Blue, Black, and White

It feels good to be getting into the theatre again. It’d been a long time (unless I’m forgetting something…) since I’d seen a theatre production, and I really do miss my friendship & involvement with the Theatre department at UH.

Blue, Black, and White is an original play by Donald Molosi, a graduate student here at UCSB, who, now that I look him up online, is apparently a very prominent rising star among young artists from Botswana. I won’t bother sharing a list of his awards and accomplishments here, but they’re easy to find online. The play tells the story of Sir Seretse Khama (1921-1980), first president of independent Botswana. He is known not only for leading the country to independence (in 1966), and to relative prosperity, but also for his then (and still?) extremely controversial marriage to a white woman, Ruth Williams, in 1948, at a time when the formal policies of apartheid were first getting underway in South Africa, and when segregation and the racial attitudes underlying it was very much the norm throughout much of the Western world and its colonies. The play suggests that interracial mixing and equality was much more common, or stronger, in Bechuanaland even before independence than in many other parts of southern Africa, and that after independence, under Sir Seretse, it became even more tolerant (especially in comparison to neighboring South Africa, infamous for its formal Apartheid policies). If this is true, it’s really remarkable.

Tonight’s performance, directed by Haddy Kreie and starring a cast of all UCSB undergraduates, was an ensemble version of the play, previously performed as a one-man show by Molosi himself; the play is still a work in progress, but even as is, it’s really quite well-done, nuanced, multi-layered, powerful and meaningful.

The play is told through multiple layers of storytelling, and each actor plays multiple parts. It is a story of a classroom in Botswana, where the teacher is teaching her students about Sir Seretse Khama; as part of her lessons, she and the students dress up and play parts and act out key moments and events in the life of Sir Seretse. But then, within that “role playing,” there are also sections where Lady Ruth Khama, sitting with some of the Ba-Tswana women, answers their questions and tells them stories, for example, about how she and Sir Seretse met. It is easy to forget sometimes that a given scene is meant to be a memory, a story being told, or that it’s supposed to be the schoolchildren playing parts. But that’s good – all the scenes feel real.

As each actor takes on multiple roles, changing gender and race as well, and often putting on accents, there comes the obvious, unavoidable question of race in the casting. I’d rather not say too much, because it is a very touchy subject, and anything said about it must be phrased very carefully. My apologies if I am not careful enough. But, as the cast, director, and playwright explained, this works for them on multiple levels. One, colorblind casting helps embody the interracial, anti-segregation message of the play. Two, the diverse background of the actors (white, Asian-American, Latina, etc.), even as they play Black Africans, helps, perhaps, subconsciously, highlight the ethnic differences within Botswana – in American discourse, we may see “Black” as a single group, just as we all too often also gloss over the great ethnic & cultural diversity within “white” identity, but, in Botswana, as in most African countries (and elsewhere in the world), there is a strong sense of ethnic, cultural, tribal differences, e.g. between BaTswana, BaKalanga, and BaSarwa (‘ba’ being a prefix in Setswana denoting a people; ‘se’, similarly, is a prefix denoting a language. Thus BaTswana means “the Tswana people,” Setswana, “the Tswana language,” and Botswana, “the Tswana country.” I learned these things today.). Finally, that for the actors, taking on all these different roles helped them to understand and to embody the different racial/ethnic/cultural identities in the story, and in the racial/political issues the play addresses. I suppose in the end, if it’s alright with the great, award-winning Batswana playwright Donald Molosi, who am I to say otherwise?

Speaking of “tribes” or ethnic identities, I thought it very interesting, and valuable, the way that Molosi introduces some criticism into his own narrative, acknowledging the choices he is making, and the presence of alternative narratives. The story he tells is a romantic and nationalistic one, emphasizing the Batswana people and Sir Seretse in particular, elevating him as an individual, as a founding father. The playwright shows his awareness and recognition of the problematic nature of this narrative by having one character, one of the schoolchildren, Frank, frequently ask questions such as “why do we learn only about Sir Seretse? Aren’t there other important people whose stories deserve to be told too?” Frank also says at one point “my uncle says we aren’t to use the word ‘tribe’.” I thought these interjections among the most valuable and powerful critical elements in the play. It is a play about recovering one’s history, one’s identity, and telling the story of one’s own people, of one’s own country. But, even while doing so, it is important to recognize that an alternative story, a counter-narrative, can also be dominating, can also be silencing of other voices, and can also perpetuate discourses (such as the use of the word ‘tribe’, or not, and what connotations it has within your culture, and your own national narrative). The teacher attacks Frank each time, yelling at him and punishing him for challenging her narrative, her curriculum. This kind of forcible enforcement of the curriculum takes place in classrooms all around the world.

Donald says that the public school curriculum in Botswana remains very much a colonial curriculum. It teaches a version of history that is heavily Eurocentric, including, he mentioned, the Russian tsars and the German unification of the 19th century, but nothing, incredibly, about Botswana’s own history. This, I was very surprised by. Not that I know anything much at all about African history, but while places like Hawaii and Okinawa still struggle (to varying degrees) to be allowed to teach their own histories, rather than, or in dialogue with, the national narrative, I had always assumed that independent countries like Botswana – especially countries so newly independent, with such a history of colonization – would have already done away with the colonial curriculum, and might in fact have, arguably, gone too far the other way. How many countries in the world teach the hagiography of their national founder above all else, enshrining him? There are the stories we tell ourselves (and our children) about Washington, Jefferson, and Adams, and there are the stories told about Mao Zedong and about Kim Il-Sung. What stories are told about Kemal Ataturk or Jomo Kenyatta? That Botswana not only does not idolize Sir Seretse in this way, but does not even tell his story – or that of Botswana’s history at all, so we are told – is really surprising. After my engagement with Hawaiian and Okinawan issues in various venues during my time at UH, I did not have to be told, but Donald made it all the more clear, speaking quite explicitly during the talk-back after the show, about the discursive impact on one’s identity, one’s self-worth, one’s worldview, to be taught to associate history with the Other – that only the Other possesses History, and that the Botswanan Self does not possess History (see Edward Said, classic element of Orientalist attitudes of the static, non-developing, ahistorical non-Western Other), or does not possess a History worth knowing, remembering, or retelling. This makes Molosi’s telling of this story all the more important.

As always with these sorts of things, I find that I have a handful of different points or themes I want to touch on, but not necessarily a particularly organized way to bring them up, to lead from one another, or to lead into any kind of conclusion. While the play is less polished than some I have seen in Hawaii – and that’s perfectly okay, as it is, after all, a lab theatre student production, and still a work-in-progress – I think that in some ways, it actually works better than some of the more professional pieces I’ve seen on issues of identity, race, nationalism. Molosi’s play is uplifting and heartening, and does not attack the audience for their beliefs or attitudes, but rather educates them, the key thematic points being well-woven into the story, into the characters, without banging anyone over the head with them, and without any of the characters being one-dimensional stereotypes.

This issue of recovering history is a central one for many indigenous peoples and others struggling with post-colonial situations. I can see, I would love to see, a similar story told for Hawaii, or for other peoples, recovering the history and telling a story that people should be proud of, while at the same time, not really attacking another people, and, being self-critical. Those interjections by Frank were a small part of the entire play, but they were crucial in helping the play acknowledge and portray multiple viewpoints, the subjectivity of any and all versions of history, and the political motivations or biases behind any and every version of history. It is of great importance, of course, that histories be recovered, and that peoples learn stories about their history, and the great figures in their history of whom they can be proud. But it is all too easy to get caught up in myths, to be led to think that questioning the narrative is a betrayal of one’s identity, of one’s community, or that elders and practitioners of the traditional arts are the ultimate authorities on truth. I would love to see a play that tells the story of King Kalakaua or Queen Liliuokalani, whose stories absolutely deserve to be told, but which might contain just a few lines of “But, teacher, what about Kamehameha and Kaahumanu? Aren’t they important too?” or “But, teacher, what about the ali’i adopting Christianity? Isn’t that a betrayal of our gods, of our indigenous culture?” and being shouted down by the teacher who only wants the one version of the narrative to be told and retold. By including this sort of complexity and self-criticism in his play, Molosi makes this work so much more powerful, meaningful, and impactful.

