Frontmatter

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Page  2 RECENTLY PUBLISHED LATIN Reports from Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela-Alexandro JodorowAMERICAN sky: interview and film script-Glauber Rocha and Alex Viany on Cinema Novo-three new THEATRE plays by Triana, Diaz, Alvarado-also: The Constant Prince photo portfolio-essays on the Grotowski repertory by Brecht, Feldman, Kaplan, Kott, Ludlam, Richie-Stefan Brecht on LeRoi Jones' Slave Ship (T46) GENERAL Jan Kott on the Ikon and the Absurd-Alan Francovich on Genet and Fanon-Marc Fumaroli on ISSUE Barba's Ferai-Donald Kaplan on stage frightinterviews with Witold Gombrowicz, Anna Sokolow, Eugenio Barba. Firehouse Theatre, Joseph Dunn-Grotowski: Apocalypsis cum Figuris, interview, report from Odin Teatret training program-music: Somma, Epstein, Musica Elettronica Viva-new plays by James Lineberger and Herschel Hardin (T45) POLITICS Darko Suvin on the Paris Commune debate-Abbie Hoffman on Media Freaking AND -Lee Baxandall and Richard Schechner on radicalism and performance-Ralph PERFORMANCE J Gleason on politics and rock-Daniel Yang on Peking Drama-Simon Trussler on John Arden-Saul Gottlieb on the Radical Theatre RepertoryScripts: Estrin, Bullins, Macbeth, Arrabal, Ruibal, Theatre de I'Epee de. Bois, Peking Drama-Ann Halprin's US-documents: Pirandello, Papadopoulos (T44) RETURN OF THE An interview with Judith Malina and Julian Beck-Stefan Brecht, Irwin LIVING THEATRE Silber, Patrick McDermott on the Living Theatre-rehearsal notes for Paradise Now-also: Transactional Analysis, O'Horgan beginnings, Peter Brook, an interview with Joe Chaikin (T43) NATURALISM Edited by Rolf Fjelde, America's foremost _ _ translator of Ibsen. Articles by Esslin, SprinREVISITED chorn, Sarris, Baxandall, Fjelde, Lahr, Tovstonogov-a portfolio of Naturalist scene the drama review design, 1876-1965-previously untranslated works by Ibsen and Strindberg (T42) AMERICA'S LEADING THEATRE MAGAZINE r --- —-—. --- —_ --- —— _-__^ Name __________________________ I-I IAddress __ I City_ State _Zip I I One year subscription.............................................. $6.00 O I Two Year subscription......................................... $11.00 D Back issues, each (specify)........................................ $2.00 O Five back issues................................................... $8.00 Ten back issues................................................... $15.00 I T42 0 T43 [ T44 O T45 O T46 I I Allow six weeks for delivery Total payment enclosed $ I I The Drama Review, Dept. L, 32 Washington Place, New York, N.Y. 10003 L~ ~ _ _ _.__ _ _ _ __

Page  3 volume one number two summer 1970 two dollars fifty/eight hundred yen editors David Goodman Kazuko Fujimoto Goodman associate editors Yamamoto Kiyokazu Yamamoto Satoshi concerned theatre ianan contributing editors Hasegawa Shiro Hirosue Tamotsu Kijima Hajime Senda Koreya Tsuno Kaitaro design Oyobe Katsuhito photography Mikoshiba Shigeru staff Ishida Shuji Hi iragi Mitsuhiro Hotta Masahiko Beth Kodama Koike Kazuko Kurozumi Yasuko A Note on Names The Japanese names that appear in CTJ are given in the Japanese order: surnames first, then personal names. With names as with other Japanese words, all consonants are pronounced as in English with g always hard. A, i, and e are pronounced as short vowels; o and u are always long. When a sound is to be particularly stressed, consonants are Concerned Theatre Japan is published quarterly by Concerned Theatre Japan Co., Ltd. International subscriptions are U.S.$10.00 or the equivalent. Domestic subscriptions are Y3200. In both cases surfacemail postage and handling are included. Letters to the editor and all other correspondence should be addressed to Concerned Theatre Japan, Hikari-cho 2-13-25, Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo 185, Japan. printed in Japan by Asia Printing Co., Ltd. Copyright 1970 Concerned Theatre Japan Co., Ltd.

Page  4 L Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars The Bulletin is a scholarly-political quarterly published by a nationwide American organization of Asia specialists who are convinced that professional expertise should be combined with ethical and political concerns. The Bulletin provides the in-depth, radical analyses that are too rarely produced in the field of Asian scholarsh ip. In the two most recent issues of the Bulletin, Herbert Bix examines Japan's resurgent military-industrial complex; Angus McDonald and A I McCoy expose Pan Am's odious involvement with the Vietnam War; Ng6 Vinh Long dissects American chemical warfare, in Vietnam; Cynthia Frederick provides a full-scale analysis of the Cambodian War; Jacques Decornoy reports from a Pathet Lao liberated area; the "green revolution":is exposed; a portfolio of NLF drawings appears; and much more. Subscriptions to the Bulletin are $6.00 per year ($4.00 per year for students) and may be obtained by writing to The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars c/o The Bay Area Institute No. 9 Sutter Street, room 300 San Francisco, California 94104 U.S.A. 4

Page  5 CONTENTS Ampo Taisei: The Treaty System Lafcadio Black, text Mikoshiba Shigeru, Sumita Hiroyoshi, and Hirashima Hisayuki, photographs "Time is Just Retrogressin' As Far As Our Progress is Concerned" Okinawa 69-70 Yoshioka Kou and "Photoflock 1970" Senda Koreya: An Interview The Trinity of Modern Theatre Tsuno Kaitaro 8 16 33 47 81 Ekin Hiros6e Tamotsu, text Yada Kinichiro, photographs 101 125 The Songs and Revolution of Bharathi David Ludden Bal lad of Soldiers Hasegawa Shiro, lyrics Tani kawa Gen, music John Si Iver: The Beggar of Love Kara Juro The World as Public Toi let Yamamoto Kiyokazu 144

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Page  7 L JAPAN'S ONLY ALL-ENGLISH ARCHITECTURAL JOURNAL An exciting monthly journal directed at both professional architects and general readers with an interest in Japan, THE JAPAN ARCHITECT, over the months and years, tells you everything you want to know about Japanese buildings, including how to build them. What with the current worldwide interest in this subject, there must be many things you want to know. THE JAPAN ARCHITECT INTERNATIONAL EDITION OF SNINKENCNIKU Subscription Rates One year US$21.00 Three years US$52.50 (including sea mail postage) Two years US$36.75 Single copy US$2.50 SHINKENCHIKU-SHA CO., LTD. 31-2, Yushima, 2-chome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113, Japan Cable Address: JAPANARCH TOKYO

Ampo Taisei: The Treaty System

Lafcadio Black, text; Mikoshiba Shigeru, Sumita Hiroyoshi, and Hirashima Hisayuki, photographspp. 8

Page  8 Tokyo, June 24, 1970. Yesterday the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was renewed. According to today's paper, over 1,600,000 people took to the streets in protest. Some demonstrated peacefully, others stopped trains and fought with the police. In response to this largest movement in the history of the country, -the government did nothing except send out the police. The treaty renewed automatically. I can't get over that: I keep wondering, if you had listened very closely in front of the Diet Building, would you have at least been able to hear a "click?" There is something weird and ultratechnological about a treaty that renews itself automatically. One wonders what they will come up with next. Laws that pass themselves automatically? Politicians that elect themselves automatically? The possibilties are limitless. The fact remains, however, that with or without an audible "click," the Treaty System has locked itself into the 1970's. The government is congratulating itself on the evasion of a national crisis like that of 1960 when the streets were flooded daily, workers struck all over the country, millions signed antitreaty petitions, opposition Diet members were dragged out of the Diet by police (the renewal vote taken in their absence), Eisenhower's visit was cancelled, and the prime minister was forced to resign. It is true that 1970 has not had the crisis quality of 1960, despite the fact that more people took to the streets yesterday than on any single day of the 1960 demonstrations, and there are several reasons for this. Perhaps the most important is the fact that most opponents of the

Page  9 Treaty System and of Japan's new militarism have decided that the moment of renewal would not be so important strategically and are making more long range plans for the 1970's. But there is another reason. Over 14,000 students were arrested last year. Close to 400 universities and college campuses were invaded by the police. There is a constant figure of over 1,000 political prisoners in Tokyo jails. The government maintains a chillingly efficient riot police numbering in the tens of thousands, and the money and energy of radicals is being drained in court battles. I honestly do not know how many riot police there are altogether, but it was announced in the press that 20,000 came out for the demonstrations on the 14th of this month —one for every two demonstrators expected. The riot police, it should be mentioned, does not really constitute a police force —it does not, that is, do police work like direct traffic or fight crime. It is a small army kept on special bases in Tokyo and spending its time training to fight against the nation's citizens. What is the fighting all about? At present, the Security Treaty provides the structure through which Japan lends vital political and material support to the U.S. in the Indochinese War. And through that Treaty System, Japanese militarism is being reborn. It is considered by many to be virtually certain that before the decade is up Japanese troops will be fighting again on the Asian mainland, probably in Korea. This may come as a great shock to those for whom Japan has been a great symbol of peace and economic development. There was a time after 9

Page  10 the war when Japan seemed to offer possibilities which pacifists around the world hopefully clung to: here was a country which had renounced war in its constitution in defiance of all the rules of realpolitik, a country that claimed that it would stake its security on the goodwill of nations, a country that would "never forget." Though many do not know it yet, this precious illusion has been shattered. The reasons for this failure should be considered carefully by those who think that you can create peace by deciding to be very, very moral; or that you can fundamentally alter political and economic realities by changing your head, as John Lennon would have it, instead. For, if the Japanese example proves anything at all, it proves the ultimate impotence of even the most powerful sentimental resolution to "never forget the horrors of war," so long as that resolution is imbedded within an economic and political structure that can be held together only by military force. It is true that the postwar government of the Liberal Democratic Party ELDP] has concentrated on "peaceful economic policies." It has even seemed at times that the government had no politics at all but was only the Administrator of the Great Growth Rate. Japan has been labeled the "economic animal" by other Asians, and indeed it has been largely through its management of the postwar "economic miracle" that the LDP has stayed in power. But economics and politics cannot be so easily separated. Japan's economic growth exists within a certain kind of structure, the nature

Page  11 of which has profound political —and military —implications. And the first thing to understand about that structure is that it is an international one: it is a system dependent upon foreign markets, raw material imports, increasing overseas investment, and the cheap labor of "underdeveloped " countries. The second thing to understand about this structure is that it must expand: the stability of LDP rule in Japan is not dependent upon maintaining a certain level of prosperity but upon guaranteeing a 10% growth rate, the highest in the world. A friend pointed out to me the other day that at the present rate of increase, Japan's petroleum needs will equal the entire output of the Middle East in a very few years. And this increasing extraction of wealth, labor, and raw materials from the other countries of Asia cannot be done without profoundly transforming those countries. You cannot sell your products until you have created a consumer mentality. You cannot set up a factory until you have created a working class which is trained and disciplined to labor for a wage. And you cannot invest large sums of money in a country until you are relatively certain that the government which has promised to protect your investment and property rights is securely in power. (The reader may wonder at this recital of rather well-known economic realities, but I was asked by the editor to try to write this essay without reference to the word imperialism. I trust that having defined my terms no objection to their use will be made in the future.) The international economic system upon which Japan's prosperity

Page  12 depends is that collection of countries which calls itself the "free world." In Asia, the "free world" countries are, as everyone knows, mainly military dictatorships and sham democracies which require external military aid and intervention to protect them against their own people. Vital members of this international system are the present governments of South Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, South Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. Any economic animal which places as many chips as Japan on numbers like these must become a military animal or risk losing everything — something no economic animal ever does. The reasons why the military dimension of Japan's economic policies has been relatively invisible up to now is really quite simple: the military burden has been shouldered almost entirely by the U.S. At this point in history, Japan and the U.S. are not rivals but partners in what men in government like to call "the development of Asia." Japan's economic prosperity is something which has grown up within and through a system held together only by U.S. military power. The Security Treaty is the instrument through which the JapaneseAmerican division of labor has been effected. Through the Security Treaty, the U.S. maintains bases on Japan and Okinawa vital to the "defense" of South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia; and particularly vital to the pursuit of the war in Indochina. Through the Treaty System, Japan provides vital diplomatic and material aid to the war. It is a fine friendship. At least one U.S. diplomat has suggested that the main

