the
decline of the aristocracy
Politics and Shingeki: Influence of
Russian October Revolution (1917)
Influence of Marxism
• Senda Koreya (1904-1994), Kubo Sakae (19001958), Murayama Tomoyoshi (1901-1977),
Fujimori Seikichi (1892-1977), Hirasawa
Keishichi (1889-Sept. 3, 1923)
Proletarian Theatre
• Hirasawa’s Worker’s Theatre: “The poorest theatre in Japan,
actors are nameless coming onto the stage with their working
cloths on. Scripts are by nameless playwrights. However, this
poor theatre company is proud to present the art dealing with
labor issues and performing our real life experience on the
stage.”
Created Leftwing Plays Staged
• Fujimori Sekichi: What Caused Her to Do
That? (1927) Renamed Kanojo
• Murayama Tomoyoshi: An Account of a
Terrorist Gang (1929)Renamed The
Frontline
• Kobayashi Takiji (1903-1933): Cannery Boat
(1929), The Absentee Landlord (1930)
• Tokunao Sunao (1899-1958): Street without
Sunlight (1930)
Split of Tsukiji Shogekijo
• Death of Osanai Kaoru December 1928
• Shin Tsukiji Gekidan (a newly formed
company)
• Gekidan Tsukiji Shogekijo (formed by
remaining members)
Leftwing Theatres/Organizations
•
•
•
•
Japan Proletarian Theatre League (PROT)
Tokyo Left-Wing Theatre
Pioneer Theatre, Avant-Garde Theatre
NAPF (All-Japan Federation of Proletarian Arts, 192831)
• KOPF (Japan Proletarian Culture Federation, 1931-34)
• The New Tsukiji Theatre /New Cooperative Theatre
(The two representative Shingeki companies)
• Trunk Theatre (1924-6)
Government Suppression
Kobayashi Takiji’s torture and death
Public Security Preservation Law
• A series of laws enacted during the Empire of
Japan. Collectively, the laws were designed to
suppress political dissent.
• 1894保安条例
• 1900治安警察法
• 1925治安維持法
1931 Manchurian Incident
1937 Sino-Japanese War broke out
1941 Pacific War
Abolished 9/22/1945; Release of Communists
Split of Shingeki into Two Schools
• Kishida Kunio (1890-1954)’s psychological realism:
“We wish to avoid both the [traditional] theatrical
atmosphere… as well as the radical elements in the
New Theatre Movement. We wish to create a theatre
with an intimate connection with the emotional
realities of contemporary life.”
• Kubo Sakae (1900-1958)’s social realism: “Our
realism captures the innermost truths of the man
and society and...[w]ithout reducing them to
stereotypes and without vulgarization, we clarify
them and formulate them with artistry and style.”
Crackdown and Tenko
• August 19, 1940, Crackdown on the two major
shingeki companies, the New Tsukiji and the Shinkyo
Gekidan, arresting over 100 members.
• Many had been arrested before but released after
committing tenko
• Murayama Tomoyoshi
• Kubo Sakae
Neither School Could
Do What It Advocated
Kishida Kunio founded Literary Theatre in 1937
and became the Cultural Minister of the
Imperial Rule Assistance Association in 1940.
Mobile Theatre and War Casualties
• Actor’s certificate to pursue art
• Tomoda Kyosuke, killed in battled in Shanghai
in December 1937.
• Maruyama Sadao, killed in Hiroshima by the
atomic bomb in August 1945 while on a tour
leading the mobile theatre named Sakura.
• Tsukiji Shogekijo renamed National Theatre in
1940, which was burned down on March 10,
1945 during B-29 bombing of Tokyo.
Mobile Theatre
• Memorial Monument, Sonoi Keiko (1913-45)
• Reenacted scene on stage (1997) when New
National Theatre was opened
During the Occupation (1945-1952)
• Sweeping Revival of Shingeki
• Kubo Sakae and War Responsibilities
• The Nature of the Occupation, bestowed
freedom
• Cold War and the Reverse Course of the
Occupation
• JCP and the Occupation policies: liberatordemocratic revolution under occupation-go
underground-calling for armed struggle
A Chronicle of the Times
• Morimoto Kaoru (1912-1946)’s A Woman’s
Life
• Commission in Nov. 1944
• Premiered in April 1945
• 2nd October 1946
• 3rd, 1952
• Production in China, 1960
A Woman’s Life as National Theatre
Various stages of the piece
Underground Theatre Movement
of the 1960s and Later
• Stalinism
• Anti-Anpo Movement of 1960
Treaty of Mutual Coop and Security b/t US and Japan
• Disillusion with Japanese Communist party
and the old leftwing
• 1986, Chernobyl nuclear accident
• 1990, the collapse of the Soviet Union
• 1990s, the break of the economic bubble
Hirata Oriza’s Quiet Theatre (1982-)
• No theme
• Contemporary colloquial Japanese, not
translated Japanese, genuinely realistic
Japanese language spoken as in daily life
• No light change, no music, no stage effects
• Small ripples in human psychology
• Topics on eternal human concerns
• Seinendan /A House on Fire, or An Inferno