As much as I may miss the more regular opportunities for engagement with Asia-Pacific-American issues in Hawaii, it was a most welcome pleasure tonight to get to learn something about Botswana, to see these same issues, or similar issues, in a very different context. My warmest thanks and congratulations to Donald, Haddy, cast and crew!

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Dramaturging the Vengeful Sword: The Aoe Shimosaka

Two years ago, I was honored to play a small role in a Hawaii Kabuki production, The Vengeful Sword, and to serve as dramaturg. This involved doing research on a variety of elements that come up in the play – including the historical events that inspired the play, the history of the locations, the meaning of certain terms – and sharing the results of my research with the cast & crew via a private (closed) blog. I’ve posted before, on numerous occasions, about the production, but now, I’m finally getting around to re-posting, publicly, some of that content. I hope you find it interesting.

What about The Vengeful Sword itself, our MacGuffin, the eponymous Aoe Shimosaka?

I have asked some friends who are crazy about swords and samurai history, and have come up with nothing as far as references to Shimosaka swords carrying a curse…

The design to the left, a “three-leafed aoi” design, or something very much like it, is i would guess imprinted on the blade of Manjiro’s heirloom sword, near the handguard (tsuba). It is either this, the swordsmith’s signature, or some other inscription, that Mitsugi is looking for as he pulls each sword out of its sheath and looks at it under the lantern light. ‘Aoi’ (葵 or 蒼) is often translated as ‘hollyhock,’ but is in fact a different plant. In any case, its leaves are commonly used in samurai crests and other such symbols. If you are familiar with the Noh, and/or the Tale of Genji, this is the same ‘aoi’ as the Noh play (and Genji chapter) Aoi no Ue or “Lady Aoi,” which centers on a woman known by that name.

It is called “Aoe” with an ‘e’ in the Stanleigh Jones translation, and rendered as 青江 (blue/green river/inlet) in the Japanese, as this was the crest of the Tokugawa clan, and the authorities in the Edo period were not fond of references to the shogun (or his family crest) in kabuki, ukiyo-e prints, or other forms of popular culture.

Shimosaka refers to the swordsmith. Yasutsugu I, or Shodai Yasutsugu, also known as Shimosaka Ichizaemon, was himself the son of a swordsmith as well, but began a new lineage. Born in a place called Shimosaka c. 1532, he later moved to Echizen province, was granted the title of “Echizen no kami” or Lord of Echizen (note this was just an honorary title and carried no political authority), and was from then on known as “Echizen Shimosaka,” a name he and his disciples (and their disciples) then often inscribed on the blades they produced.

Yasutsugu I, the originator of this lineage of swordsmiths, was later in his life granted the honor of using the family crest of the Tokugawa shoguns (seen above), and thus it was that the ‘aoi’ crest came to be found on Shimosaka swords.

The Certificate of Authenticity

The original play seems to just use the word orikami (折紙, lit. “folded paper”), but as for a term that actually denotes a “certificate of authenticity,” it would seem that one of the most common or standard terms is kanteisho (鑑定書). I don’t know how different ours would look, as our play is set a good 200 years ago, but perhaps it would look something like this:

A kanteisho written in the late 1950s or early 1960s, for a 14th-16th century blade, from the collection of a Col. Hartley, and forged by the swordsmith Shidzu 志津 of Mino province 美濃国. There’s a lot here that I can’t make out, but it does give the name of the swordsmith, his province of origin, the age or date of the sword, and its length, along with the signature of the appraiser and date of the certificate’s creation.

The kanteisho for this sword, forged by Fujiwara Hiroyuki of Kyoto (平安城藤原弘幸). This, too, gives the signature and seal of the appraiser – Hosokawa Moritatsu (細川護立), head of The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords (日本美術刀剣保存協会), and, now that I look him up, the 16th head of the Hosokawa samurai family which once ruled Kumamoto Domain on Kyushu. The document is dated 1970, the year Moritatsu died, but while I don’t see any date for the age of the sword on the document, looking up Fujiwara Hiroyuki, we find that this inscription was only used from 1615-1624.

—-
A Protection Charm from Kompira Shrine

Iwaji (who is really Kitaroku) tries to pass off the document as a certificate of authenticity of a protection charm from Konpira Shrine. Konpira, in Sanuki province (which borders Awa), is probably the most famous shrine on the entire island of Shikoku. It is believed to have been founded in the 1st century, making it (along with Ise Shrine) one of the oldest shrines in all of Japan.

Incidentally, the Kanamaru-za, the oldest kabuki theatre still in operation, is located quite nearby to Konpira.

A paper protection charm from the shrine would look something like this (left), while protective charms (omamori) are more commonly enclosed within (or take the form of) little cloth bags (right).

If you’d like one of your own, you can visit a branch of Konpira Shrine at 1239 Olomea Street here in Honolulu.

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The Vengeful Sword: Ten Gold Pieces

Two years ago, I was honored to play a small role in a Hawaii Kabuki production, The Vengeful Sword, and to serve as dramaturg. This involved doing research on a variety of elements that come up in the play – including the historical events that inspired the play, the history of the locations, the meaning of certain terms – and sharing the results of my research with the cast & crew via a private (closed) blog. I’ve posted before, on numerous occasions, about the production, but now, I’m finally getting around to re-posting, publicly, some of that content. I hope you find it interesting.

In The Vengeful Sword, the courtesan Oshika claims to have lent the samurai Mitsugi ten gold pieces, or ten ryō in the Japanese. Each “gold piece” would have been a coin called a koban, roughly the size of the palm of your hand, and each worth one ryō.

Right: Two koban coins from roughly 1818-1830, each worth one ryō. Each would be roughly the size of the palm of your hand, and perhaps roughly as thick as a quarter. Not pure gold, they would have been roughly 80% gold, 20% silver, the coins having been debased numerous times since the beginning of the Edo period.

But how much money was this, really, in terms of value? Oshika talks of selling all her special kimono, and her regular kimono, hair ornaments, all to try to raise this money for Mitsugi. Must be quite a bit of money. Of course, given how expensive kimono could be, how many did she have to sell? This webpage indicates that a men’s ensemble (haori, hakama, and kimono) would have been about one ryô at the cheapest; I’m merely extrapolating, but I’d guess that the much more elaborate, embroidered, and otherwise more fancy kimono of the courtesans would have cost much more. Three ryô each? Five?

Still, that doesn’t give us a very good feel for the real value of the ryô. So how much is “ten gold pieces”? Well, it’s hard to say. For much of the 17th century, for the most part, one ryō was, at least in theory, equal to one koku, a set standard measurement of rice said to be equal to the amount needed to sustain a man for a year. But by 1796, when our play takes place, there was considerable inflation, and the coins were debased. One koban no longer contained enough gold to be worth a full ryō in terms of the precious metal it contained, but was one ryō only in face value; furthermore, one ryō was not worth as much as it once was – you couldn’t buy as much with it. As with all currencies, purchasing power, and thus “real value,” fluctuated widely across the Edo period, and so it is impossible to say with any certainty an exchange rate between 1796 ryō and 2011 US dollars.

However, a few figures might help us put it into perspective.¹

*The salary of kabuki star Ichikawa Danjūrō I (1660-1704) peaked at 800 ryō.
*Yoshizawa Ayame I (1663-1729) was the first kabuki actor to attain an annual salary of 1000 ryō.
*The Kansei Reforms, in 1794, two years before our play is set, put a cap on kabuki actors’ salaries of 500 ryō.
*In 1711, a high-ranking hatamoto (direct retainer to the Shogun, rather than to a provincial daimyo) earned 483 ryō.