Page  13 "gain" of the war in Indochina has been the protection of Japanese investments in Southeast Asia. After the Cambodian invasion, Prime Minister Sat5 went out of his way to tell the world that it had been "unavoidable." Every day over a million gallons of jet fuel pass through Tokyo on the Japan National Railroad bound for U.S. bases and Indochina. Thus, an important development in the radical movement here in the last few years has been the discovery that, whatever the opinions they have about the war in Vietnam, workers, students, and white collar employees are caught up in a structure that systematically operates in support of the U.S. side in that war. That is, the modern managerial system is aimed not at gathering and reifying the intentions and sentiments of workers, but at gathering and organizing their labor and energy behind a different set of intentions. Many began to realize that however vigorously they might oppose the war in the political arena, they were still spending most of their time at their jobs, working for the warmachine. People began to talk of "the Vietnam within ourselves." But now there is a new development: the U.S. is threatening a general withdrawal from Asia and is demanding that Japan become an "equal partner." Whether the U.S. will ever really withdraw or not, the threat fits nicely with Sato's historical ambitions. Japan can no longer depend on the permanent presence of U.S. forces and must start thinking about its own defense. It is important to avoid looking at these matters nationalistically and to focus on the international system. While there seems, from a 13

Page  14 nationalist point of view, to have been important changes in the JapanU.S. relationship in recent years, it is clear that the system has not changed in any fundamental way. The return of Okinawa is a perfect example. The island will return to Japanese sovereignty but will remain a military colony crushed under the weight of vast bases. Those bases, evacuated by U.S. forces, will be immediately taken over by Japanese Self-Defense units. Only the names will be changed to protect the image. Still, the Sat5 government has been forced to move rather slowly because the myth of peaceful economic development dies hard. But the logic of realpoZitik is inching its way forward inexorably. The "SelfDefense Forces," assuming that their existence is legal at all (which it is not), are supposed to exist only to defend the homeland against attack and never to go overseas. But, of course, an increasing amount of the wealth of the homeland is located overseas: who will defend it? Sato revealed the basic nature of the answer when he announced, in his joint communique with Nixon on November 21, 1969, that "the security of the Republic of Korea is essential to Japan's own security," and that the security of "the Taiwan area is also a most important factor for the security of Japan." There is nothing reassuring in the words "security" and "self-defense:" every military man knows that "the best defense," as Lieutenant General Utsunomiya Michio put it last year, "is a good offense." Of course, the Sat5 government is still insisting that they will "obey the constitution" and will never send troops overseas. Their strategy is simply to keep pointing at the growth rate and let the 14

Page  15 message sink in. It is interesting that in one sense the new left and the "defense realists" of the new right share the same analysis: both sides argue that the present economic and political structure of Japan can only be defended by the force of arms, while the sentimental middle wishes to keep up the economic boom without facing the reality of where it is all coming from. The difference between the left and the right is in their prescriptions. The right says build an army and navy. The left says change the structure. The hope of the government is that as the illusion of the sentimental middle fades, most citizens will slide over to the right. However, there is a contingency plan ready in the event that things do not work out that way, or that the crisis comes too soon. In 1963, there was a joint U.S.-Japan military exercise carried out on paper called Mitsuya or Three Arrows. It was planned in response to a hypothetical crisis involving a threat to the military dictatorship in South Korea. It involved Japanese and American units going to war in Korea, Japan being placed under martial law, and Japanese police and military units suppressing the expected riots. One of the reasons for the desperation of some sects in the Japanese radical movement is their belief that they have only a few years left before this script is enacted and the hopes of a generation are destroyed. 15

"Time is Just Retrogressin' As Far As Our Progress is Concerned"

pp. 16

Page  16 /F,7

Page  17 On November 7, 1969, ten days before Prime Minister Sat5's visit to the United States to confer with President Nixon on the return of Okinawas and the automatic extension of the Japanese-American Mutual Security Treaty, a Marine Corps division was moved to the United States air facility at Iwakuni, Japan, near Hiroshima. The 3,650 persons stationed at the base on November 8 had increased to 5,350 by March of this year, and a new commanding general, Brigadier General Johnson, was appointed. For the better part of November, the base was put on alert as "rioting" had become endemic to the area, and MPs patrolled armed with carbines, loaded and fixed with bayonets. At the end of February, battalion-scale anti-riot maneuvers were conducted. At the same time, anti-war sentiment was rising within the base, and the anti-war newspaper Semper Fl began to publish there underground. Correspondingly, however, barrack patrols were strengthened and the freedom of speech repressed. As one of his first acts, General Johnson began forming a "Human Relations Committee. " The committee came into effect on January 26. On February 5, he held a meeting with a group of marines —thirty black and ten white —to give a trial run to his new policy. To the consternation of the base authorities, a tape recording was made of that meeting, a copy of which came into the possession of Beheiren, The Japan "Stop the War in Vietnam!" Committee, who prepared this transcript. We have chosen to publish this transcript in Concerned Theatre Japan for a number of reasons. The transcript reads like —and we hope will be performed as —a documentary play. It may give readers some idea of conditions within American military bases overseas, specifically those in Japan, and the position in which black soldiers find themselves. It may also serve as valuable counterpoint to the demonstrations against American military presence in Japan reported elsewhere in this magazine. But above all we have chosen to reproduce this transcript because it is a profound document of our times. The following is an edited version of the transcript. It has been edited to make it easier to read and to eliminate redundancies. In all other respects it is a verbatim record. The setting is a room at Iwakuni air base. There is the constant sound of jet fighters starting and revving their engines. It is so loud that the voices are occasionally drowned out by it. The General sits behind a desk strewn with papers. He is appropriately middle-aged and speaks with a drawl that may be more Western than Southern. Although there are forty people in the room, only one speaks at a time, and the proceedings begin to sound like a dialogue between a general and a lone marine. In performance, the Marine may be played by one or more people. General: I've talked to quite a few members of this command here, and some of 'em in detail since I been here, about various problems in human relationships here in Iwakuni and in fact in general. So I understand by talking to a couple of sergeants here that you've taken a little time before I got here and covered some of the items that you'd like to discuss and...uh, some of the things you'd like for me to take a whack at after I got here. Hammen, do you, uh, have anything in particular, or, uh, Craig? Marine: Well, sir.... General: Just sit down, don't get up. 17

Page  18 Marine: Sir, I got a breakdown of six things, six problems. In the last meeting, everybody had problems but no solutions. We have solutions. We feel that if you don't like these solutions, maybe you can provide us with better solutions. General: Well, I have a committee.... Marine: Okay, ah, the first thing we need is that the base regulations say that if there is racial discrimination in any bar in town, this place will be put off limits. Now I've been told that it takes one incident, and I've been told it takes three to five incidents. We were wondering: how many incidents are necessary to close it? General: What I have to have, or what I have to need, to recommend to Colonel Quinn to put some place off town is a consistent pattern. I would say several, and by several I mean three to five that can be documented. Now, when I say documented I don't mean that you're gonna tell me that someone else told you. It's gotta be straightforward from the guy himself, 'cause in dealing with these problems I find there's a fantastic amount of hearsay, and when it comes right down to... hang on a second...when it comes right down to....Why don't you take your dark glasses off. You know you're gonna go blind if you wear dark glasses inside all the time. That's one of the things I learned when I was in the all-weather business.... But, uh, I got to have facts; I can't deal with hearsay; I can't deal through memory. But I can guarantee you that if I get such things as three to five carefully documented, factual representations from people that give me the straight facts, then that's what we're gonna do, we're gonna move against the outfit. Marine: Thank you, sir. Uh, this is a complaint about PMO. They have a warrant officer there by the name of Cobble who's been involved in a number of incidents. One incident cited here is the fact that 12 black marines were 18

Page  19 walking down the street minding their own business and were stopped by him in a civilian car in civilian clothes, and he ordered them: "All blacks off the street!" without asking what was going on. And these things have happened before by him, and we were wonderin'.... General: I'd like you to give me the, just the name of one person who was there. Marine: Sergeant Hawkins. General: If Sergeant Hawkins, I want him to come to me and simply make a little statement to this effect. I, uh, incidentally, I have had various representations from other black marines and white marines on the subject of PMO. I've had representations from both sides that, uh, the PMO is perhaps overly aggressive, uh, more tending toward harassment than they are toward help. Now, I don't know if this is actually right or not, but I am feeling for it, and I am looking in that direction, and one of the things I want to do from the standpoint of the Wing is that I don't want anybody assigned to the PMO who is not a first class marine. We should have the best people over there, and the attitude they should have is that they're out there to help the marines, not to hurt 'em or hinder 'em. They're not there for the purpose of putting anyone in jail or increasing the disciplinary rate or punishing anybody. Their sole function in life is to keep us in order. There are times and places where everybody gets a little out of order; if the PMO just takes the attitude: Well, look Joe, why don't you just get back to the base tonight, or we'll take you back to the base, and get some chow and rest before you get in any trouble. Not: We're gonna grab this guy, and we're gonna slap him in the car, and we're gonna take him back and put him in jail and file a complaint against him. Now this is the direction I want to be headed. Marine: Well, this is our thing. It was put together by black and white, conservative and otherwise. Ah, the next item is books. We'd like some books in the library, some relevant books, books by people like Eldridge Cleaver or Rowland Bennet or Leroi Jones; history books and books of the times. The books they have now are outdated. General: I think you're right, 'cause I think I'm readin' the same ones this time as I did when I was out here before. Marine: A lotta people say that these books aren't in the library because they're considered subversive material. But they have books in there on Mao, Mao Tse-tung on guerilla warfare, and the writings of Ho Chih Minh. Why can't they have something on people like Malcolm X which will mean something to us? It's a fact that we need it, we need it a great deal because we're behind the times bein' over here. But it would help the white marines to read the stuff too because they would get more of an insight.... General: What you're really talkin' about is we need to get our library updated and get a better selection of books. Marine: If there should be any difficulty with finding lists of books, I have this month's Ebony, uh, December's Ebony which we received in the PX on the second of February. 19

Page  20 General (pointing): In the back. Marine: This thing about shore patrol. They got a verbal order out that says two blacks cannot walk together, but they don't have anything out saying two whites can't walk together. General: Who has the order? about the sleeves. I saw some down there had all kinds of hair and sleeves out there. I don't know how they got off the base; maybe they had 'em out there in their pad. But, uh, this is a matter of no real importance, and, uh, I don't see why we can't get some sort of relaxation in this sort of thing. Marine: I don't know. They have 't in the PMO, our shore patrol has it. General: Well, somebody show me the order. * Marine: Base regulations says there is a standard civilian dress appropriate for any time on liberty. But both blacks and some of the pacifist elements within this command would like to wear the type of clothes that is considered normal back in the U.S., that're worn by everyday people in the United States. And by this we mean the Afro, dashiki, bell-bottom trousers; and we see no reason why beads and the modern medallions are not allowed, because they're normal types, and they're worn by people in high places and normal people in the United States. General: I might question they're normal people, but they are worn by a lot of people. I'll have to look into that and see what the problem is with this. You see, I didn't know we had any such regulation. Marine: And they say we cannot wear any large sleeve shirts, and they say that if a man wears pacifist beads it means that he's some kind of a queer or a faggot. General: Well, some of those kids down in the [unintelligible, name of a bar] apparently didn't get the word Marine: Ah, as our fifth item, sir, it's quite evident that certain individuals around.the base have gotten less than a fair shake on the legal side. We have a man here by the name of Solomon, Sergeant MacDuce, who was involved in an inciden+ with a man by the name of Guthrie from Station. Guthrie made it a point to call him a "black son of a bitch" and raised a hassle with a PMO. He was given office hours, and his office hours gave him as punishment a verbal admonishment. Solomon let it slide because he was short, he could go home, and he knew that if he had put hands on the man it woulda been him; and I feel that Guthrie shoulda gotten much more, much more than verbal admonishment. Now these things have happened time and time again. And, uh, we'd like to know if there's some way to get a standard between units so as at least within the unit.... General: Well, I have taken this up with the, uh, uh, the Fleet Air Wing commander, as a matter of fact, because I was acutely dissatisfied as a result of some actions taken in a hassle that took place in the Club on the other side about a month ago. And I've gene even further than that and discussed it with the Admiral. I think we oughta have standards on these things, and they oughta be across the board, and, uh, when people are inciting riots — and that's exactly what was 20

