Guilt, Nostalgia, and Victimhood: Korea in the Japanese Theatrical Imagination

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei
Keyword(s):  
Associate Editor ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Post War ◽  
Terayama Shuji

How has post-war Japanese theatre grappled with Japanese responsibility for its imperialistic/militaristic past in Asia, and for institutionalized discrimination against resident minorities? Using the tools of guilt, nostalgia, and the valorization of victimhood that are embedded in the idea of hōgan biiki (sympathy for the loser/victims), Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei here analyzes Japan's often contradictory, flip-flopping self-image as both victimizer and victim in relation to Korea and resident Koreans. Looking at both mainstream and alternative performances, her article suggests that despite attempts to discuss these issues openly, most theatre artists actually present images that soften or displace responsibility for the past. Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA, and was recently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universität, Berlin. An authority on post-war Japanese and cross-cultural performance, she is also a translator, director, and award-winning playwright. Her books include Unspeakable Acts: the Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan and the co-authored Theatre Histories: an Introduction. She has published numerous articles and presented papers and keynotes throughout the world. Professor Sorgenfrei is Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal and Editor of the Association for Asian Performance Newsletter.

“From Postcolonial Literature to World Literature”

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-487
Author(s):  
Kuei-fen Chiu
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
Award Winning

Abstract Starting with an analysis of the award-winning literary documentary Le Moulin, this paper argues that the film’s reconstruction of Le Moulin Poetry Society in colonial Taiwan suggests world literature as an alternative framework for studying Taiwan literature within cross-cultural contexts. Taiwan literature has been predominantly studied as “postcolonial literature” vis-à-vis Japanese literature and, more recently, “Sinophone literature” in relation to mainland Chinese literature. Instead of deliberating on the subjugated position of Taiwan literature in relation to dominant literatures, the documentary film celebrates the avant-garde experimentation by Le Moulin Poetry Society and underscores the connection of Taiwan literature to world literature through the mediation of Japanese writers. Its employment of what can be called “performative historiography” to fulfill this task raises significant questions about the reinvention of literature, literary canonization, and literary historiography in a new age.

‘Supernatural Soliciting’: Pathways from Betrayal to Retribution in Macbeth and Yotsuya Kaidan

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
International Research ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Ghost Stories ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Research Fellow ◽  
Intercultural Performance ◽  
International Research Institute ◽  
Terayama Shuji

Although written two centuries apart and in divergent cultures, the kabuki play Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan and Shakespeare's Macbeth exhibit marked similarities (as well as differences) in plot. Here, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei analyzes some of the ways that these plays reflect (mostly male) anxieties regarding shifting patterns of gender and political power in Jacobean England and Tokugawa Japan. Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is a specialist in Japanese theatre and intercultural performance, and was recently a Research Fellow at the International Research Institute in Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Free University, Berlin. She is the author of Unspeakable Acts: the Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan (University of Hawaii, 2005) and co-author of Theatre Histories: an Introduction (Routledge, third edition, 2015). She is also a playwright whose latest play, Ghost Light, is a contemporary fusion of Macbeth and Yotsuya Ghost Stories, in which the ghost of a Japanese-American actress returns to wreak vengeance on the husband who betrayed her. The play will be staged as an Equity Showcase in New York in Autumn 2015.

scholarly journals Emperor Tomato Ketchup: Some Reflections on Carnality and Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Došen
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Tomato Ketchup ◽  
Turbulent Times ◽  
Graphic Content ◽  
Terayama Shuji

Terayama Shuji is one of the most prominent Japanese avant-garde artists of the 20th century. This paper explores Terayama’s experimental film Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1971), dealing with children’s rebellion against (masculine) authority. With an apparent lack of conventional narrative, this 16mm tinted black and white feature, shot in documentary style, was filmed in public without permission, demonstrating the guerilla tactics of Terayama’s experimental approach. Reflecting the turbulent times of Japan’s 1960s, when the quest for reinvention of national identity was compellingly engaged both right and left, Emperor Tomato Ketchup illustrates a dystopian Japan where the brutal revolution of ‘innocent’ and immature takes place. The focus of this paper is on the notion of carnality and politics of postwar Japan, as film’s transgressive graphic content of pre-pubescent children’s sexual encounter with women can still be perceived as radical. Article received: December 26, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Došen, Ana. "Emperor Tomato Ketchup: Some Reflections on Carnality and Politics." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): . doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.230