It’s only a rough estimate, and fairly sloppy, but let us assume for a moment that we can apply this figure of 483 ryō to 1796, eighty years later. If a high-ranking hatamoto is earning less than 500 ryō (and has expenses in excess of his income!), then this ten gold pieces that Oshika has supposedly given to Mitsugi is fully one fiftieth of what a very high-ranking samurai (or a top-ranking kabuki actor) is earning. Mitsugi himself is only a low-ranking Shrine priest – surely, it’s safe to assume that this ten gold pieces is a rather sizeable sum for him. What is his annual income? Ten ryō? Twenty? Fifty? I can’t imagine it would be above 100, or maybe 150 or 200 at the absolute most.

Cecilia Segawa Seigle, in her volume on the Yoshiwara, suggests an arbitrary conversion rate of $450 to one ryō, and suggests that one’s first visit to a major Yoshiwara bordello could cost as much as 10 ryō, including tips to the nakai (serving girls) and taikomochi (men who work in the teahouse) [hey hey! I get tips!].

One website, giving a rundown of typical Edo period prices, costs, and incomes indicates that an officer of the law, i.e. an officer of the magistrate’s office (奉行所同心) earned about 28 ryō a year.

Seeing a play at Ryōgoku in Edo cost 32 mon in 1820, or roughly 1/125th of a ryō, at 4000 mon to the ryō. Sending your child to temple school (terakoya) for a year cost up to 1/4 of a ryō, while hiring a maid cost roughly two or three ryō for a year. Buying a small room in Edo (roughly 80 square yards or 66 square meters) was 360 ryō.

So, in the end, I am not sure what we can say about quite how much money 10 gold pieces (ten ryō) is to Mitsugi or to Oshika, as we don’t really know their incomes. On the one hand, in terms of income, ten ryô might be a very sizeable portion of Mitsugi’s annual income – anywhere from 1/10th to 1/2 of his total annual funds. But, on the other hand, in terms of prices or costs, ten ryô could just be the price of visiting the Aburaya a few times. I guess it becomes clear that Mitsugi has been living far beyond his means. Even a high-ranking samurai like Manjirô (son of the Chief Counselor to the daimyo of Awa province), whose income is presumably much more than Mitsugi’s, got himself into debt with the teahouse, and had to pawn the precious Aoi Shimosaka sword.

So, while we can’t really come up with any particularly definitive answer, let us just suffice it to say that “ten gold pieces” is quite a lot of money. Yes, granted, it is only about the same amount as the cost of a visit to a prominent teahouse in the Yoshiwara, but it is also about four times the total annual salary of a housemaid, one third the total annual salary of a local officer, or 1/50th the total annual salary of a high-ranking shogunal retainer or top-ranking kabuki actor. So, not exactly the kind of money you just throw around. Nor would I want to encourage throwing it around – those gold pieces are large and heavy, and could do some serious damage if you hit someone in the head with them.

EDIT: This post, from two years ago, represents only my first tentative effort to dip my toe into this subject. Having looked into it a bit more in the last two years since then, the issue of how much a mon or a ryô is worth, and how much things cost, remains frustratingly elusive and complex. The multitude of currency denominations – not only koban and ôban and ryô and mon, but also momme and bu – along with differences between gold, silver, and copper, and of course the dramatic changes in the strength of the currency over the course of the Edo period, make an understanding of the real purchasing power value of the currency, and of the real ‘cost’ of this or that item, extremely difficult. But, I continue to explore the subject; what little I’ve come up with can be found in an article on Currency on the Samurai-Archives Wiki.

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(1) Samuel Leiter. “Edo Kabuki: The Actor’s World.” Impressions 31 (2010). pp114-131

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Dramaturging the Vengeful Sword: Mitsugi & the Shimosaka in Kuniyoshi’s series of Famous Blades

Two years ago, I was honored to play a small role in a Hawaii Kabuki production, The Vengeful Sword, and to serve as dramaturg. This involved doing research on a variety of elements that come up in the play – including the historical events that inspired the play, the history of the locations, the meaning of certain terms – and sharing the results of my research with the cast & crew via a private (closed) blog. I’ve posted before, on numerous occasions, about the production, but now, I’m finally getting around to re-posting, publicly, some of that content. I hope you find it interesting.

This post was just a cheeky mini-update to share a print series I happened upon.

William Pearl, a local Honolulu-based art collector and overall really nice guy, has, in “The Kuniyoshi Project“, put together a beautiful and thorough website cataloging and sharing the works of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), an ukiyo-e artist especially known for his print series depicting famous warriors, and for the innovative effects deployed in them. You may know him from a particularly famous work depicting a skeleton spectre.

In any case, in 1847-48, Kuniyoshi apparently produced a series of 10 prints depicting famous swords and the warriors / stories to which they belong. The one above features our “hero”, Fukuoka Mitsugi, with (presumably) Okon (a courtesan in the teahouse, and Mitsugi’s chief love interest character) in the background. Unless that’s Manno (the scheming mama-san of the teahouse)… I find it interesting that in a series of famous swords, it is Mitsugi’s name, and not the words “Aoi Shimosaka” (the name of the sword) which appear in the cartouche (the title box).

I have not taken the time to read through the whole inscription (it’d be better/easier if I had a larger version of the image), but one can assume it tells the story of the play. We see the artist’s signature in the mid-to-lower left, with a seal that I guess belongs to the artist, though it could belong to the publisher, Ise-ya Ichibei (a coincidence, I am sure). Another publisher’s seal, reading “hanmoto [printer/publisher] Ise Ichi”, appears on the stone by Mitsugi’s foot.

I was also interested to notice that another print in the series also features a sword by Shimosaka Yasutsugu, though I have yet to find anything much at all about the play “Oriawase Tsuzure no Nishiki” in which this character, Shundô Jirôemon, appears.

I love the splotchy texture of the red used here, and the realization that Kuniyoshi would have had to carve a separate woodblock of just handprints and such for applying the red ink onto the print. I cannot say for sure in what order the colors were applied, but the idea of having each copy of this print be relatively “clean” and then be “bloodied” in the course of its production is pretty interesting and amusing to me.

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AAS Report 3 – The Ming Lives On

The elaborate, ornate costume associated with the Ming in kabuki, loaded with ruffles, can be seen in this “Battles of Coxinga” triptych by Kunichika.

Satoko Shimazaki was the third presenter on the panel “Early Modern News: The Fall of the Ming on a Global Stage,” which I wrote about in my previous post. I was particularly excited to meet her, as she is not only a kabuki specialist, but combines this with research on popular publishing, and on perceptions of the foreign – all things at the core of my research interests.

In her presentation, Shimazaki discussed the appearance of Ming China, or Ming individuals, in kabuki, with a particular focus on the 1715 play “The Battles of Coxinga” (Kokusen’ya kassen).

She first introduced the 1818 play Shitennô ubuyu no Tamagawa　(四天王産湯玉川), in which a Ming princess travels all the way to Japan to see the great actor Ichikawa Danjûrô, and showed us some images of that scene, from illustrated woodblock-printed books of the time. I tried to find a similar image, on Google Image Search, to share with you, but was sadly not successful. This seems a wonderful, amusing example of how playful and humorous kabuki can be – and, also, the cult of the actor, i.e. the power of celebrity, which plays such a major role in the character of the kabuki theatre.

She then turned to discussing The Battles of Coxinga, an epic-length jidaimono based on the legend of Coxinga, aka Zheng Chenggong, a half-Japanese Ming loyalist who led forces on Taiwan in raiding the Chinese coast and otherwise fighting off the Qing (Manchu) forces which had taken much of mainland China. In the play, Zheng is referred to as Watônai, typically written 和藤内, but a reference to 和唐内, meaning “between (内, nai) China (唐, tô) and Japan (和, wa).” Shimazaki argued, however, that these three characters can also be interpreted as meaning not only “both Chinese and Japanese,” but also “neither Chinese nor Japanese,” or “heard of in both China and Japan.”