Page  21 taking place in that thing — that's a pretty severe type of operation and action should be taken. I can get together with the people that are in the unit commands on the base and say, let's have a standard policy so that we're all on the same track, and each guy gets his fair shake, no more, no less. Somebody back there has a question. Marine: Ah, our sixth point, sir, the feeling that, we feel that a lot of the white marines around here are against the fact that the brothers are unified, and they feel that if one white marine says something that's derogatory, call someone "boy" or a "profane nigger," he feels he should not be jumped and beaten by two or three black marines. And the basic thing here is, as Colonel Pearson put it, that these people don't know these things are wrong and that they've been told before that they shouldn't say things like this, and they continue to say them, and a lotta people say they didn't know that such a thing was as bad as it is; they didn't know how we feel about it. I would like, sir, if it's possible, we have some brothers here are quite accomplished in the art of bulletin-writing,and we'd like, if possible, to put out maybe a bulletin or a memo and have it distributed with these sort of words and terms that we consider against our ethnic background. General: Well, you hit a lot of good points, but you hit one that I'm gonna say my piece on right now. This ganging up and jumping on people when a guy calls you a name is not going to get you anything but trouble, and since I've been here, we've had entirely too much of it. I am frankly bored of the gang action and the gang operation. I've had too many of them on CID, and if I find 'em I'm gonna jump on 'em. The use of the terms that are offensive, I think that we can get this across very well, and we will git it across. You give me the list, and I'll see that it's disseminated to the unit commanders for further dissemination among the troops. And, uh, then when you have reason to take offense, that's the time to get the guy's name, who he is, and who he belongs to; and we'll find,give him a little bit of instruction on how to get along with people, because that's what this committee is for is human re ations. Marine: What penalty would you give a man who's using obscene words such as "nigger" to another negro? General: I wouldn't necessarily give a penalty to him. That is the duty of the unit commander in the circumstances concerned. Marine: Well, what is your advice to the commanders? General: I'm not gonna advise the unit commander on that particular item. I advise him to use the UCMJ. Marine: the unit look the My instincts tell me commander would overmatter as more or less a.... General: Well, let me ask you a question. Has the use of that term injured you? Marine: Yes, sir. General: How has it injured you? Marine: That's an assault to me. 21

Page  22 General: Do you think you can collect any money in a civilian court on that? Marine: Ah, no, sir. But they could take it out on me if I fought the man. General: That's right, and they will. Marine: And he's assaulted me. He's lowgraded me in front of myself as a man. Marine: Couldn't it be, wouldn't it be a slander charge if you wanted to press it in a civilian court? General: I think that you're really gettin' into a rather nebulous area here. I prefer not to have people be offensive to other marines under any circumstances, but what legal ground you're standin' on, I frankly don't know. I know that if you stand and call me all sorts of names the chances are I'd have no legal recourse whatsoever. Marine: I'd like to bring your attention to a Private McCloud. He spent two months in the brig for talking back to a colonel who called him all different names. That's the same thing as with me, you call me.... General: I'm not callin' you anything, but I'll read something to you about colonels. Now let's see if I can see this thing. (General reads a copy of the enlistment contract he's brought with him.) Isn't that the same thing you signed? Marine: Yes, sir. General: Didn't McCloud sign it? Marine: Yes, sir. General: Isn't it a "breach of good order and discipline"? Marine: Yes, sir, but the man who called you a nigger, didn't he sign it too? General: Are you his superior officer? Marine: I might be. He might be a private. I'm not sure. General: If that's the case, then he is, is executing an offense against you and should be so charged. Marine: Well, ah, sir, I think they have an article in the UCMJ that covers that sir — racial injustice.... General: Well, if that's the case, then why not bring it up? Why not make the charge? Marine: It's been brought up, sir, but no action has been taken on it. This is what I'm here for. What action will be taken on it? General: I cannot guarantee what action will be taken; that is up to the individual unit commander. Marine: What part do you play in this? Are you not a commander? General: I can only direct to a certain extent; otherwise the legal people get into what they call "command influence." I can establish policies in this matter; I can make recommendations; I can suggest, but I can't direct a unit commander in a specific instance to take a specific action. That's not legal. If I did so and the court upheld it, it would be thrown out. Marine: Isn't it true that you are the.... 22

Page  23 General: Now wait a minute, just a minute. I am not going to discuss this with you anymore. am not a lawyer. You go to the lawyer and find out what can and cannot be done. Marine: He'll give me the same run-around you gave me. General: Maybe there isn't anything that you can nail down on people. Marine: Are you trying to tell us that, just because a man is a colonel in the Marine Corps, that he can verbally assault another person and nothing be done about it just because he is a colonel? General: I did not say that. Marine: You are implying, sir. General: No, I am not. Marine: Well, then, maybe, maybe, uh, this should be presented to us in a way that we won't get this idea, because the feeling that we get is that just because that particular person was a colonel, that he could verbally deface this' lance corporal or whoever he was. He could get away with it and, by you being the next senior officer in rank, that you would really do nothing about it. General: No, no, you misunderstood me. Marine: I think we all did. General: You misunderstood me. The point that I had, as I understood it, was that the lance corporal or PFC had read off his colonel. Marine: Do you actually believe that if I put a charge on a full bird or a first sergeant or a sergeant major that I would get any action on it? General: I would think that you'd have to prove your point just like anyone else. Marine: Prove your point! (laughter) Okay, let's get back to our problem. When you go into office hours in the first place, you have only two people in the office, the sergeant major and the CO. Can, if I go in for office hours, can I take a friend of mine in there, take notes and everything? General: Not necessarily. If you don't like what they are doing, you can appeal, or, if you don't care for an officer, you can ask for a choice. Marine: Well, sometimes you go in there, and they say things you could get 'em for if you had someone there to prove it. General: If you want a counselor, why don't you ask for one? Have your counselor go with you. Marine: First of all, I think you have to take somebody that'd be willing to say something after they came out. General: Well, you really have to stick to the facts; you really have to state the facts and not a supposition. When you get into the legal ramifications of these things, well, you find out why there are so blasted many lawyers and why there're so many laws and why it's sometimes a little difficult to find out what the law is. But I do not think, as you've indicated, I do not think that a corporal, sergeant, lieu Marine: man said. That's not what the General: Well, then, I didn't understand it. 23

Page  24 tenant, major, colonel, or general has any particular right to browbeat or mistreat —and I use the word "mistreat" —anyone in the Naval service using a provoking word or gesture, just like that. Marine: You say you won't go against this, but, ah, I repeat: what action would you take against him, what action? General: What action would I take against whom? Marine: Well, okay, say I wrote up a colonel. He has to come before you, wouldn't he? General: He would have to come up before whoever his immediate senior was. Marine: Well, if I wanted to write up Colonel Quinn, he would come before you, right sir? General: No, he would not, because I'm not in his chain of command. * General: Well, I don't see no reason why anybody should be hesitant to come and see me; I've had people down at my office every day practically since I been here. mast is the right of anybody. But you do not have the right to demand who you're gonna have request mass with, nor do you specifically have the right of turning everybody down until you get to the top man. I have 5000 marines, and, you mentioned personal problems, I could spend all of every day workin' on personal problems, but their unit commander is supposed to try to solve these things, and if he can't solve 'em to your satisfaction, then' they should go to the next in command, and if he can't solve them, then you should come up to the next fella, and so on up the line. Now, if you're askin' an impossibility to start with, can you really expect solutions? If you're proceeding in good faith, that's something else again. Marine: Sir, the way it was with this man, he's sent back down South now, so he isn't here to.... Marine: Sir, you said that it was not a person's ability to turn down another person in the chain of command if he did not wish to see this person. On the request mast sheet it states that you do not have to converse with anyone except.... Marine: I know one instance where Lance Corporal Greensby wanted a request mast with yourself, and before he even got to see you he was threatened with mess duty, no phone calls, guard duty, and this was kept right up all through the chain of command until he saw you. Uh, I don't see where this is too fair, and this is what keeps a lotta people back. General: Well, this is not fair. This is not fair, and I have just signed an order on this subject, because the request General: The purpose of the reques mast is to bring it to the attention of the command. Now, you can play this game. And I just went through one in which people did not want to talk to anybody but the Commandant The problem could have been solved at squadron. That is the purpose of request mast, to give the command an opportunity to solve it. Marine: Sir, it is stated on the request mast form that it isn't fair for another person to have to speak with someone 24

Page  25 about a particular problem. General: You don't have to speak with the sergeant major or the first sergeant or the lieutenant or the captain. Marine: Well, you just said, sir, that it is not his right to deliberately turn down someone. General: You can turn everybody, but you're not gonna get the problem solved. You go to the command, that's what it is: request mast with the commander. And the next commander and the next commander. Now if there's something internal to that command that you don't want to report, that's one case. But just this idea that you have to go to the top man every time is destructive of the purpose of request mast. you're saying to me that the way that it seems to me is that each one of these incidents could have been solved in the squadron level. But what I'm saying is that, what I believe that the majority of the group is tryin' to get over to you people of authority, is that most of these situations are, are caused by the same problem. In fact, I can't pinpoint it, but I'm sure that if all the marines were to try to find out a certain basis, the things about the Marine Corps that does cause marines to feel the way they do and that cause racial relations, then present these to you, then something could be done about it. General: Well this is what I would like to have from the standpoint of a so-called "human relations committee." Marine: Yes, sir, but this thing on the request mast sheet says it's a right, it's a privilege. General: That's correct. Marine: And, ah, as you say, you're taking this privilege away. General: No, I'm not this privilege away; telling you how to do proper way. taking I am it the * Marine: I don't think you can accomplish anything at all as far as solving our problems in meetings like this if you continue to go as we are now, because everyone, every time that an incident is brought up, it's said that, uh, well, no one man or any particular incident involving a group of people is so big that it can't be solved in, uh, within the unit. So every time an incident is brought up, then, in a sense Marine: How can you do that, man, when as it seems to me, you refuse to see how either of these incidences are connected with each other. You look at each incident as a, as an individual situation, and should be solved in this squadron, I mean in his own squadron. But all of 'em are connected together in a certain way. So what I'm sayin' is that if we could get the majority of marines that feel strongly about certain views and agree that this certain thing is causing the problem, or these three things are causing the problem, would there be something done about? General: Yes, there would. Marine: Well, how can you do this like, I mean, if...if,... I seen it happen on other bases, like people were tryin' to gather information and find out what the majority of the people felt and what the main problem was, and then they 25

Page  26 brought up the situation that these people were, how do you say it, they were part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government when they were really trying to.... General: Well, I'm sure that there are people that will say that what we're doin' here is a conspiracy of some kind or another, but I don't think that's the purpose, and I am trying to get together a piece of paper which wi II call for having a couple of people in each squadron whose function will be to bring forth the problems that you're talking about. And again, I say, if you don't feel that the problem can be solved at your unit or within your organization, then you ask to come on up the chain of command and give it a try. Marine: Yeah, I'm not going to take up much time, sir. All I have to say is I don't see how the problems can be solved when you consider each one, each problem as an individual problem and fail to see how each one of 'em are connected in a certain way. General: Well, I'm sure that they're connected, and I'm sure that they have some basis in some misconception or some wrong attitude. But I don't see how I'm gonna solve this thing en masse, because just the items that are brought up here this afternoon are, are extremely diverse. Marine: Sir, I don't want to change the subject...and I do too. Ah, since we, we aren't gettin' anywhere like this, so why don't we...since everybody seems to think that we're the ones that are always causin' the trouble...that's what all you people seem to think...you might be able to learn somethin' if we just discuss why we act the way we do. I mean, do all the brothers agree with me? Marines: Yeah, yeah, yeah! General: 'Cause, see, people don't understand why we act the way we do. Now, if we have a fight, people don't understand why we fight; people don't understand why we feel like we do about the legal aspects, why we want a fair shake. I believe we could really begin to make some progress with this human relations or racial relations deal if people just began to ask us questions why we act the way we do. Because we don't, you see, we are tired, we are absolutely tired of the white guys comin' in here and not sayin' anything constructive to what is really the problem. So what we have in here, the white guys we have in here now are, they just want to sit back and sympathize. We don't need anybody to sympathize with us. We need some of the people, like Colonel Pierce said the other day, to crumble the mountains that's goin' to give us some opposition, and so you can see this opposition, and then we can bring our side up, and then, maybe we'll be able to get somewhere from there. We don't need your sympathy we don't need you to prove how valid your beliefs are toward us, because we're not the racists! It's you people that are the racists; and I don't mean anything personal, this is not any personal degradation, but you, you people have been the ones that have been givin' us the trouble, and as a result of all this trouble, we are the ones that are actin' the way we're doin' and why don't you just ask us why we act the way we do? 26

