Japan Society of Fairfield County
Culture Watch, Society Watch (11)
by Dr. Ikuko Anjo Jassey
I like any sort of entertainment; from
those for the highly intellectuals to those for the general populace. I
don't mind any forms of entertainment, either: dances, plays, movies,
puppets, songs, circuses, and vaudevilles. However, I cannot enjoy
plays or movies much in this country because of my language barrier,
particularly when it is a Woody Allen's piece of work. It just gives me
a miserable feeling or frustration, while giving my Jewish husband a
hearty laugh and contentment. So, when I read an article in a newspaper
about the coming of a Japanese popular theatre called "taishu-engeki,"
I jumped up with joy and fetched my husband to the 90-seat Kraine
Theatre near Chinatown in Manhattan on a hot July day.
In the 1950s when I was a child,
television was not yet spread much in rural Japan; therefore, a
traveling theatre troupe, which came to our village in late November on
the occasion of our annual harvest festival, was something I looked
forward to. The troupe stayed in our village for two nights. A
temporary stage was built on the grounds of the shrine. It was an
open-air theatre. Perhaps, more than a hundred village people sat on
their straw mats spread on the ground, covering themselves with thick
winter jackets and/or blankets. I was one of those village people. I
didn't mind the cold air biting my cheeks and creeping from the ground.
The program consisted of a sword play and dances each night, and yet
they performed different plays and different dances. So, I went both
nights. After I became nine or ten years old, I went alone, without my
mother, which meant I had to go back home all by myself around 11:00
p.m. Since my house was on a mountain pass leading to another village,
I had to take a path built between rice fields and mountains. It was a
little bit scary to walk alone, but I did, humming under the big yellow
full moon shining in the navy blue sky. My enthusiasm in plays and
dances was stronger than my fear for the silence of night, which made
me act intrepidly like a soldier.
The pop theatre company which came to
New York was lead by Ryuji Sawa who was an actor as well as a
tateshi(an instructor who teaches actors how to wield a sword). Sawa
was born and raised in a dressing room at his parents' theatre and has
been performing on the stage since he was four years old. With the
spread of television in the 1960s, the popularity of traveling theatre
troupes gradually declined; however, in the 1980s, it was revived,
represented by Tomio Umezawa, a female impersonator, who immensely
contributed to galvanize pop theatre. Presumably, Sawa took this boom
to activate his company, creating what he named "samurai musical"--a
mixture of a sword play, dancing, and singing-- that made him a star of
the pop theatrical world. Since then, he has been appearing in TV
dramas, movies, and on stage.
Still, Sawa introduced himself as "a
traveling actor" who was once regarded at the bottom of the social
class, saying, "Regardless whatever I am now, my roots are in a
traveling theatre." He acts, dances, and sings. "Today," according to
one of the actresses in her dancing costume, "there are about 100
troupes in Japan." Sawa's traveling company has nine actors and
actresses, which is far smaller in number, compared to that of his
parents' days. The actress whom I had spoken to responded to my other
question, saying, "Yes, we receive a monthly salary from Sawa-san,
which is about 15,000 yen (150 dollars)." And then she added
voluntarily, "All of the young actors and actresses in our theatre are
college graduates. Most of us majored in theatre." Society changes, and
so does the educational level of a pop theatre member. They have chosen
to become traveling actors and actresses, simply because they love
theatre.
The two-hour show was more like an
experimental stage, prior to their scheduled Broadway performance in
2007, including a touch of a play, dancing, taiko drumming, and
singing. Among the programs, the most fascinating performance was a
less-than-ten-minute "drama" performed by a young star-actor; a young
man wearing jeans applied full make-up, wore a wig, put on a kimono and
a belt in amazing speed and transformed himself into a beautiful geisha
in front of our eyes.
We paid only twenty dollars, the same
price we would pay in Japan for a popular theatre ticket. It was
certainly more than worthy of the price. At the end of the show, all
the actors and actresses in their costume lined up on the stage and
then, hurriedly ran to the exit of the theatre, greeting us, "Thank you
for coming. Please come and see us again tomorrow. Thank you." Their
vigor, energy, pride, love, and devotion for theatre were as hot as the
bright summer sun.
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