Shimazaki tells us the term “Japan” appears numerous times in the script. What form this takes, whether it’s Nihon, or Wa, or some combination of those and other terms, is unclear (though I imagine one could figure out quite easily by just finding a copy of the play… and, at least in one scene, a Ming princess in Japan, asking for help, employs the term “Nihonjin”), but, regardless, this is pretty important. Many scholars argue that there was no sense of “national” identity in the Edo period, but, while I agree that there certainly is no integrated nation-state of Japan in the modern sense, and that modern(ist) discourses of “nationalism” might likewise not apply, it is nevertheless clear that there was a conception of “Japan” during the Edo period. It was not solely a local conception, in which identity was based in village, province, or domain. This conception of “Japanese” identity was, however, different from modern conceptions of ethnicity in important ways. David Howell writes about the Ainu being able to become Wajin (and vice versa) simply by changing their appearance, behavior, and customs. This sort of malleable notion of identity is seen too in the play, as Watônai converts some Tartars into Japanese by shaving their pates (i.e. giving them Japanese hairdos) and giving them samurai swords.

This brings us to the question of the word “Tartars.” “Tartar” is a broad, all-encompassing word employed in pre-modern Europe to refer indiscriminately to any and all steppe peoples, including Mongols, Manchus, and various sorts of Turks. This seems a pretty good translation for the Japanese word Tattan (韃靼), which similarly refers indiscriminately to a variety of steppe peoples. The similarity between these two terms – neither of which refers accurately to a specific people – is surprising and interesting; I wonder if Shimazaki addresses this in a fuller (published or to-be-published) paper. I’ve looked it up briefly in JapanKnowledge (an online resource which searches multiple encyclopedias and dictionaries), but didn’t find anything much on the origins of the term… Though, we are told that the Wakan sansai zue (one of the most prominent encyclopedias published in Edo period Japan) associates the term Tattan with the Mongols, Jurchens, Manchus, and even the Russians – anyone who could fit within the category of “Northern Barbarians” (北狄). Part of the identification of the Tattan as barbarians, Shimazaki explained, derives from their identity/location outside of the classic Three Realms: India as the home of Buddhism, China as the home of Confucianism, and Japan as the Land of the Gods (i.e. the home of Shintô), with Tattan thus being the home of none of the major Teachings (教) or Ways (道).

Through these examples, and others, Shimazaki showed that the Ming represented in Edo period popular culture was not the actual contemporary China, but rather an idea, an imagined space of a past era. In other words, the Ming survives on, as an idea in the Japanese collective imagination.

This can be seen, too, in some of the works which I’ve been looking at in my own research, and which Shimazaki brought forward too; books such as Bankoku jinbutsu zue (“Pictures of the Peoples of the World”) by Nishikawa Joken show the Ming and the Qing separately. Of course, there is some validity to this, as in our modern conception of race and ethnicity, we would think to organize such a book separating the (Han) Chinese from the Manchus, which is essentially what they’re doing. But, in works such as Joken’s “Peoples of 42 Countries” (四十二国人物図) and “Expanded Thoughts on Trade & Commerce with Civilization & Barbarians” (増補華夷通商考, Zôho ka’i tsûshôkô, 1708), he labels the Ming explicitly as equaling Chinese civilization or culture (中華), and the Qing as being the Chinese civilization or culture of “today” (今の中華). In other words, there is a sense that the Qing is not the real China, that the Ming is the real China, controlled, occupied, or suppressed, that the Qing may be temporary, and that the Ming could come back. Of course, as of 1708 or so, not even the Qing Court could have predicted that their rule would last the better part of 300 years, all the way until 1911. Even today, when “The Battles of Coxinga” is performed, the Qing is represented as lasting only 180 years, as Chikamatsu had it (actually, it’s kind of surprising that Chikamatsu, in 1715, would put it at 180 years, and not some shorter period, if indeed people had a sense of the Qing being only a temporary blip, and the Ming rising again). Of course, it’s not as if the play is particularly historically accurate in other respects, anyway. It does end, after all, with the revival of the Ming, something that (sadly, arguably) did not occur in reality – the entirety of the Chinese Imperial system, and so much of its traditional culture, fell with the Qing, in 1911, or with the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.

As the Qing Dynasty went on, Shimazaki argues, the concept of the Ming became detached somewhat from the geography – people recognized that Qing Dynasty China was the China of their time. Ming thus became a marker for historical China, for Chinese culture and civilization in a somewhat free-floating way, existing no longer in the physical space of China, but now in a more free-floating cultural, intellectual, conceptual space.

And, while certain aspects of the understanding or conceptualization of the Ming may have been based in accurate historical/cultural understandings, as Keiko Suzuki and others have also detailed, the conceptualization of what comprised Ming culture or identity quickly came to be confused and conflated with a variety of other elements, forming a broader, more general concept of the “foreign.” Shimazaki cites pennants carried in the production of The Battles of Coxinga which read 「清道」 (lit. “Pure Way” or “Way of the Qing”?), and which closely resemble those carried by Korean – not Chinese – embassies to Japan. Another prominent element which she shows us appears frequently in theatre and in prints is the association of the Ming with lavish, ornate clothing, with lots of ruffles. I am no expert on Chinese theatre, but I can kind of see how elements of this aesthetic could be taken from jingju costume; that said, however, when would kabuki performers or ukiyo-e print designers have gotten a chance to see jingju costumes or performances? Shimazaki also pointed out that the goddess Benten is often depicted in these Ming-style robes, looking very much like a Ming princess from the kabuki theatre; why, however, remains unclear, as Benten is, so far as I know, not generally associated with being Chinese any more so than the other six of the Seven Lucky Gods.

In the course of the Q&A after Shimazaki-sensei’s presentation, a number of other questions and issues came up. One was the question of how depictions of China in bunraku & kabuki, as discussed in her talk, compare to representations of China in the Noh. This is certainly an interesting question, given that the Noh comes from a different period, and a rather different cultural context. I would imagine, just off the top of my head, I feel as though Noh is more connected to classic stories of classic figures, and would represent China more as a classical source of Confucianism, Taoism, wisdom, magic, certain legendary figures or certain gods, rather than as a contemporary foreign country or culture in the way Coxinga does, when it engages with recent historical events.

Shimazaki had also mentioned at one point that it was difficult for theatres to put on productions of Coxinga, explaining that kabuki theatres operated on a schedule organized around certain themes. The majority of kabuki plays retell stories from the Japanese past (or from legend), and most plays fit into a particular sekai (“world”), whether that be stories of Yoshitsune & Benkei, or stories of the Soga Brothers; Coxinga, Shimazaki argued, did not fit well into this schema, and so, thematically, it was difficult to find a thematically appropriate time/space to fit it into the schedule of a theatrical season. Indeed, many 19th century guides to the various sekai of kabuki plays either omit Coxinga entirely, or list it under “miscellany.” I have never read or seen Coxinga myself, or studied much about it, but I was interested to learn that, in fact, it was originally composed as a gamble, as something very new and different, to draw audiences to the theatre and keep the theatre going after it lost its chief chanter (Takemoto Gidayû – more or less the founder/inventor of the chief bunraku chanting style). This brings us back to Sarah Kile’s presentation about Chinese playwright Li Yu, who was constantly preoccupied with remaining cutting-edge, new, and fresh, and which I wrote about in the previous post.

I think that Prof. Shimazaki’s research on conceptualizations of the foreign in the Edo period will be of great use for me as I move forward with my research on Ryukyuan-Japanese interactions in that period, and I love that she does kabuki as well. I suppose I won’t be working with her directly any time soon, since we are not at the same institution, but I do eagerly look forward to reading more of her scholarship, and perhaps getting a chance to speak with her more in future.

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AAS Report 2 – How the Ming have Fallen

The first panel I made it to during the Assoc. of Asian Studies conference this year was one titled “Early Modern News: The Fall of the Ming on a Global Stage.” The use of the word “stage” here is quite clever, as the panel was discussing the representation of the Ming and its fall in theatre.