Page  27 General: Well, I'll ask you the question: Why? I didn't know that you acted in any particular way from a few other marines.... Marine: Well, I mean, you see all the fights; you see the unrest; and we're, and it seems we're always the ones that are labeled, so evidently we are actin' the way we do. And just for me to sit down and, uh, well, we would have to be sittin'down because we'd wear ourselves out standin' up, for me to tel you why we acted the way we did. But the reason why, I can just tell you this, the reason why we are actin' the way we do is because, like James Brown says, we comin' from a brand new bag, see. This is a, this is a black generation we have in the Marine Corps now, and it's not like when you first came in when you have a bunch of negroes and patsies. In other words, they're walkin' arm in arm together talkin' about "We Shall Overcome" and stuff, see, 'cause we know, we know we're gonna overcome and by what means we want to use to overcome and what we would like for you to do to help us. I mean, once we get started on this part then we'll be gettin' somewhere. General: Speak. Marine: Okay. Now this: the reason why we act the way we do is because it all goes back from a cultural standpoint. Now more than ever, we are realizing —and we are not being turned down, we're not goin' to turn our back to the fact that we are men. We are men as you are, not just like you —because if I say just like you that's puttin' you on the standard; in other words, if I say we're just as good as you, that's using you for a standard, and nobody can be used for a standard. Now, we act the way we do because we're tired of all the petty stuff that's been goin' on. We're tired of gettin' the lower end of everything. We're tired of people turning their backs on us. And, as a matter of fact, we're just tired of the system —the way it is altogether. We don't want to change the system; what we want to do is to contribute our own part to it; and we can't contribute anything because people always turn their back on us even though we have something contructive to offer. We have black men who've been fighting since the Revolutionary War, but do people know it? This is going back to what Sergeant Barne was sayin': you can't learn about it because you don't know us. And because you don't have any way of findin' out about us, you think we're the same dumb old niggers or the sex fiends or the sex dudes that that you've always been afraid of deep down inside. So, therefore, the same thing is goin' on and on. Time is just retrogressint as far as our progress is concerned. But you don't want to take any time to find it out. When we bring up these problems or when a brother gets in trouble, havin' the same stigma that you have, the same thing happens over and over agin, so finally we get tired of it after 450 years —he gets tired of all this bull-shit that we've been havin' to put up with. And we rebel against it. Not all of these fights — we don't say, that's what you say, you say they're riots. Well, a riot is something that happens sporadic. We say they're a rebellion. A rebellion is a physical discontentment or a physical 27

Page  28 way of showin' your dissatisfaction for the system the way it is today. Then, when we fight and when we express ourselves in the only way we know how, we get the shaft. And the reason I say the only way we know how is because, like brother B.J. said in the last meeting, that's the only thing you understand. The reason that's the only thing you understand is because that's what America stands for. Not, not it represents the land of the free and the home of the brave; it doesn't stand for that. That's one-hundred and eighty out. You stand for fightin', and you stand for violence, and you stand for bloodshed, and when we start doin' this,you...this is when you react. We've been tryin', brothers in the service, brothers on the outside, people who we represent have been tryin' to talk to you people. We been tryin' to get with you people ever since we were freed in 1865. But you refused to see it that way, and then along about 1965 when brothers really started gettin' themselves together, going out there, throwing knuckles, and givin' the power, and takin' heads, then you people sit back and say, "Well, I guess we'd better do something about those niggers, because if we don't watch out they're gonna git us." You see, this is not...this is the only thing you understand. And then we come to the point where we just don't want to talk anymore. Then they come into the service; they come, like myself, Brother Halum, Brother Four, Brother Solomon, and all the rest of these brothers over here who came outside into all this, came out of the civilian world, who were influenced by all the awareness that we were faced with. And we brought it in the service. Then you still have these dirt farmers, these redneck dirt farmers, in here who still continue to hold us down and who still don't want to give us a fair shake. So finally we get tired of it and start throwin' knuckles, and you decide you want to throw yourself a racial relations board together. But still, the racial relations board is not goin' to do anything contructive because the people still don't understand where we're comin' from. A lot of the brothers don't understand.... General: What do you expect them to understand? Now, you're speakin', and you're speakin' for a lot of people, and you said some things that I agree with and some things that I don't. But you're speakin' here for a lot of people, and just what do you expect to be done? Marine: First of all, first of all, we don't really expect anything from you, not on your own accord. What we expect for you to do is to finally wake up and come out of this old bag that you have and finally realize that we're men and that we're great. Now, we don't expect you to realize it by just our hearsay, because man has always had to prove himself. And we have already proved ourselves when the white boy was still livin' in the cave. See, the black man proved himself, but there is no way for you to know it. You have to give us a fair shake. And the only way for us to be able to get a fair shake is to be able to express our views, express our views in a way that they're goin' to educate 28

Page  29 you and further educate the brothers that are in your command. You got to understand that we do have a culture and that those of us who speak and speak intelligent are comin' from a cultural bag. And you got to understand that our culture differs from yours, and that our culture transcends your education which for us is nothin' but a trainin'. Whereas education is a theorem and, ah, in-doubt, and complete training, complete hypothesis of everything we have learned. Our culture depicts the way we act; it determines the music we like, like what the brothers said about the dress. It used to be, a long time ago, that the brothers didn't know nothing about a daishiki, he didn't know nothin' about a natural. He was still trying to use, whattya call it, hair straightener. But then the brothers came by with this new cultural concept, he came out of the concept of blackness, and he found out in order for him to say he was black, he had to work out three things: color, culture, and conscience — something you don't understand but we're beginnin' to. And then we throw all of this on to you. You come up, whereas you been sayin' a brother been a pacificist in his ways and shakin' hands with you, and then you don't understand us. Just about the only thing you said today that I will agree with is that the biggest problem around here is the lack of communication, which it is. And the reason that there is this lack of communication is because you people just really don't understand us, and you're really makin' no effort to. General: Well, I have made a rather substantial effort in this direction, in between the other things I try to do. I have been related with this problem almost longer than you've been in the Marine Corps, if not probably longer than you've been in the Marine Corps. Marine: Then it still hasn't done any good, has it, sir? General: Well, there are 200 million people in the country, and I can do my part as far as I can, and I can influence as much as I can those people who surround me, and that's all. Just like you do. Marine: We appreciate this very much, but it still does not do away with the fact that your influence is not helpin' us! It's no fault of yours that you don't understand us, so therefore your influence could not be beneficial to us. In order for you to be able to help us, first you have to help yourself. General: You're makin' a value judgment which is based on solely your feelings. Marine: That is our whole concept! That's right, that's right, sir! General: And as such it may or may not be valid. However, I will try to help you and go in whatever direction you come up with solid recommendations on. Marine: Well, then, sir, if you're goin' to say it's not valid, then we're not getting anywhere. General: I'm sayin' that your opinion of my relationship is not necessarily valid. It's a value judgment, that's all. Marine: Oh, well, this could be true, but what we're sayin' 29

Page  30 has value. In other words, it has so much value that it determines everything we stand for. We know that our values supersede everything that we've learned here; because yet and still, all of the brothers in here are not goin' to stay in the Marine Corps; very few of 'em are gonna stay in here. But they're still not gonna change their values. There still could be somethin' done while the little time we have remains in the Marine Corps. General: What direction do you suggest we go? Marine: I suggest, first of all, that we take a step backward so that we can take a larger step forward; 'cause what we're doin' is stumblin' right now. I suggest that we take a step backward. I suggest that you people take a step backward and begin to get yourself together on us. And after you have got yourself up to a point —after you have learned with our help what we are capable of doin' and after you have learned with our help that we are people who have feelings, then we can offer some suggestions, then you can offer some suggestions. General: I've been under the impression that you had feelings for some time; now, do I have to learn this over? Marine: Yes, sir. I think you... there's no doubt in my mind that you have to learn it over. As a matter of fact, you have to learn it to begin with, because what you're thinkin' is from a false concept now. Because you don't know the new generation. You...you...when you talk about black marines, see, you're talkin' about first sergeants and gunnery sergeants, and people you have dealt with since you've been here. You're not talkin' about lance corporals and new sergeants who are under four because this is an entirely different bag. General: Well, I still haven't gotten the step back or the stumbling back or what have you. I'm still lookin' for what the answer is. Marine: Well, what...what exactly is it that you don't understand what I'm talking about? General: Well, what I wanna know is watta you want! You been talkin' here for an hour. Marine: I want you, I want you —l haven't been talkin' for an hour —but I want you to understand that in order for us as a group, in order for us to live in this Marine Corps interdependently, first you have to understand us, first. You gotta take a step back and alleviate your mind of all those hang-ups that you have about negro people. See, like I say about the negro people, you gotta understand that these brothers in here, because of circumstances you have caused yourself —not personally you, but people like you —have caused yourself, that we aren't goin' to put up with it. You gotta, you gotta start and find out who we are. General: Well, I understand who you are, I think. But whatta you mean, you're not gonna put up with it? That's what I'm gettin' at. Marine: Just what I said. There's a whole lotta brothers in here who could be sergeants and corporals who are privates because they refuse to put up with the system like it is, and, in fact, simply because some 30

Page  31 man's been pressin' them on their back, you know, unduly and unnecessarily. You gotta understand why we don't wanna do it. I mean, that's a long process, but you only live once. You might learn somethin', you know, that's gonna help a whole lotta marines out in the future. By the time you make lieutenant general for something like this, then you'l I have it. General: Be a long time away. * Marine: Who do you think went out there and converted the Japanese' minds out there against blacks? 31

Page  32 mean this, this was was in the States between the blacks and the whites, but'no, this over here in Japan. Now, I mean, we didn't do it. General: But, uh, hang on a second. What they think and what they do, I can't really control, and I can't say whether this was, as you say, put into their minds by white men or not, because they have their own prejudices and some very strong ones. Against me as well as you. Marine: Sir, when the bomb was dropped, how many black men were flyin' one of those airplanes or whatever it was? General: I have no idea. Marine: Not a one. So why should they hate us? General: I wasn't aware that they did hate you? Marine: See, this is it, sir. I mean, people like you and Colonel Quinn and the rest of 'em, they don't have to go through the problem that we go through. But actually, you never sit down and think about this. Just like you said, you wasn't aware of it. General: I was not aware when you used the term hate. Now, I was not aware that any such thing existed. I have made a point of goin' for example, to the "Crown" to sit down and have a drink and see what the hell is goin' on, but I have never had one say anything to me against blacks. Marine: Take for example the incident that happened about eight months ago, with the whole mass, every brother on this base, was taken down to the PMO to get their mug and fingerprints and serial number taken from them. How long does it take it from this base to get out to that town? So the base does a lot to contribute to prejudices out in town, you can say this. As far as they're concerned we're second class. You're superior; the white man's superior to the black man. Yet you go somewhere, say we're in the country. You go up in the hi lls, and you get better treatment than you get in these bars out here. You get equal treatment up there because they don't know. They haven't got the word yet, see.... General: Well, let me cut you off. I just looked at my watch, hell, I didn't realize anything about what time it was. I think you made some good points here I am well aware I hope meaningful exchange challenge to everybody open mind limit of my capabilities that's all I can do Terms: Iall-weather business: al I -weather flying. 2pMO: Provost Marshall's Office or the base police. 3dashiki: a broad-sleeved, billowy shirt of African origin. 4Station: personel attached to the base itself rather than troups temporarily stationed there. 5office hours: the lowest level of hearing in the military judicial system. 6CID: Criminal Investigation Division 7UCMJ: Uniform Code of Military Justice 8request mast: an appointment with a commanding officer to bring up a complaint. 9givin' the power: giving the sign of black solidarity, a raised fist. 32

Okinawa 69-70

Yoshioka Kou and "Photoflock 1970"pp. 33

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Page  44 (1) High school girls listen with unflagging attention at a meeting in protest against the Sato-Nixon Joint Statement on Okinawa. (2) Dissatisfied with the policies of their teachers, high school students call a meeting to formulate their own program for action. They decide to demonstrate on their own. (3) The people of Kadena Village stage a sit-in demanding the immediate withdrawal of all B52 bombers from Okinawa. (4) Okinawan and Japanese businessmen gather at a reception to commemorate the inception of new government policies on the influx of industry into Okinawa expected to come with American withdrawal. (5) Miyazaki Junji, a guard on an American base, is one of 300 survivors of the atomic bomb residing in Okinawa. Twenty-five years ago he was living in Nagasaki. (6) Helmeted members of the Antiwar Faction of the student movement are herded off by American troops after a demonstration. (7) In a silent march of protest, the farmers of lejima Island demand the immediate closure of an oil-drilling base owned by the Toyo Petroleum Company. The photographs on the preceeding pages, as well as those accompanying the article on black marines at Iwakuni, were taken by Yoshioka Kou and a group of six other cameramen. These pictures, along with dozens of other superb photographs of Okinawa and its people, are collected in a 150-page book: OKINAWA 69-70 Created by young photographers who have worked for more than a year to express in black and white the exploitation and response of the people of Okinawa, this is unquestionably the.best and most complete depiction available of Okinawa's continuing struggle against outside domination — Japanese and American. Copies are obtainable through Concerned Theatre Japan at $3.00 U.S. (including postage); the price in Japan is ~600 plus V120 postage. 44

Page  45 reads Kamika. It means to make things of paper. The widely acclaimed beauty of Japanese papers has yet to find an equal. But beyond the traditional, Japan's burgeoning Paper-Power makes available both nonwoven textile and other paper-like materials. Drop in our charming store for a glimpse of the past, the present, and the future of Japan. * traditional papers * stationary goods, dolls, tableware * papercrafts, posters, interior decorations * unwoven products-paper dresses, etc. PARCO Seibu Department Store Sei Department Store Ikebukuro Shopping Center Station I Ikebukuro Parco Rotary Shibuya Station Even with the last few minutes before your departure from the city, you can be sure to find just the gifts you are looking for at Paper Shop Kamika.