Optimism, Traffic, and the Historic City in Post-War British Planning

Boom Cities ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 14-34
Author(s):  
Otto Saumarez Smith
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Historical Buildings ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
British Planning ◽  
Economic Future ◽  
Historic City ◽  
Second World

The first chapter introduces the way architectural and planning ideas were conceived and perceived as responses to concurrent British concerns and ambitions. A widespread optimism about Britain’s economic future led planners to revise many of their assumptions about planning that had been formed in the aftermath of the Second World War. This chapter stresses the centrality of the growth of traffic for architectural thinking in the period, while also showing how architect-planners were influenced by a cross-cultural reinvestment in distinctly urban values, often centred on the slippery term ‘urbanity’. Planners developed an approach to the buildings of the past, where what was at stake was providing a new environment to a selected number of historical buildings, often at the expense of the more mundane built fabric of cities.

Alluring Ambiguity: Gender and Cultural Politics in Modern Japanese Performance

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-351
Author(s):  
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
International Research ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Intercultural Performance ◽  
International Research Institute ◽  
Suzuki Tadashi ◽  
Terayama Shuji

In contrast to most studies of cultural nationalism, which tend to focus on literary style, narrative devices, or the static visual arts, in this article Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei analyzes the ways that Japanese actors deploy physical and vocal techniques in portraying gender and ethnic ambiguity. Expanding on her recent work on actor-dancer Itō Michio (1893–1961), she uses the concept of J-centrism (Japancentrism) to demonstrate how modern Japanese performing bodies (in both traditional and contemporary genres) imply political meaning – her title being a riff on Susan Sontag's famous essay ‘Fascinating Fascism’. While not suggesting that the artists under consideration promulgate fascism, Sorgenfrei maintains that the Japanese aesthetic preference for gender and ethnic ambiguity fuels the politics of Japanese cultural nationalism, even when the performers or directors adamantly disavow rightist, nationalistic ideologies. Through a focus on analysis of selected performances by Bando Tamasaburō and theoretical writings by Suzuki Tadashi, Sorgenfrei suggests that the performance of ambiguity by a single actor implies the ‘universality’ and cultural superiority of the Japanese body. Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is a specialist in Japanese theatre and intercultural performance, and was recently a Research Fellow at the International Research Institute in Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Free University, Berlin, where she researched the work of Japanese dancer Itō Michio. She is the author of Unspeakable Acts: the Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan (University of Hawaii, 2005) and co-author of Theatre Histories: an Introduction (Routledge, third edition 2015).

scholarly journals THE CONVERGENCE OF POETRY AND JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE CINEMA

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Marko S. Grubačić
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Models ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Experimental Cinema ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
Experimental Workshop ◽  
Post War ◽  
Terayama Shuji

Since poetry held a central position in the cultural life of the Japanese nation since the earliest times, the elements of poetic expression naturally grew into the spiritual space of the early Japanese films. This contribution seeks to analyse the insufficiently examined phenomenon of convergence of avant-garde poetry and "unconventional" or experimental cinema in the post-war period. Owing to, inter alia, the interdisciplinary work of the Experimental Workshop, an artistic collective inspired by European culture - active during the fifties of the past century - the poetic impulse continued to permeate the artistic climate in the next decade. Although the cinematic language of the next generation of artists owes more to the influence of American cultural models, the intertextual experiments by such avant-garde luminaries as the poet Terayama Shūji successfully transcended the limitations of particular artistic disciplines, creating an authentic expression on the intersection of literature, theater and film.

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