Now, before I go further, I’d like to offer a brief disclaimer: I apologize if I may misrepresent the facts or the arguments from any of these papers – I am merely going from my notes, and there is plenty of opportunity for mis-hearing or misunderstanding things said in an orally presented paper. Also, I am sure that in these panel summaries/reports, for the sake of brevity and cohesiveness of my blog posts, or for whatever reasons, I will be skipping over major sections of papers, or skipping some papers entirely. No offense is meant to those scholars; I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated all of the papers I heard presented at the conference.

The panel began with Sarah Kile, professor at U Michigan, who presented on Chinese playwright Li Yu (1611-1680). I’d never heard of him – I wonder how big-name he is, and if it’d be possible to study the sort of Chinese history in which he’d come up, rather than the course I took last quarter, which was pretty much a total wash, more or less completely useless for my interests. In any case, he sounds like a really interesting figure. I’m not positive what type of theatre he was involved with (kunqu? It’s too early for jingju, right?), but the ways in which he was involved in popular culture & literary circles, as well as his thoughts on theatre, make me very interested to learn more about him, and about the early Qing popular culture realm, in comparison/contrast to that of Edo period Japan.

Right: A collection of the complete works of Li Yu.

Kile said that Li Yu made himself known, by appearing in a variety of publication as commentator, author of the preface, etc. He wrote not only a lot of theatrical plays, publishing the scripts, but also wrote & published a lot of commentaries and writings about theatre. In these writings, and especially in composing his plays, Kile says, Li Yu was perpetually concerned about always staying on the cutting edge, producing something new, in order to attract audiences. I haven’t read that much of contemporary (Edo period) kabuki commentaries, but hearing about this makes me much more curious. How did kabuki commentators or playwrights talk about these same issues? How flexible was the early Qing theatre? Kabuki generally adapted plays into new and different forms with each production, so even if the play itself was largely the same, it still was very much aimed at remaining fresh. … This also places Li Yu more firmly into a popular culture sort of discourse, a very separate set of concerns from those concerned with maintaining tradition, and performing something “properly” according to the proper forms. Did even Noh have the same concerns of maintaining tradition during the Edo period that it does today? I wonder. Perhaps Thomas Looser’s new book “Visioning Eternity” has some answers.

Another very interesting bit that Kile introduced from Li Yu’s writings was his musings on the role of lighting in the theatre. He asserts that the dim light of evening is better than daylight for helping the audience focus in on the play. Daylight, he writes, allows the audience to see everything at once, and for their attention therefore to drift all over the stage; too much light also reveals too much of the artifice of the production, whereas dim light hides the artifice and emphasizes the drama or artistry. This certainly sounds like something relevant too to Kabuki and Noh, especially in terms of cultivating the correct spiritual atmosphere and effect, yûgen or whatever it may be called, in Noh, as well as a much wider variety of effects and atmospheric moods in kabuki. I wonder what kabuki and Noh commentators of the time said about lighting.

—

The second paper in this panel was given by Prof. Paize Keulemans of Princeton University. He presented on the fall of the Ming in Dutch literature, poetry, media, and theatre, touching especially on the idea of the fall of the Ming as the first instance of “global news”, and on certain prominent discourses at the time in Northern Europe regarding Self, and China.

The Ming capitol of Beijing fell to Manchu invaders in 1644. By July 1650, agents of the Dutch East India Company had conveyed the news to the Netherlands. Impressive though this may seem, given that it is, quite arguably, the first instance of worldwide news, transmitted/known in a great many places all across the globe in a relatively short amount of time, I’m frankly surprised it wasn’t faster. How long did it take for the news to travel within China and to reach Canton or Fuzhou or wherever it was the Dutch were based? Given the constant back-and-forth travels and trade of Dutch and Chinese ships going to and fro between China, Japan, Indonesia (Dutch East Indies), and Europe, you’d think it’d have spread much faster. No?

Well, in any case, some of the most interesting aspects of Keulemans’ presentation were the discussion of discourses relating to Dutch “Enlightenment.” He highlighted mainly two manifestations of these, both dealing with conceptions of “openness.” Firstly, the idea of China as “closed,” as represented for example in an illustration from the 1655 Novus Atlas Sinensis (“New Chinese Atlas”), which depicts Atlas opening a gate to China, and stating in a sort of “word ribbon” (the word balloon having not yet been invented), “I open that which had been closed.” The gate itself is in a large wall which might be taken to represent the Great Wall of China. By portraying China as “closed,” Kaulemans argues, Europeans could see themselves as “open,” by contrast, as valuing openness, and therefore as more Enlightened, in terms of the European intellectual Enlightenment movement, placing great value on the “open” free flow of information. The free flow of information is a progressive thing, a key to advancement and development of a society, while China’s closedness (to Europeans, at least; whether info flowed freely within China or not is a separate matter) is seen as backwards and self-stifling.

The second side of this Enlightenment discourse of openness which I thought quite interesting was the suggestion that (some? many?) Dutch writers saw the key to advanced, Enlightenment-era power not in possessing territory, but in strength in maritime trade. The idea of the oceans as being an open, free space belonging to no one (and thus to everyone), Keulemans tells us, was a rather new idea at this time, and a major element of this discourse of Enlightened “openness.” I think it should come as no surprise that the Dutch, who were a rather powerful maritime power & wealthy economy at this time and who controlled very little territory compared to Spain, Portugal, France or England, should think this way.

Joost van den Vondel, a rare Catholic Dutchman writing at the time, drawing upon similar discourses, and informed by Jesuit missionaries operating within the Chinese Court, blamed the fall of the Ming on the Emperor’s isolation from knowledge of the outside world. The walls built by the Emperors, he wrote, proved insufficient to defend the realm from invaders. If only they had converted to Christianity, he asserted, China would be able to defend itself against any invasion. In true Catholic fashion, he ignores, or is incapable of seeing, that converting to Christianity would itself be succumbing to foreign influence. How much of Chinese culture and identity – from ancestor worship & local deities, to the political culture surrounding the Emperor’s relationship to Heaven, to the geomantic significance of the layout of palaces and cities, to the numerous Court rituals – would be irretrievably destroyed, lost, if the country converted to Catholicism? But I guess we can’t blame van den Vondel for being a product of his times.

This idea of “openness” is, of course, not so foreign to us, as it is not so different from the logics behind the Open Door Policy extended to (imposed upon) China by the Western powers in the 19th century, and the attitudes surrounding Commodore Perry’s mission to “open” Japan in the 1850s. But, to see it emerging two hundred years earlier, and in a particularly Dutch flavor, is quite interesting. I’d be curious to learn more about exactly how it was articulated, and how it played out, at that time.

For the sake of length, I will leave my summary/discussion of the third paper on this panel, one by Satoko Shimazaki, until the next blog post.

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Kabuki-za Kansei!

歌舞伎座完成！ The new Kabuki-za, under construction since 2010, is now complete, and ready to open in April. The previous incarnation was constructed in 1950, and lasted throughout the post-war, until now – this is the first time in history that the Kabuki-za was intentionally taken down, rather than being destroyed by earthquake or fire. Why did they dismantle it and built it anew, from the ground up? I don’t know. They say it was in order to install better, newer, systems for protecting the building from earthquakes. This is purely a hunch, a gut feeling, but it sounds to me like a cover-up sort of answer, like there was some other reason for doing it.

In any case, now that it’s complete, plenty of blogs, news sites, and the like are covering the event.

*The blog Kokera-otoshi 13 is dedicated entirely to the topic of the rebuilding; there are only a few entries that have been posted, but they’re quite beautifully done. I expect that now that the building is complete, we should be able to expect more new and exciting posts in the near future.

A number of YouTubers have posted simple walkaround videos showing what the new building looks like. We’ve been seeing concept drawings for quite some time, and now we get to see the real thing. My main reaction? It’s very white. Looks almost unreal, it’s so perfectly clean. Kind of recalls for me the white, clean, aesthetic of, well, I don’t know the word for it, but of a particular brand of post-modern / ultra-modern architecture. Actually, what I think it reminds me of more than anything else is a reproduction – its perfect, brand-new, so-clean facade reminds me of the Hawaii Byodoin, an extremely clean- and new-looking full-scale replica of the actual Byodoin, in Uji (near Kyoto), which, by contrast, looks old, historical, authentic. Ah, but the new Kabuki-za will look and feel authentic before too long. We’ll all get used to it.