Page  46 FIVE MASTERWORKS BY THE VIRTUOSO OF SYNTHETIC FIBERS ASAHI KASEI

Senda Koreya: An Interview

pp. 47

Page  47 I

Page  48 Mr. Senda, we are publishing Japan's first theatre magazine in a language other than Japanese, and we hope that this will develop into a channel through which we can make a contribution to world theatre. Modern theatre in Japan developed much later than it did in Europe, but now we have achieved parallel levels. Even so, I can think of no instance in the past when Japanese have stood up and actively expressed their opinions with regard to the outside world. People in Europe and America still think of Kabuki and Noh when they hear the words "Japanese theatre." The Foreign Ministry doesn't think there's anything else to introduce to the world except Kabuki and Noh, so when you receive guests from other countries and show them a Shingeki performance, they are surprised to find that there is something besides Kabuki and Noh.l It doesn't strike them as being obvious. Shingeki started by rejecting traditional dramatic forms and borrowing new ones from the West. The purpose was not to imitate but to establish a modern theatre in this country. It would be innacurate to say that Shingeki history has been the history of the rejection of the past —there have been many instances when modern theatre has referred back to tradition. At times this has been a xenophobic return to Japanese tradition, while at others it has indicated a sort of humble acceptance of the stylistic perfection of Noh and Kabuki. Now we have finally reached the point where we may remain modern theatre artists in a tradition that is commonly held around the world and, at the same time, view our own tradition with equanimity. In recent years, Japanese playwrights like Abe K6ob and Mishima Yukio have beene translated and published overseas. Has this helped any? Abe and I have worked together for many years, and I certainly think his work is worthy of translation, but Mishima.... No doubt he is talented, and he really knows how to exploit that talent, but he seems to lack an awareness of his responsibility to society. If he is aware of his social responsibility, he interprets it as being the responsibility of a genius novelist to flaunt his talent before his society. But as far as social experience and knowledge are concerned, he is incredibly immature. Practicing swordsmanship, performing mock-ups of ritual suicide, praising the military —he seems to be filling a very important role as one of the leading reactionaries of our time. He seems to be trying to tell the world that no matter how outrageously he behave, he remains an artist of genius. It's disgusting. Have you ever thought that he is conscious of what he is doing, that he relates to society with tongue in cheek? Never. And I honestly detest the obsequious attitude of Japanese critics who deal with Mishima. They believe that to deal with Mishima from political or social points of view is highly unsophisticated. It never occurs strange to anyone, including Mishima himself, that his writings in praise of the samurai spirit and his reports on his private army the Escutcheon Society [Tate no Kai], have been printed up and used as propaganda by the Japanese mili tary. He wrote a play recently called My Friend HitZer. The critics praised it saying that Mishima's language was beautiful, *Please refer to page 77 for an explanation of the photographs accompanying this article. 48

Page  49 I qp e 4, 4, I I I

Page  50 that the tragic situation was convincingly contrived, and so on. But as an interpretation of Hitler, it is unspeakably banal and stereotyped. Mishima's only full-length play in English is Madame de Sade. What do you think of it? Effete and nihilistic. I don't care for it. Sade is being resurrected all over the world. What do you think of Mishima's version? If you compare Peter Weiss's Sade to Mishima's, you can see the difference very easily. Sade was a stepping stone for Weiss as he moved toward his revolutionary, documentary theatre. Mishima's Sade is a deadend. I'm just repulsed by thinking that revolves around the idea of the ineffability of human nature. Mishima and Abe are figures active on the contemporary scene —they were born into a world where Shingeki already existed. This was not really true in your case, was it? Just for the sake of the record, how old are you now? I was born on July 15, 1904 —the day Chekhov died. Your life as a theatre artist began when you joined the Tsukiji Little Theatre.2 What had your family background and education been like up till then? My older brothers were all artists. When I matriculated into one of the most prestigious high schools, my parents expressed their relief at having finally produced a son who would go straight. They forbade me to study music or to paint. Out of spite, I read a lot, but my first attraction was always to the fine arts. Then your interest in theatre grew out of readings in dramatic literature, is that right? Not really. At the time, Gordon Craig and Max Reinhardt and others were being introduced to Japan. I learned about Serge Diaghilev of the Russian Ballet around that time, too. One of my older brothers, Ito Michio, was studying at the school of Emile Dalcrose in Germany. Dalcrose's method was a kind of rhythm-training. At the time, it was regarded as a very important part of an actor's basic training, and in Japan it was said that theatre artists would greet each other by asking if they were studying Dalcrose. As you see, the aspects of theatre that first attracted my attention were things like stage design, music, and dance. You might say that I was interested in theatre as a total art. Were you involved at all in traditional Japanese theatre or any of the traditional arts? When I was in junior high school, I used to go to the home of Mr. Yamaguchi Go, a professor of Edo literature at Waseda University, to learn about Noh and Kabuki. At the time, Kabuki interested me most because of its visual and aural uniqueness. My ambition was to be "a connoisseur," and I dressed, as Mr. Yamaguchi did, in a hakoma of laterally striped material that was quite stylish.3 Mr. Yamaguchi was collecting the 50

Page  51 g

Page  52 figurines of the traveler's guardian deity that are set alongside the road in the country, and he told me to go someplace where I could steal some for him. I was sixteen and curious. I sensed the connection between traditional Japanese theatre and the temples and shrines. I also began to understand the relationship between theatre and the gay quarters, and I spent a lot of time just walking around them. I didn't have any money, so walking was about all I could do. At school we were told that we shouldn't even go to the movies, but I did. I would go to Asakusa in the morning and spend the whole day there. When did you make the decision to go into theatre? I couldn't see much point in going to college. I thought that some day I'd like to be like my brother Michio for whom Yeats wrote At the Hawk's Well, one of the pieces included in the Four Plays for Dancers. Yeats wrote it in 1916 for Michio who had already made himself something of a reputation in America. How old were you when you joined the Tsukiji Little Theatre? Twenty. It was just after the great earthquake of 1923.,4 The earthquake turned Tokyo into an enormous stretch of burnt ruins in a matter of minutes. There was incredible chaos, and to make matters worse the government spread a false rumor that anarchists and Koreans living in Japan had taken advantage of the chaos and rioted. Hundreds of Koreans were massacred. A policeman mistook me for a Korean and I was on the verge of being murdered myself. I was very shocked.5 The books I was reading at the time were mostly those by anarchist authors like Kropotkin and Osugi Sakae.6 It was the literary section of the Tsukiji Little Theatre that I joined. As I had studied German, I was to edit pamphlets using material I had read in that language. What was Shingeki like when the Tsukiji Little Theatre was founded? The Shingeki movement had begun as early as 1909, although I saw none of the plays from this early period. By the time I joined Tsukiji, the Shingeki movement was faced with serious financial problems that

Page  53 had been exacerbated by factional infighting. Playwrights turned away from Shingeki groups and began to write for Kabuki actors. The first productions of Shingeki I saw were those performed by Kabuki actors. How was it that the Tsukiji Little Theatre came to be built? The theatre was built with the personal resources of Hijikata Yoshi.7 He was a count, and his involvement with the theatre was considered heretical by his family. When the great earthquake struck, Hijikata was in Europe. When he was informed that the government had passed a new law permitting the construction of theatres on the condition that they be one-floor wooden structures, he decided to come back and build a theatre with the money that had been set aside for the remainder of his stay in Europe. The theatre was constructed in 1924. Hijikata had seen a lot of theatre in postwar Europe, especially the productions of the German Expressionists. He decided to come home via Moscow since the Russian government was giving special visas to Japanese who had to hurry home after the earthquake. In Moscow, he saw postrevolution theatre and was especially impressed with the productions of Meyerhold. What were the plays first produced at the Tsukiji? Tsukiji was supported by basically three men. One of them was Hijikata who did plays by the German Expressionists, Karl Capek, and Pirandello. Then there was Osanai Kaoru who did plays by Ibsen, Gorky, Chekhov, Turgeniev, and Strindberg.8 Osanai had had his own theatre troupe before Tsukiji and had done the work of Ibsen and Gorky. He went to Europe several times and studied with Stanislavsky for quite a while. We could see that he had been deeply influenced by the Moscow Art Theatre. The third person supporting Tsukiji was Aoyama Sugisaku. He didn't belonq to any particular school but was an actor turned director —a rare breed in those days —and he took charge of training actors, choosing plays that would be most beneficial to them. I studied basic acting technique under him, too. All of us went to see foreign films starring famous actors, and afterwards we'd practice "how to embrace a woman," "how to kiss a woman," and "how to fall when you die." Speaking of movies, was The Crimes of Dr. Kaligari with Werner Krauss shown in Japan around that time? It was shown before the earthquake. As we were producing many Expressionist plays, we went to see Expressionist films whenever they were shown. I also remember seeing Georg Kaiser's From Momn to Midnight [Von Morgens Bis Mitternacht]. But we weren't doing Expressionist plays to the exclusion of everything else. We did everything that was new in the world. It was as if a tidal wave of new artistic trends had broken over Japan. We did Futurist plays and those of the Constructionists as well. What was it like to perform plays that had, for the most part, been written outside of Japan? I didn't feel especially strange about doing them. You know, the earthquake had literally turned Tokyo upside down. The economy was booming because of the war, while at the same time concern with the problems of society and cries for democracy were being raised. Inspite of these trends, most Japanese playwrights were writing about themselves and their own personal concerns. Their plays read like diaries. When the 53

Page  54 Tsukiji Little Theatre declared that it would produce only those plays that had relevance for the new era, plays that would be stimulating to those who had to live in the new age, it virtually declared that the works of Japanese playwrights would not be produced. Plays translated from other languages were far more relevant to us and our audience than the Japanese plays that dealt with the private lives of the playwrights and their psychologies. Translated plays were being put on in the Tsukiji Little Theatre while Osugi Sakae was being executed outside the theatre. That's what it was like. Playwrights like Kishida Kunio,9 Yamamoto Yizo,10 and Kikuchi Kan,I who never thought about theatre in relation to the world, wouldn't come near our Tsukiji. But I don't want to give you the impression that everything was going well with us, either. Our three directors were producing all kinds of plays without a clear sense of goals. This was part of the reason I eventually left Tsukiji, but I'll go into that later. Architecturally speaking, what was the Tsukiji Little Theatre like? It seated 499 people. The law permitted us to bui d theatres of one story with a maximum seating capacity of 500. The stage had about 36 feet of frontage and was about 24 feet deep. It was the first theatre in Japan to be equipped with a Kuppelhorizont, a sky-dome for indirect lighting. This meant a great deal to us, for to be able to create a sky on stage and put stars and clouds into it was something quite wonderful. The sky-dome was the only part of the architecture made of ferroconcrete. The whole structure looked like a gothic cathedral painted in gray. I guess it was meant to symbolize the sanctuary of the performing arts.

