Manga Discourse in Japan Theatre by Fukushima

Author:Fukushima [Fukushima]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Ethnic Studies, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136772733
Google: PfeAAAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-03-24T03:38:21+00:00

Fig. 17 The 1983 production of Merusu – Moeru shitagi wa osuki (Run, Merusu! – Do You Like Burning Underwear?). Uesugi Shōzō as Merusu Nomeruku (left) and Enjōji Aya as Kagerō Reiko (right) (Courtesy of NODA MAP).

The play depicts the everlasting battle between the strong and the weak, and concludes by telling that everything that has happened in history will eventually be turned into desert sands. Here Noda, using the illogical leaps of a surrealistic plot, depicts “universal” themes, such as a father’s love for his sick daughter.

In September 1983, Noda staged his new play, Koyubi no omoide (Memory of the Little Finger), at Honda Gekijō (see figs. 18 &19). The performance of October 7 was televised on October 31 on the NHK program “Geijutsu Gekijō” (“Art Theater”). The script, based on Noda’s novel Atariya Kenchan, suggests that we will experience awakenings of our childhood through supernatural fantasy. The term atariya in the title of the novel means a person who deliberately gets hit by a car in order to extort money from the driver. The mother and four boys in the play are atariya by profession. The name of the mother – Kasuba Seiko – is arrived at by combining the meanings of “a woman of the Kasbah”; “Kasper Hauser,” a German boy raised in total for isolation in a box for seventeen years; and Seiko in modern times was a drug dealer selling white seeds (toothpaste was used on stage) and murders her own child, Kasuba Hōzō, whose name sounds like Kasper Hauser. Seiko’s second and third son, played by female actors, Takeshita and Enjōji, lived in the Middle Ages. Akagi Keiichirō (played by Uesugi), a graduate of the school of atariya, and Seiko’s fourth son time-traveled to the Middle Ages with the help of white seeds purchased from Seiko. In the end, Seiko in the Middle Ages is hunt down as a witch and crucified. Her four sons survive by killing a man (played by Danta), who was sent to destroy the family of delusion.23

Theater critic Ōzasa Yoshio reads Koyubi no omoide as a sign of affirmation of the reality found in the younger generation of Japanese:

Different from Terayama Shūji, who tried to fictionalize reality and realize fiction, Noda Hideki, adopting dualism, depicts both reality and fiction. Development of a complicated puzzle designed with the devices of kakekotoba (paronomasia or word play traditionally established in Japanese literary arts, originally in poetry) is characteristic of Noda. But another characteristic is his lack of understanding of reality – what kind of reality is it delusion or illusion or fiction? His theater is saying nothing more than “It’s all great, anyhow.” I feel a little doubtful. What makes us say it may be Noda’s uncontrollable affirmation of the present condition? If so, Yume no Yūminsha does not possess an essential attribute of theater, its ability to act as a critical mirror to society. This lack of a critical aspect, however, makes this troupe extremely popular among the young (Ōzasa 1984: 72-3).

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