What’s really important is that, contrary to some people’s fears, yes, it does indeed look just like it always has – they didn’t omit or dramatically alter the 1889 Imperial Style pseudo-Azuchi-Momoyama facade – and, the skyscraper, in my opinion, really doesn’t look like it detracts at all. Even if it isn’t really, the skyscraper tower looks like a separate building, behind the theatre. It almost sort of melts into the background, amid the other skyscrapers of Ginza.

What do you think?

*Meanwhile, Jiji Press has published a photo of a massive snow sculpture replica of the Kabuki-za, exhibited at this year’s Sapporo Snow Festival (Yuki Matsuri).

*And, here, from Shôchiku themselves, a brief article (in Japanese) on the raising of the yagura earlier this week. The yagura (lit. “tower”) is the purple cloth cube hung above the entrance to the theatre announcing, or indicating, that the theatre is open and featuring productions that week/month. Unlike the castle-like architectural style of the Kabuki-za, this is a tradition going back to the Edo period, and extremely similar yagura can be seen hoisted above the Nakamura-za, Ichimura-za, Yamamura-za, and Morita-za in ukiyo-e prints from the time.

Grand Opening performances, called kokera-otoshi (“falling shingles,” implying the building is so new the shingles are still falling off.. or something?), will last for six months. I very much hope that I get to go visit Japan this summer and get to see some of these performances.

In the meantime, as I come across more news, pictures, and video, I’ll keep updating about it.

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A Cage of Fireflies at Kumu Kahua

While in Hawaii a couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing the sold-out production, “A Cage of Fireflies,” at Kumu Kahua Theatre. Written by local playwright Daniel Akiyama, the play takes place entirely within the Honolulu apartment of a pair of elderly Okinawan-American kibei sisters; kibei 帰米, meaning “returned to America,” is a term referring to Japanese- or Okinawan-Americans who were sent to Japan or Okinawa as children, to be raised and educated within the Japanese/Okinawan education system and culture, and who then returned to the United States. These two, along with their third sister who frequently visits, comprise the entire cast. Through mundane conversations about family events and everyday interpersonal frictions, the play addresses themes of tradition and identity – questions of how to live as an Okinawan-American in Hawaii, what constitutes tradition or Okinawan identity, and how to go forward in the everyday, and in the longer term.

Plays having anything to do with Okinawa are so rare, of course I was glad for the opportunity to get to see this one. And I am certainly glad that I did. Though the overall aesthetic, or mood, of the play is dreadfully modern and mundane, in the end, I could not help but find various aspects quite interesting, moving, engaging, and thought-provoking.

I suppose it is both a positive and a negative aspect of this play (and of so much else besides) that it makes me struggle to decide what I think of it. On the one hand, what drew me to Okinawan Studies to begin with was how colorful and upbeat the culture is, how beautiful, exotic and exciting. Okinawa in my mind is blue skies, white clouds, green trees, blue seas, and white sand; it’s lively, upbeat music and culture otherwise which is keenly in tune with up-to-date trends and fashions (e.g. pop/rock music, street fashion, clever t-shirts) while also drawing upon a vibrant tradition. For me, Okinawa is purple (or blue?) headscarves and taiko, red tile roofs and multi-colored bingata fabrics. It is a bright, colorful, culturally vibrant history full of kings and priestesses, envoys and musicians, scholar-bureaucrats, aristocrats, sailors, merchants, warriors and artisans. And, so, it is frustrating for me when time and time again I see Okinawan culture represented through a lens of the melodramatized issues of ordinary, everyday immigrant families, so disconnected from all of that, and so enmeshed in the same limited set of contemporary/modern concerns.

The plot, for the most part, centers on the youngest and eldest sisters, Kimiko and Yukiko, who live together and tailor or repair clothes for the family of the middle sister, Mitsuko. Mitsuko constantly talks of her children and grandchildren for whom these clothes are being sewn, actively engaged in a busy everyday American/Hawaii life full of recitals and soccer practice and the like, while the other two sisters, it seems, scarcely leave the house, let alone engage in much of a social life at all. In fact, these two do not speak English, but only Japanese (all the dialogue in the play is in English, but we are to understand that it is Japanese), and speak frequently of eventually going “back home” to Okinawa, though in truth it’s been many years since they’ve been there.

I am not sure there is much to be said about the sets, props, and costumes, beyond that I was impressed that the taps in the kitchen sink actually worked. In this respect, it seems very much a play in the mode of realism; not trying to do anything innovative or artistic with staging, but rather reproducing realistically, believably, a very plain, typical Honolulu apartment. The acting, however, was not quite so believable. Watching Dian Kobayashi (Kimiko, the youngest sister) and Kat Koshi (Yukiko, the oldest sister), it was hard to forget they were actors, and to think of them as their characters. There were moments, to be sure, but overall, with my sincere apologies for saying so, they felt more scripted, more unnaturally dramatic, than Karen Yamamoto Hackler (Mitsuko, the middle sister), who seemed quite natural throughout the play, and who truly melted into her character. This sort of stilted, dramatic mode of performance can often be extremely appropriate, and effective, when it is a conscious stylistic choice, for a show that is meant to seem unreal, one that is meant to be abstract, allegorical or metaphorical. When I attended a dramatic reading of Ôshiro Tatsuhirô’s The Cocktail Party, this worked fairly well, as each character was clearly meant to be a stand-in, or allegory, for sides in contemporary Okinawan political issues (e.g. the American serviceman, the American civilian, the Okinawan who suffered during the war, the Chinese man who suffered during the war, the Japanese man who was not involved in the war, the Okinawan woman who is too young to have been directly affected by the war). But that was a dramatic reading, and, I assume, an intentional choice of performance style. I doubt that it was a conscious choice here.

A set of kimonos and other textiles, selected or woven himself by Alfred Yama Kina were gorgeous; it is a shame we did not get to see more of them.

Though the mundaneness of the content of the plot really grated on me at first, by the end of the play, we began to see important themes begin to show through. The eldest sister as having her mind situated in a pre-war conception of what Okinawa is like, and her identity very much in belonging to a pre-war or traditional Okinawa, and not in assimilating or adjusting into American life. She holds on strongly to tradition – not to traditions that truly go back to the brightest heights of the Ryukyu Kingdom, but only to the tradition within which she grew up: a very domestic, mundane sort of tradition centered around tailoring clothing and around her experiences as a child in Okinawa. The youngest sister, it emerges, is sort of trapped by this eldest sister, with whom she lives, having never mustered the courage, it would seem, or the independence of thinking, to stand up to her sister and to say or think anything different, nor to act upon that. We don’t really know how long the two have maintained this same routine, day after day, isolated from the world changing and moving forward outside their apartment, but we get the impression it has been forever – and after however many years, only now does she finally start to express that she wants to explore the world outside the apartment, and that she wants to learn English. She represents, I suppose, a portion of Okinawan-American society that is afraid, or hesitant, to move forward, to know how to move forward, to negotiate a new balance of American/Okinawan & traditional/modern identity. And which is controlled, influenced, by the great discursive strength of the community, of their elders, who wield a monopoly on defining proper Okinawan identity and tradition, or at least claim to. Meanwhile, the middle sister, Mitsuko, has moved forward, creating a new version of Okinawan-American identity, still observing various observances, but performing Okinawan identity mainly through social/community events, such as the Okinawa Festival, something that rings of the same kind of energy as Little League soccer practice.