Page  55 Did the audience sit in chairs? Yes, after the earthquake even Kabuki theatres were designed to have chairs instead of tatami mats for seating. Of course, lighting had been done with electricity for a long time already. When you see photographs of Tsukiji, you find it resembles your present Actor's Theatre. 12 Yes, but the architecture of the Tsukiji Little Theatre really stressed the fact that it was supposed to be a sanctuary of theatrical art. What you were doing at Tsukiji was considered avant-garde, but the theatre building itself seems extremely traditional and conservative. Why? Well, new theatres were not even being built in Europe at the time. It wasn't as if you had a theatre here for Futurist plays and another there for the plays of the Constructionists. Meyerhold, in fact, was using very traditional places despite his famous idea of a circus-type theatre. He just brought in a lot of steel piping and so forth and set up scaffolding. But the Tsukiji Little Theatre was built on the ruins of a city the earthquake had destroyed. While you were doing Europe's most avantgarde plays, why did you copy its most traditional theatre architecture? The repertory of Tsukiji encompassed everything from Naturalistic to expressionistic plays, you see, and even in Europe avant-garde experiments were being conducted in theatres with proscenium stages. As for establishing more communication with the audience, they invented auxiliary front stages, started using staircases that descended from the stage into the audience, and began to adopt the Greek arena to contemporary use. That was about it. Tsukiji seems always to have used Europe as its referent. Today, when we want to do something new and exciting, we find it necessary to go back to Kabuki. That was the case with Sat6 Makoto's Nezumi Kozo: The Rat. To go back to Kabuki and to find new possibilities is to go back to precisely what Tsukiji had given up. But this seems to be a rather new phenomenon — no one else in the history of modern Japanese theatre has tried to make use of what his predecessors had discarded. No one has tried to make new theatre out of tradition. Furthermore, if we face the fact that the Tsukiji Little Theatre and Haiyuza are not very different architecturally, we realize that what people have been demanding of the theatre has not changed in thirty years and that, perhaps as a result, the kind of theatre we have performed for the past thirty years has been static and unchanging. I guess that's right as far as theatre architecture and acting technique are concerned, but you must bear in mind that when modern Japanese theatre began, all we had to work with was a group of actors who could only deliver lines in chanting, Kabuki fashion —even when they performed Naturalistic plays. When Aoyama Sugisaku did the part of the pastor in Ghosts, people were shocked to learn that he was delivering his lines as if he were out in the street instead of on stage. It caused quite a sensation. Osanai Kaoru had to work with Kabuki actors in order to produce Ibsen; Tsubouchi Shoyo tried to do Shakespeare as if it were 55

Page  56 Kabuki.13 Translations were unspeakable. But that's where we had to begin. In your year and a half at the Tsukiji Little Theatre, how many plays did you act in? Two plays a month at the beginning. What about rehearsals? You wouldn't have believed it! There were some plays we only rehearsed for a few days. It was almost as if our three directors had been possessed, they were so overjoyed to have their own theatre to work in. During my year and a half at Tsukiji I acted in twenty-five plays altogether and had to take major roles in ten. I was called an Expressionist actor because I was young and reckless and did all kinds of outrageous things on stage. I would shout at the top of my lungs, strut and move about mechanically, and I was constantly striking one pose or another. After a year or so of that, it began to get embarrassing, and I began to want to get down to some good, realistic acting. So the role of Jean in Miss Julie came next. We find ourselves being stimulated even today by Expressionist works, and we find it interesting that Brecht seems to have tried, without much success, to extricate himself from the Expressionist mold in writing his early plays. Did your move away from Expressionism mean a move toward Marxism as it did for Brecht? Was it around this time that you began reading Marx? Oh, no, I started much earlier than that. At the time, I was reading Das Kapital, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Bukharin. I got to feeling I'd like to leave Tsukiji. The Marxists and anarchists had gotten together and formed the Proletarian Literary Federation EProletaria Bungei Renmei], and I joined and became an editor on their publication Literary Battlefront CBungei Sensen]. I also founded their drama department. What was your main criticism of Tsukiji? Tsukiji was still doing Ibsen, Chekhov, and Maeterlink, and I began to feel that it was getting a little tedious and irrelevant to continue performing their works at that stage of the game. I thought that we ought to consistently be doing proletarian plays. I thought we could have been doing so. What was Tsukiji's Chekhov like that you took such exception to it? Mr. Osanai had studied at the Moscow Art Theatre during its most reactionary period, and he brought a Chekhov back to Japan whose work was a requiem for the crumbling class of landowners and aristocrats. It was only after World War II that people began to deal with The Cherry Orchard as a comedy, the way Chekhov had intended it. So, I thought I'd join the proletarian movement and really do something rather than waste my time on the plays I've mentioned. I tried to refuse roles in the Tsukiji productions and started going to study groups that the students had set up as well as to factories being struck by their 56

Page  57 unions. When I finally did leave Tsukiji for good, there was a big strike being conducted by the printers' union. The workers were all getting together to try and keep away scabs who'd try to break the strike, and I wanted to do something to entertain them. They, of course, were doing all right for themselves, singing popular songs and telling comic stories, but I felt that we, as professional theatre artists, ought to do something to help them. I felt rather lost. It was the first time in my life I'd met real workers; so I just helped them make posters and acted as a liaison man. While the strike was on, The Suitcase Theatre [Toranku Gekijo] was formed.14 It was a mobile theatre and I joined them. After a while, I founded a proletarian theatre group called The Avant-Garde Theatre [Zeneiza], and we did Anatoli Lunacharsky's Liberated Don Quixote. After 1927, the proletarian movement in the arts came under increasingly severe pressure, and it began to split and resplit for basically political reasons. By that time, though, I was in Germany. While you were in Germany, were you affiliated with any particular organization or institutions? I arrived just after Erwin Piscator had been expelled from Volksbuhne and founded his own Piscatorbuhne; I was accepted into his research institute. Did you actually work with Piscator at all? Not really. In the beginning, I attended rehearsals and helped make sets and so forth, but I soon began to feel that Piscator's experiments were being conducted on a scale too large for Japanese proletarian theatre. So I went out and joined an amateur theatre group being run by workers. Did you participate as an actor? No, I did things like design sets and costumes. In the four and a half years of your stay in Germany, what do you think you gained? 57

Page  58 I didn't study much theatre. It would be more appropriate to say that I had gone to Germany to get involved in the German movement. After 1928, theatre in Germany was becoming increasingly political, and I was there during the period of transition, when people were moving towards agitprop theatre. I worked with several mobile theatre groups, and I worked with some of the people who were involved in planning demonstrations. What I tried to do was to give those demonstrations a touch of theatricality. I designed a demonstration with placards and flags carried in such a way as to make the demonstration a sort of visual experience. Another demonstration I did had people divided up into groups that recited different slogans in chorus. I also experimented with a puppet show that was performed with enormous puppets for a meeting of 150,000 people in an outdoor plaza. Berlin of the Weimar Republic was a particularly cosmopolitan city. During my first two years there, Germans seemed to have more freedom than their contemporaries in Poland or France. There was a certain balance struck, I thought, between the right and the left. And Berlin was really the center of world theatre at the time. In Berlin, you could see the most important theatre from all parts of the world being performed: Russian theatre, French or Italian. These were the years of relative economic stability for the Weimar Republic, but when Germany was swallowed up by the Great Depression, the Nazis began to gain power. I remember the Nazis coming by in a truck and firing their pistols into the headquarters of the German Communist Party where I was drawing pictures for posters and handbills. Tell us more about German agitprop theatre at the time. Historically, I think there were roughly four periods in its development. The first stretched from the 1918 revolution until 1925 and centered upon festival pieces employing Schprechchor [agitprop choral theatre] and Bewegungschor [mass choreography agitprop] techniques. Between 1925 and 1928, when the economy was stable, cabaret-style agitprop became the most popular since it was suitable for performance in the factories, in workers' residential districts, and in rural communities. 1928 marked the third period when so-called agitprop Truppe were organized to perform pieces that were more explicitly oriented toward direct agitation. Most of those troupes belonged to the Communist Party, the Young Communist League, and other radical organizations. The final period came after 1929 when the danger of fascism became more visible, and it became necessary to unite people of diverse political leanings. Thus, productions began to move away from agitation and toward propaganda and became increasingly didactic. Passionate appeals were replaced by more educational kollektive Referat. It wasn't long before performances held at mass meetings and cabarets were suppressed, and agitprop transformed itself into a kind of theatre that could be performed in empty lots, on the street, or in the backyards of workers' tenements. I remember doing agitprop on the beach one summer and also on the trains of the National Railroad. We got on the train in groups of three, made some speeches, and got off as quickly as possible when the train arrived at the next station. There was a more sophisticated kind of agitprop for trains where you'd pretend you'd found an envelope on the floor. You'd say, "Oh, I've found somebody's paycheck!" and someone else would say, "Wow! Look how much has been deducted!" "Unspeakable! Incredible!" would be your reply. Some passengers were bound to join in, and that way you'd get a discussion going. 58

Page  59 It sounds very much like a scene from Brecht's movie Kuhle Wampe. That's right. Some of the agitprop troupes in Germany maintained a high level of artistry and influenced dramatists such as Brecht and Friedrich Wolf. Nor was that all, for they influenced groups performing in Japan and China, especially in China where antiJapanese theatre groups used German agitprop techniques during the war. Would it be accurate to say, then, that you formed a certain idea of theatre and its relationship to society when you were working in Germany? Do you think that idea still occupies an important place in your thinking today? Yes, indeed. I can't conceive of dealing with theatre as something that is, in itself, an end. I consider theatre a means to communicate with people, to change them; it is something more than a means to selfexpression or self-realization. It is a way of influencing people in certain directions with dramatic technique. Many of your ideas were formed in Berlin where Brecht, too, was working. Did you ever have an opportunity to meet him? No. I saw the very first productions of Measures Taken and The Threepenny Opera, though, and I remember the first production of A Man's a Man being performed somewhere in a city outside of Berlin. Was Brecht already an influential figure? Yes, he had been recognized as a talented playwright with BaaZ and Drums in the Night and became popular with The Threepenny Opera. When I was in Germany, Brecht was gradually moving toward Marxism and the labor movement, but most proletarian theatre artists were not yet very enthusiastic about him. Of course, they changed their opinions later, but at the time you could see in them a very strong sense of distrust in professional theatre artists and intellectual revolutionaries. As you said earlier, the proletarian theatre movement in Japan was in serious straits, suffering from factional division and fragmentation. Were you concerned about this? Yes, I was concerned. I was constantly being approached by various sides in the disputes to join them, but as I didn't really have a clear idea of what was going on, I was forced to remain neutral. Most Japanese who go abroad, even today, remain outsiders who take notes on what they see, remain aloof from the societies in which they live, and think of themselves as active human beings only in terms of their own Japanese society. You, though, don't seem to fit into this category. I believe that the finest thing I gained during my stay in Germany was the experience of living and working with German laborers. Because of my family background, I was deprived of such opportunities during my youth in Japan. Furthermore, workers didn't treat me specially because I was a foreigner. I regret I didn't study more about German theatre per se, but I had plenty of time to read Goethe, Schiller, and Reinhardt 59

Page  60 later when I was in prison. After your return, you did The Threepenny Opera, didn't you? I came back the same year as the Manchurian Incident. The government was becoming increasingly repressive, and I thought it imperative that all kinds of theatre artists get together and form a new, broadly based organization. When I founded the Tokyo Theatre Group or T.E.S. [Tokyo Engeki Shudan] I tried to include literally everybody —people who had not been members of the Proletarian Theatre League, liberal-democratic theatre artists, dramatists from the art-for-art's-sake school, and even some vaudeville entertainers from Asakusa. The Threepenny Opera was the first thing I did. It was in March 1932 and there were no scripts yet published. I had to create what I called the Kojiki Shibai [Beggars' PZay] on the basis of my memories of the movie and stage productions, the music, and John Gay's Beggar's Opera. T.E.S. had two primary purposes. One was to organize theatre artists to fight against fascism and the approaching war; the other was create opportunities for experimentation outside the narrowly restrictive framework of the proletarian theatre movement of the day. By including popular comedians, opera singers, and dancers, T.E.S. prepared the groundwork for the musical plays that were later to become popular. We did have our shortcomings, though. A movie star, Tsukigata Ryunosuke, who had acted in nothing but samurai movies, approached me and asked me to give him a part in my Beggars' Play. I created a scene especially for him. In terms of introducing Brecht to Japan by faithfully producing his plays, our production was a total failure, but our social and political circumstances demanded the approach we took. Wouldn't you say, though, that yours the most Brechtian way of going about producing the play? You see, as we set the play in the years immediately after the Meiji Restoration, Peachum, for instance, was dressed in a traditional Japanese costume and samurai hairdo. Macheath and his henchmen were dressed in Western clothes fashionable at the time. When I attended the conference "Brecht Dialogue," I saw a photograph of that production exhibited as the first production of The Threepenny Opera in Japan. I was so embarrassed! What did T.E.S. do after that? T.E.S. fell apart after one year. Had it been suppressed? It just disappeared because there were no people to carry on. Let me explain. There were two things involved. First of all, I personally had to take over for the leaders of PROT [Japanese Proletarian Theatre League] since they had all been arrested.l5Then there was the Japanese Communist Party. They lacked any flexible approach to people's organizations and were incapable of organizing any kind of united front. They even demanded that T.E.S. do things according to their very rigid political line. Naturally, this made some of our artists, who were not particularly political, very uncomfortable and not a little afraid. They left T.E.S. and T.E.S. disappeared. In 1934, PROT also collapsed. 60

Page  61 Were you a member of the Party? No. I was a member of the German Communist Party, but I never joined in Japan. In Japan, you didn't have to be a party member to be indicted or to have your activities suppressed. They told us that although we knew what the Party was all about, we persisted in activities that aided and abetted it and helped it to pursue its goals. We couldn't be arrested for what we were doing on stage, because we were only doing scripts as they had been censored by the police. We always had to get permission to perform any given work, you see. In retrospect, do you consider your productions at the time to have been particularly antagonistic toward the system? Looking back, they seem very lukewarm to me. As I told you, we could only do what had escaped censorship. Pressure from the police was so great that, although we felt rather heroic to be working at all, our plays left a great deal to be desired both ideologically and artistically. It wasn't like making bombs in your dressing room, was it! It was like that, too. Whenever we tried to hold a meeting, it was 61

Page  62 dispersed on the spot, and our leaders were arrested. Sometimes we would receive orders from the Party to go and recapture party members who were to be transferred by car from one prison to another, and we went. Did you have a sense of hopelessness or despair? No. I am by nature an optimistic person: I love to work, to do things. I could find a lot of things to do even during times like those. You see, during a performance, the theatre was dark. People from all kinds of organizations were able to distribute handbills among the audience. When people were interrogated by the police as to why they had joined the proletarian movement, they often answered that they had been watching a play at the Tsukiji Little Theatre when a handbill had appeared in their hands out of nowhere. They said that they had read it and been very moved and that it made them join the movement. The darkness in the theatre protected the people who distributed the handbills. You were arrested more than once, were you not? Four or five times in the short span of eighteen months. How did it feel to watch Germany, a country you had made your home 62

Page  63 for some time, fall under Nazi control and go so completely barbaric? I protested the book-burnings and organized the Confederation for Academic and Artistic Freedom [Gakugei Jiyu Domei] with Tokuda Shusei and Hirotsu Kazuo and others. I was arrested and sent directly to prison when I was preparing for the Shanghai Conference that was to take place in August. When I got out of prison in 1935, there were two theatre groups —Shin Tsukiji CNew Tsukiji] and Shinky5 Gekidan [Newly Associated Theatre Company] —in the center of the leftist theatre movement. PROT no longer existed. These two groups were doing plays in conformity with the official line of Socialist Realism, and their audience was limited to intellectuals and students. They didn't have factory workers or farmers in their audience as PROT had had. Anyway, I worked with the New Tsukiji as an actor and director, but a year before the war started these two groups were also forced to break up and important leaders were thrown in jail. I was sent back to jail again, too. How long were you imprisoned during the war? From 1940 to 1942. And how were you treated? Relatively well. I had a certain degree of freedom since I was never sentenced. I am also the kind of person who gets used to living in jail just as I had no trouble getting accustomed to living in a foreign country like Germany. I do remember one thing, though. My jailer didn't usually lock the door to my cell, but when the American B29's came flying over Tokyo for the first time, he locked the door and fled. Later I asked him why he had done it, and he replied that he was afraid that if a bomb had fallen on the prison I would have escaped. About your recantation....16 When I was released in 1935, you could get out by just telling them that, although you would not change your beliefs and would continue to participate in proletarian, socialistic cultural activities, you would sever your ties with the Party. I came out and found that the central committee of the Party had been completely destroyed. They had all gone to prison. But you did recant when you were released in 1942. You swore that you would work in the national interest from then on. Yes, that was the first time I had to say that I was sorry for what I'd been doing and that I would work for my country from then on. What disturbs young people about the recantations made around 1942-3 is the fact that many of those who recanted actually said that the situation had changed, that Japan had entered a war with the United States, that it had become a matter of his country's survival, and that he could no longer remain silent in prison. What disturbs them most is that many of those who recanted weren't able to maintain the conviction that Japan's survival was irrelevant. I was not concerned with whether Japan won or lost the war. It was not important to me. When a person was faced with the problem of recan 63

Page  64 tation, there were two basic things to be considered. One concerned your responsibility to your organization. The other had to do with your responsibility to yourself. Right? You also had to take into consideration what effect your act would have on others who were trying to resist; you had to consider whether or not your act might prompt somebody else to give up. When they got me the first time, I did everything to protect the people in the Party. In order to get information on the Party, the police didn't hesitate to torture suspects. Fortunately, I was able to keep silent. The fact that I had anything to do with the Party never passed my lips. Somebody else from the Party blabbed. Later I admitted my sympathies, but that was all I told them. When I was nabbed the second time, there was no Party. But I went beyond the call of duty and, in order to protect the members of my troupe, I protested that there was no legal basis for their ordering theatre groups to disband or their harassment of individuals. The members of my troupe disbanded on their own, and they all recanted while I was struggling in jail. They all recanted and went into the government's traveling companies, and some just went into commercial films. I didn't have anybody left to fight for, so the problem boiled down to a very personal one. I. thought it would be better to get out and start doing things again instead of sitting in a prison cell. I wanted to find out somehow if there was any possibility left of continuing the movement. Generally, my attitude is to always keep doing things. When the police said to us before the war that we weren't to be allowed to use red lights, we used pink ones. And when pink light was banned, we used amber. The audience always applauded because they understood what we were trying to say. Could you tell us a little more about the traveling companies? They were organized by the government for the purpose of visiting soldiers at the front and military factories. The purpose was obviously to bolster people's fighting spirit. Ironically enough, it was the first and last time the Japanese government ever subsidized theatre. It seems that artists who had participated in the agitprop theatres before the war employed their expertise to a kind of mobile theatre meant to serve opposite purposes. What were you doing at the time? Were you involved in antiwar or protest movements? It was absolutely out of the question to stage political protests. I tried to maintain contact with young people who had unwillingly gone into the traveling companies. I gave them artistic advice. But, you see, no matter how much I might say that my advice was to help them artistically, I don't think I can escape my share of the responsibility. I was forbidden to act or direct during the war, but they were doing plays "to bolster people's fighting spirit," and it is clear that my advice helped them. But let me say this: as far as the actors and the directors with whom I kept in touch, there was no one who worked willingly for the traveling companies. It was one of those inescapable evils. Did you gain anything by having cooperated with the traveling companies in this way? I don't know if I gained anything, but one thing.is clear. I kept a group of people in one place, and these were the men who filled many important roles in theatre after the war. Oh, yes, I also gave acting classes —I guess my classes were the only place in Japan where you didn't 64

Page  65 have to listen to patriotic speeches, where you were not trained in violent, militaristic ways. The war had another side for me. It was a time to think. I read a lot in prison, read a lot of the classics, books on phonetics and psychology. My book on acting technique Kindai Haiyu-Jutsu [Modern Acting Technique] was born out of reading and thinking I did in prison. After the war, how did you start Haiyuza? It was an attempt to search for real theatre again. I included three groups of people: one from the pre-Tsukiji period, one from the group that had started their theatre careers with Tsukiji, and the third group consisted of the people who had started with the proletarian theatre movement. Haiyuza's first ten years after the war was a period during which we groped toward new possiblities in theatre In those ten years our productions included Shakespeare, Moliere, Chekhov, and Mafune Yutaka. It was a period of trying to redefine drama. There were some leftist theatre groups that dominated theatre in the period of so-called postwar democracy, but we steered clear of politics until the Korean War. With the Korean War, we began to participate in political activities and continued to do so up to the 1960 campaign against the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. During the campaigns and protests against that treaty, we produced many plays by Brecht and Abe Kobo. After 1960, in the midst of the confusion and prevailing sense of failure that followed the treaty's renewal, we returned to our attempts to search out the meaning of theatre and of theatrical expression. We have produced a number of new plays by Tanaka Chikao,17 Ishikawa Jun,18 and Hasegawa Shiro 19 I would also like to point out that we have put a great deal of energy and effort into the training of young actors and other theatre artists. We've had a training school attached to Haiyuza for twenty years. 20 You built your own theatre house for your troupe in 1954, but for many years you performed mostly outside of that theatre, in large commercial houses. Why? 65

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Page  67 The Actor's Theatre [Haiyuza Gekij5o is very small, with a seating capacity of 400. We wanted to perform in larger theatres. I don't think there's any necessary opposition between large and small theatres. In reality, you are forced to put on very avant-garde, experimental productions in a small house because there is only a very small audience that will come to your productions. If you remain content with producing in small houses, it would only be Tsukiji all over again. I go out to big theatres because I want to come into contact with the masses. My goal has always been to create something that speaks to the masses and stimulates them as it entertains. Even experiments done in small theatres ought ultimately to seek this. Otherwise, theatre becomes meaningless. You have been producing plays regularly in your own theatre since last year. It has been thought that you did this because you realized the importance of continuous activities in a specific theatre building. These regular performances at the Actor's Theatre are for the limited number of people who are willing to come and see our more experimental, avant-garde productions. But I don't think we should limit ourselves. I feel the need to go into commercial entertainment quarters and let our kind of theatre be there. It's one of those things, you see. We've got to take our kind of theatre into demonstrations, into the factories, and into cities outside of Tokyo. Going into big commercial theatre houses is one of the many things we must do. Although sometimes theatre owner-producers like the Nissei Theatre demand that we cast certain famous actors or choose certain plays, that doesn't necessarily mean we have to lower our artistic standards. Don't you think the audience is forced into a very passive position in a big theatre where the stage is so far away? There are many ways of solving that problem. The ancient Greeks performed in mammoth theatre, you know. The real problem we have in Japan is that we are so often forced to perform in concert halls. As far as the problem of communication with the audience is concerned, it doesn't really make too much difference if a theatre's small or large. At this point, no matter what you try in terms of communicating with the audience or audience participation, they all remain technical solutions — not essential ones. It is not difficult to agree that viewing these problems as merely matters of technique is foolish. The real focus of this problem seems to be theatre-going as it is practiced in this country. The importance of having a place where something is always happening has become more and more widely recognized of late. This has nothing to do with the size of the theatre; it concerns the nature of the system for producing plays. Just putting a gala show on the stage of some posh auditorium for a week doesn't mean anything any longer. Theatre must be made a continuous, everyday matter. Audience participation really begins at the moment someone decides to go and see a play. For our part, we must provide continuous opportunities for participation, don't you agree? There's nothing greater than an audience that comes to your theatre because it's your theatre. But to bind your audience to your theatre building and demand that they see everything that happens there seems wrong. 67