The family has a set of kimono, which crossed the ocean three times, and which serve as a powerful keepsake or heirloom, a symbol of the family’s history. That the eldest sister wishes to keep them in the tansu (chest), “where they belong,” and just keep them there, regardless of whether anyone ever looks at them, let alone wears them, is a subtle, but excellent, symbol of her attitude towards tradition – to just keep it, preserved, static in a set form from a given not-so-distant time in the past. Mitsuko, the middle sister, comments that some families hang their kimono on the wall, on display, celebrating their history and heirlooms, and performing their traditions and identity in that way. When she declares that she has had them chopped up, to make new, modern garments that the family might actually wear, and framed sections which can be hung on the wall, I gasped. And it was in that moment that I realized the greatest strength of the play – it addresses all of these issues, but acknowledges the complexity, the difficulty, and does not shove any one answer down the throats of the audience. Whoever you are, whatever your views on this matter, you can identify with one of the three sisters. And, then, these moments, these questions come up that force you to think about the other side of the issue. Up until that moment where she talks about chopping up the kimono, I found myself mostly siding with Mitsuko against Yukiko’s stale lifestyle. You can practically smell the mothballs, imagine the dusty, stale air. Reminds me of my uncles’ apartment in Brooklyn, where nothing has changed in I don’t know how many decades. But then Mitsuko talks about chopping up the kimono, and I gasped. I have seen some of these garments – blouses, vests, neckties made in part from old kimono – and while it does provide an opportunity for me to get to wear such things and express my Japanese-affiliated interest/connection/identity in a more everyday setting (actually wearing kimono is such a rare occurrence), still, I find myself very much in support of the threatened, endangered, hopefully beginning to revive, kimono industry & kimono culture. I so wish more people in Japan would wear wafuku more often.

I wish we could have plays/productions that were set in historical periods, or which made more use of traditional Okinawan music, dance, and costume, or related otherwise to the history and culture of the Ryukyu Kingdom at its height, rather than these endless performances of Okinawan identity as defined by contemporary/modern political or immigrant issues. How wonderful it would be to see an Okinawan play that features Confucian scholar-aristocrats, whether in Ryukyu, in Japan, or in China, or which tells the story of an episode in Okinawan history. The various events surrounding the fall of the kingdom, the arrival of King Shô Tai in Tokyo, and the Ryukyuan royal family taking on the costume and customs of the new “modern” Japanese aristocracy, could make for a great play, to name just one that wouldn’t require too extensively pre-modern sets, props, costumes, etc., and which might not necessarily get into the issue of the language spoken. I appreciate the difficulties of doing a properly traditional-style kumi udui in Hawaii (or anywhere else outside of Japan), but, if we can have Shakespearean-style performances set in any and every historical period, surely, how hard could it be to do something set in a pre-20th century Okinawa?

That said, tired as I am of these modern themes, “A Cage of Fireflies” addresses them well, provoking the audience to think and rethink their attitudes, and their relationship to tradition and identity. It may not draw you into its world the way the greatest theatre does – its world being the very one you’re already in, living in contemporary Hawaii – but it does go beyond its utterly mundane plotline to address much deeper issues and concepts, and to make the viewer think, and in that, it is truly a successful, powerful piece of theatre.

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Loss of a Legend: Ichikawa Danjûrô passes away

Sad news again from the kabuki world. Frankly, I’m still a little bit in shock, and finding it hard to believe.

A friend just posted on my Facebook wall a few hours ago a link to the New York Times obituary for Nakamura Kanzaburô, who passed away this past December. Looking at her post, I got to thinking about when, at some point in the future, Danjûrô would pass away as well. I never suspected it would be so soon. Not even five minutes later, I scrolled down to see a post from Kabuki scholar Matsuba Ryoko, linking to a Mainichi Shinbun article stating that Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjûrô had succumbed to pneumonia, and died earlier today, Feb 3rd. Here is the article from the English-language version of the Mainichi.

Danjûrô was, pretty much by definition, the most prominent actor in the kabuki world. His passing, especially combined with that of Kanzaburô, marks the end of an era. I feel terribly privileged to have gotten to see them both perform, to have met Danjûrô, and to have gotten his autograph, and to think that, some years down the road, when it is a new Kabuki-za that everyone has grown familiar with, and a new Danjûrô and a new Kanzaburô who grace its stage, I’ll be able to think of myself as someone who has been a fan since the previous generation – someone who remembers the previous Kabuki-za, the previous Kanzaburô, and the previous Danjûrô.

Of course, none of this is about me, or really about the art, the theatre; though the kabuki world and its fans have of course lost a legend today, my heart goes out too to his family – his son, prominent actor Ichikawa Ebizô who has just lost his father, and all of Danjûrô’s other close and extended family and friends.

You will be dearly missed, sir.

I expect we will be seeing more from the Japanese media in coming days. This truly marks the beginning of a new era of Kabuki.

My good friend Brigid and myself, with Danjûrô, outside the Kabuki-za in January 2008.

EDIT: Additional articles and links:
*Obituary/Article at Kabuki-bito.jp, the Shôchiku official website

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Dramaturging The Vengeful Sword: Pre-Show Talk

Two years ago, I was honored to play a small role in a Hawaii Kabuki production, The Vengeful Sword, and to serve as dramaturg. This involved doing research on a variety of elements that come up in the play – including the historical events that inspired the play, the history of the locations, the meaning of certain terms – and sharing the results of my research with the cast & crew via a private (closed) blog. I’ve posted before, on numerous occasions, about the production, but now, I’m finally getting around to re-posting, publicly, some of that content. I hope you find it interesting.

During the run of the show, I enjoyed the privilege of delivering a public pre-show talk, sharing some of my research with the audience. I’m posting the content of that talk below.

Minna san mo, kitte kudasanseee. I have… with kabuki… fallen in love

Yes, fallen in love. And I am very excited that during my short time here at UH, I should get to not only see a kabuki production, but to actually play a small part in one.

I’m honored as well to get to serve as dramaturg for this show, and just to be involved, alongside such an amazing cast and crew, and to be a part of a now 87-year-old tradition of English-language kabuki at UH.

I do not know if I will ever have the chance to be involved in a kabuki production again, and so being here is truly a privilege. To Dr. Iezzi, Kikunobu-sensei, and everyone else, I offer my sincerest gratitude.

As dramaturg, I have enjoyed immensely researching various aspects of the early modern Japanese setting of the play – from the history of the town of Furuichi, to the meaning of the name of the titular vengeful sword, to the status and responsibilities of the taikomochi, my own role in the play. I shared what I found with the cast, both through an online blog, and of course in person, hopefully aiding some of my fellow cast members in better understanding their roles, or at least entertaining them with interesting information. Tonight, I take pleasure in sharing some of what I found, with all of you.

The Vengeful Sword is a story of a samurai in search of an important missing heirloom sword, and also a story of relationship drama, scheming and intrigues.

It is a faithful English-language translation of the traditional kabuki play Ise Ondo Koi no Netaba, which debuted in Osaka in 1796, and which has been performed at UH once before, in 1938 under the title “The Quest of Shimosaka.”

The play takes place in and around the town of Furuichi, near Ise, the location of the most ancient and most sacred Shinto shrine in Japan. But most of the action takes place at the Abura Teahouse, one of the most famous and popular teahouses in the area. Personally, I much prefer the refined, classy euphemism, but just so we’re clear, when I say “teahouse,” we’re talking about a house of prostitution, a brothel.

So, you must be thinking, why are there teahouses in Ise? Isn’t Ise a holy place where people go on sacred pilgrimage? Well, you’re right of course. But, in fact, prostitution in Japan, and presumably in many places around the world, got its start at rural inns along major pilgrimage routes.

In case you are not familiar with the geography of Japan, you can see Ise as a blue star on this map. It’s sort of in the central-western part of the country, only about an hour and a half from Osaka or Kyoto by train today. You can also see, shaded in red, Awa province, on the island of Shikoku, another place which figures in the play.

The town of Furuichi, located on the road which runs between the Inner Shrine and Outer Shrine areas of Ise, though in some respects a rather quiet out-of-the-way village, saw many pilgrims on their way to the Grand Shrine. The town grew, therefore, mainly as a result of the demand from these travelers for places to eat, drink, and stay the night; since it was fairly customary for pilgrims to give in to enjoyments such as alcohol, eating meat, and other pleasures after a long period of abstaining while on pilgrimage, the demand for these things played a major role in Furuichi’s development.

By the 1790s, the town of Furuichi boasted 70 prominent teahouses, and roughly 1000 courtesans, that is, prostitutes, ranking third among pleasure districts in the country, after the Yoshiwara in the shogun’s capital of Edo, and the Shimabara in the Imperial capital of Kyoto. The most prominent teahouses in the district were the multi-storied Bizen-ya, the Sugimoto-ya, and the Abura-ya, where most of tonight’s play takes place.

These teahouses were particularly famous for their performances of the Ise Ondo dance, a famous and popular attraction exclusive to the area, after which our play, Ise Ondo Koi no Netaba, is in part named. You will hear the Ise Ondo music throughout the play, and will see several of my beautiful and talented fellow cast members perform the dance later on in the evening.

The district also had three or four puppet theatres and three kabuki theatres, along with an establishment called Osugi to Otama, which was famous for its shamisen performances; not simply musical performers, the shamisen players at Osugi to Otama are said to have been especially skilled at dodging coins thrown at them by the audience, or catching them or flicking them away with their bachi (the plectrum with which the shamisen is played).

Both kabuki plays and actors often got their starts in Furuichi, before making their debuts in the more major theatres of Kyoto and Osaka. It was often said, “if you can’t make it in Ise, you’ll never tread on the cypress stages of Kyoto and Osaka.” Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura, or “Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees,” one of the most famous and popular plays in the entire kabuki repertoire, is among those which was performed first in Furuichi. Kabuki is sadly not so strong today in Ise, but in recent years, there have been revivals of this play, Ise Ondo, and of other pieces, as part of summer festivals in the area.

Now, before we return to the subject of the Abura Teahouse itself, let me take a few moments to discuss some prominent items you will see in the play, starting with The Vengeful Sword itself.

The Aoi Shimosaka sword, as it is called, is a valuable heirloom which has been in Manjirō’s family for generations. Now, he has been tricked into pawning it and must try to get it back. But what does the name Aoi Shimosaka mean?

A little research revealed that it was forged by a swordsmith named Shimosaka Yasutsugu, born sometime around 1532 in a place called Shimosaka. He later moved to Echizen province, which is today Fukui prefecture, and took on the name Echizen Shimosaka, a name that he and his disciples (and their disciples) would then etch into the swords they produced.

Yasutsugu I, the originator of this lineage of swordsmiths, was later in his life granted the honor of using the family crest of the Tokugawa shoguns. The crest consists of a design of three leaves from a plant known as aoi, and thus the Aoi Shimosaka sword got its name. You will see in tonight’s play several characters looking intently at the blade, possibly in search of the name “Shimosaka”, or for this three-leafed aoi crest, in order to figure out which sword is the Aoi Shimosaka they are all seeking.

Another item central to the plot is the certificate of authenticity, a document that certifies that this sword is indeed the Aoi Shimosaka, and not just another dull blade. Here is a certificate, or kanteisho, for another sword, which I think gives us a sense of what the certificate Mitsugi is searching for looks like.

[Bonus: As I was putting together this blog post, I just came across an actual certificate of authenticity for an actual Shimosaka sword. Check it out.]

You can see on the right the name of the swordsmith, Heianjo Fujiwara Hiroyuki, which helps us date this blade to sometime between 1615 and 1624, the only period when this name was used. The document also provides the length of the blade, and then ends, at the far left, with the date of the document, and the signature and seal of Hosokawa Moritatsu, the man who drew up this certificate, certifying the authenticity of this sword.

There are of course a great many things you will see tonight in the play which I would love to talk about, from kimono to shamisen to hair ornaments and wooden clogs, or geta, but I think I’ll take time to mention just two more, briefly.

Here we see Manjiro, with a sort of cloth called a tenugui wrapped around his head. It serves both to protect his lovely hairdo, and to hide his face somewhat as he makes his way to the teahouse. He is worried about his reputation, and is trying to keep it a secret that he frequents the teahouse.

The word tenugui means “something to wipe your hands on”, but the cloth only came to be called that later. In the early modern period, such cloths were used primarily for this sort of purpose – covering the head and protecting the hair. Men and women both at this time used oils and wax to hold their hair in place, and some women, such as courtesans, had especially elaborate hairdos that would need to get protected from wind and rain, from low-hanging tree branches, and the like.

Tenugui can be worn and used in many ways. In addition to Manjiro hiding his face, you will see one of our lovely hawkers protecting her hairdo with a tenugui.

Speaking of the hawkers, they will be out here shortly, before the show begins, selling souvenir Hawaii Kabuki tenugui. All the proceeds go to the disaster relief efforts in Japan, and the hawkers will be happy to show you all kinds of ways you can use the tenugui.

Another thing you will see in the play is a number of characters smoking long thin pipes like this one. These are called kiseru.

Longer and thinner than the pipes we may be used to in the West, with a smaller bowl, the kiseru was made mainly of bamboo, with metal ends made of bronze, brass, silver, or gold. Contrary to the associations we may draw regarding smoking in China, or the assumptions we may make given the shape of the pipe, this is a tobacco pipe, not an opium pipe. Opium never caught on in Japan, perhaps because of the lack of British access to the country, but tobacco did, following its introduction in the late 16th or early 17th century by the Portuguese or Dutch. And since the Spanish and Portuguese did not smoke pipes at the time, we can assume it was the Dutch who introduced the kiseru.

I do not believe that it was particularly popular at the time to smoke privately, nor logistically viable to smoke on the street as we might do today with cigarettes. Rather, smoking was primarily a social activity at the time, something enjoyed alongside saké, food, music or dancing, and conversation within the teahouse.

Speaking of which, let us return to the subject of the Abura-ya, perhaps the most famous teahouse in the district.
Like other teahouses, the Aburaya would have had multiple rooms for entertaining guests, including smaller rooms towards the back for more important customers who desired greater privacy or discretion, and larger rooms towards the front for larger parties.

There was also a dance stage, as you can see here, where the Ise Ondo would be performed. In one former teahouse [Actually, a geisha house] which I visited in Japan, which has been turned into a sort of museum or historical house, all the women’s living spaces, the kitchen, storage for kimono and hair ornaments, and the like were on the ground floor, while all the entertaining spaces were upstairs, but I am not sure that this is necessarily how the Abura-ya would have been arranged.

Today, the Abura-ya and, arguably, the entire district of Furuichi, is known chiefly for this one play, and for the real-life historical events which inspired it.

On a summer night in 1796, a local doctor and regular patron of the Abura-ya, 27-year-old Magofuku Itsuki, quite possibly drunk, or at least drunk, it is said, with jealous rage, pulled his sword inside the teahouse, killing three and injuring six. Little is known about what exactly set him off, what sort of problems or issues he was having, who had angered him or how. But, as is quite often the case in kabuki, simply knowing that such an event occurred was more than enough to inspire a new play, and to serve as the core of its plot.

Hearing of these events, and of amateur performances being produced locally in Ise, and knowing how much audiences love this sort of dramatic, action-packed story of jealousy and revenge, some of the top playwrights in Osaka at the time took the story, added various dramatic elements, deceptions and plot twists, and transformed this shocking and tragic event into an exciting and dramatic theatrical production, which then opened in Osaka two and a half months later.

Itsuki committed suicide at his uncle’s house two days after the incident, and was buried at the nearby Buddhist temple Dairinji, which you will see is mentioned in the play. Meanwhile, his love, the courtesan Okon, only 16 at the time, survived and lived a relatively long life, dying of illness at the age of 49 and being buried alongside him at Dairinji. You can still visit the grave today, and actors often do, paying their respects before taking on the roles of Mitsugi and Okon.

Little remains today of the inns, theatres, and teahouses of Furuichi, except for stone markers indicating their former locations. Nevertheless, I hope this summer to visit, to pay my respects at Dairinji, see the Ise Ondo dances, and perhaps have a meal at the Chinese restaurant that now stands where the Abura-ya once did.

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