Page  68 Why need it be wrong? For too lonq a time, Shingeki has been trying to attract audiences with the plays it produces. The result has been that we have a very limited range of people in our audiences. It is high time there were places where there is theatre all the time. So few theatre companies have their own houses in Japan, and yours is one of them. Do you have any intention of making it into a real repertory We have tried. The main obstacle is financial. We cannot afford a warehouse, and we don't have the financial ability to advertise constantly. Do you really think the reason Haiyuza is not a repertory company is economic? Or, to put the question conversely, do you believe the time when Haiyuza becomes a repertory company in the real sense of that term will be the time when it has achieved economic stability? Haiyuza has more than one hundred actors. In order to make ends meet as a professional company, we have to tour around the country at least twice a year. Half the amount of money we live on comes from what we earn in movies and television. With these activities and the amount of work scheduled, it is inconceivable for us to become a real repertory company. In short, our society is not yet capable of providing us with the basis needed to become a true repertory theatre. It is inevitable that we are the way we are —we are forced to produce theatre of high artistic quality without any subsidy from the government, local groups, or wealthy individuals. Take, for example, the National Theatre here in Tokyo. It's nothing but a name. They don't have their own company; they borrow actors from the big commercial companies like Toho and Shochiku. They will never make the National Theatre a repertory company. Have you heard about their plan for building another National Theatre for Shingeki? The Cultural Agency of the government lacks both the ability and imagination to run a theatre company or produce plays. I bet that the theatre, if it ever materialized, would just be another hal I for rent. They build fine buildings, but they never consider spending their money on theatre itself. And if we want to use the building, we have to pay admission taxes on top of the rental. There's no government patronage and no use for the National Theatre. The government is only spending about 500 million yen [1.38 million dollars] annually on that theatre. There's no money left after they pay the wages of the bureaucrats working there and the other maintenance expenses. And the municipal government? Well, this year they decided to allocate 50 million yen for theatre, opera, and ballet. We told them just to give money to each company. They refused; they wanted a few companies to get together and do a joint production, or no money was to be given away. Special discounts for residents of Tokyo or no money. I told them their ideas were lousy, that they should build a lot of advertising pillars in the city so that we could advertise for ourselves, but they wouldn't hear of it. The municipal government does not have any interest in the arts or 68

Page  69 cultural activities. They allocate a portion of the budget so that they can buy excuses, like cultural indulgences. Precisely. No one has any intention of protecting the arts in a longranged way. They want the money to go directly back to the citizens, the taxpayers. It's just another way for the politicians to brown-nose the people. Theatre in this country seems to exist in the shady area between two predefined and extreme alternative modes of being. It can either become a means of furthering purely political goals —as with the traveling companies you mentioned, where people weren't drafted if they were in theatre —or it can become a legalized corpus of outworn artistic precepts, as is the case with Kabuki. As far as society at large is concerned, theatre is a dead-letter — it exists only as an empty shell. Actors were classed among the most lowly and were even forced to live in special ghettos until the Meiji Restoration. Although the Meiji government wanted to imitate European countries and built a few luxurious theatres where foreign guests of the government were entertained, theatre was still regarded as something special by the people. The government did nothing but squeeze the admission tax out of theatres, keeping them under constant pressure, up until the notorious traveling companies were established. I dare say nothing has changed since the war. In the entire history of modern theatre in Japan, Count Hijikata was the first and last of the wealthy Japanese to patronize theatre. For that, he was divested of his title and thrown in jail. He literally spent on theatre to the last penny. Take the Nissei Theatre. It's a theatre to compare with the biggest and most plush in the world. But can you call that patronage? No. It was constructed by the Nippon Life Insurance Company which is the world's third largest insurance company, but it's not patronage. It is an enormous advertisement for their company just off the Ginza and a warehouse where they store their treasures, various kinds of art objects and other valuables. It is just another way to maintain their capital without being bothered with tax problems. In the final analysis, it's the mass media that support theatre with the jobs they provide. Right. I'1 tell you how I built the Actor's Theatre. I acted in twentynine movies in two years. I wasn't the only one. A few other important actors did the same thing. 65% of our earnings went to finance the new building. It took four years for us to come up with the money necessary to build the theatre, and after we'd done so, we still had such a large debt that we had no choice for some time but to rent the theatre to other companies and to work elsewhere, in the movi.es, television, and commercial theatre, ourselves. Artistically speaking, it could not have been beneficial to the company. I can't stress strongly enough how much damage has been done to our company by the financial difficulties we have had to face. We don't have foundations either. We must be extremely careful with foundations. Quite dangerous, you know. We were once approached and offered financial assistance by an American foundation. We refused. Theatre has always been antiestablishment, 69

Page  70 something for Kawara beggars. Speaking of Kawara beggars, what do you think of Kabuki today? We abandoned Kabuki when we started Tsukiji. What we wanted was something dynamic, and Kabuki didn't seem to satisfy us. It wasn't until I discovered Brecht that I began to reexamine the possibilities in Kabuki. There is quite a lot we can learn from Kabuki in terms of the relationship between dramatic meaning and style. But I think the Kabuki we see today is terribly perverted. Kabuki has stopped changing or growing since the Restoration. Kabuki was breathing and growing with the masses during the Edo period. We only have a mummy of what Kabuki once was and a lot of people doing their best to preserve it. After each performance they put it to bed in a refrigerated sarcophagus. And that's why we aren't concerned with "how best to use Kabuki techniques on the contemporary stage." If we only use Kabuki techniques all we'll have will be superficial parodies. Joseph Papp made his Hamlet a Puerto Rican garbage collector, his Ophelia a teeny-bopper. Thus, he attempted to destroy their traditional images. No one has tried anything like this in Kabuki. Was your Shingeki ChUshingura an attempt?21 No, the intention was not to satirize Kabuki. The play was to be a discussion on Kabuki, a portrayal of the different approaches to Kabuki. That is why we tried so hard to imitate Kabuki. I don't like to have to admit it, but it was not a very skillful imitation. When we deal with Kabuki as a historical entity, not something rigid and fixed but something that changed with the people, the fact that there are no parodies of Kabuki seems to indicate that there's something about Kabuki we haven't quite been able to surpass. That's not an appropriate way to approach the problem. Theatre must stay with the masses: that's obvious. But our theatre has to stay with today's masses, and they aren't concerned with what Kabuki once was. Do you seriously think, then, that people today enjoy Kabuki? No, they don't enjoy it, but the image of real Kabuki deep down inside us has never been surpassed by anything ---we can also be sure of that. But the fact that it has never been surpassed does not necessarily mean that you have to turn around, go back, and start all over again from where Kabuki left off. We're in the middle of our fight to surpass it now. Kabuki used to be an art form that breathed with the people; it was the wisdom of their culture. Today, Kabuki offers neither a rationale for theatre nor a body of firmly established theory, but an example of the spontaneous emergence of theatre. The question that we have to answer now is how theatre is to emerge out of our daily lives. It is not a matter of methodology. Kabuki had the answer when it was born. It is true that to use Kabuki in contemporary theatre for the edification and education of an audience is undesirable, but it is also true that Japanese contemporary theatre has never seriously tried to 70

Page  71 explore what possibilities there might be in Kabuki. We haven't mastered the very direct, even grotesque, emotions that you can find in original Kabuki scripts, much less those emotions as Kabuki expressed them. We are no longer concerned with the question of ultimate goals; we are only interested in creating theatre. Tell me how you will deal with the illogicalities, anachronisms, and formalism of Kabuki. I don't believe that to search for an idea of theatre by going back into origins is very constructive. Rather, I believe we ought to find that idea in the complex, diverse forms and functions of theatre today. Well, let's just talk about the audience. For the audiences of early Kabuki theatres, there existed a sense of freedom and disorder. Lovers exchanged love letters; people kept eating and drinking; merchants conducted their business talks; there were drunkards lying around and dogs sneaking in and walking around. Today, though, it's all a big no-no. No money is a no-no; bad manners is a no-no. Our theatres are not filled with the kind of humanness that old Kabuki must have had. Do you think it is an absolute impossibility to have something very human and chaotic in Shingeki? It's too late. You can have that sort of thing at home in front of your television set. You can lie down, drink, eat, and kiss your sweethearts as much as you like. Things are better like that, because you don't get in anybody's way. Theatre was a sort of health center in the old days, where you enjoyed yourselves in many ways only one of which was seeing a play. We have seen various attempts to reestablish the dialogue which Kabuki once maintained with its audience. Most of the time, we are very disappointed: intentions are so obvious; they make you so terribly selfconscious. A dialogue doesn't begin because actors and audience touch each other or shout at each other. I can't help thinking there are amenities to be observed even in the theatre. The point as far as we are concerned is simply that no such dialogue exists anymore. The fault does not lie with the emotional or psychological relationship between the actors and the audience. Rather, the real problem is that Shingeki has lost its ability to make people want to come to the theatre. We are concerned with what things might draw people. "A place" could be one of them, a place where something is always happening, where people gather all the time. My mother used to get up at two o'clock in the morning to go to the theatre. She would prepare lunchboxes, warm sake, bake cakes, and finally go to the Meiji-za theatre by boat. She would relax and just enjoy watching plays from early morning till evening. That is precisely what we would call "audience participation." But today people who work for their living don't have the time for that kind of thing! They can only enjoy theatre in ways that will enable them to work normally the next day. 71

Page  72 It was for the purpose of giving these working people a chance to see theatre that R6en [ROdOsha Engeki Hy6gikai, The Workers' Council on Theatre] was begun. Would you tell us something about that? Roen was started after the war. It is essentially an independent organization for providing opportunities for workers to see plays for less money. AftQr the war, we were faced with the problem of how to create such opportunities while insuring ourselves of at least enough money to cover costs. If the house is full, admission per person can be lowered. You see, you can cover the daily cost of a production if you have the house filled to sixty percent of capacity. You budget that way to avoid deficits. So, if Roen fills the house with its members, and they each pay sixty percent of the regular fare, the company doesn't lose too much, and each member of Roen pays about half of the regular admission. Volksbuhne [Folk Theatre] in Germany used to employ this technique. In reality, because the prices of everything have risen so much, it has become a sacrifice far the company to give performances for Roen audiences. But I still think it's important, and so we will continue to give R5en performances. We provide these opportunities to workers who are alienated and force-fed the leftovers of bourgeois culture. Mr. Senda, that strikes one as being a rather arrogant attitude. It sounds awfully "bourgeois" to be motivated to do things "for the betterment of the masses." Well, ideally, it would be best if workers could create something for themselves, but they can't yet create their own theatre as the German Volksbu]hne once did. What kind of workers comprise Roen? Mainly white-collar workers. Many of them are bank employees, insurance company employees, government employees, and school teachers. Weren't blue-collar workers Roen's target when it was begun? Yes. They still are trying to get blue-collar workers in, but it's very difficult. The majority of people in Roen today are still the people who can afford to pay the admission, who have time to spend in the theatre. And I don't doubt that most of them come to the theatre thinking they're going to get some culture. Nevertheless, the problem seems to lie with the organization itself more than with the members. How do you mean? One of the purposes of organizing R6en was to reflect audiences' opinions and expectations directly on the theatre, to give them a role in the creation of theatre. But Roen is now simply a passive, recipient body. Furthermore, regional committees decide what will be good for members to see, and in the process of making decisions certain prejudices work to their detriment. I can imagine your having experienced that. There's a great deal of influence from the Communist Party involved. On the other hand, 72

Page  73 however, the members of Roen do present a problem in themselves. If you ask the members, as is done in Tokyo, to vote for what they want to see, the results always indicate very clearly that what they want to see are famous plays with famous stars. Their demands are aggravating, but I don't think you can afford simply to ignore them. If you let them loose, they will be swept away by things like Minen [Minshu Engeki Kyokai, Democratic Theatre Organization] sponsored by the Komei-to [Clean Government Party] specifically for the purpose of interfering with the activities of Roen, or commercial organizations like Onkyo [Ongaku Bunka Kyokai, Musical Art Association]. There are a lot of things wrong with Foen, but I'll stick with it for the sake of those who faced the discrimination and ill-treatment workers who join Roen often meet. In the beginning, Roen was a part of the cultural activities of the Communist Party and, even now, because of that, some employers fire people when it's discovered that they're members. We must face up to reality: artistically speaking, the front and the rear guards may never meet —but they do politically. What do you mean by that? Organizations like Roen organize people; they pool people in ways that are politically useful. And who knows, they might do something to change society someday. I can't stress enough the fact that working people do not create their own culture. When they are free from work, what do they do? Drink or imbibe their lousy bourgeois culture. They are being poisoned. I don't want to have to decide what I'm going to do solely on the basis of what these people demand, but I think it would be equally wrong to give up on them. Do you really think you can separate your work so neatly into two categories —one for the masses, one for your avant-garde audiences? They are separate in reality. It's hard to accept that. We can't classify things and tailor them to suit various audiences. You can afford to say that because you only run a small company. In my case, however, I've chosen to make my company self-supporting. Hasegawa Shir5, for instance, never takes your position of separating these two kinds of theatre: valuable, good theatre and theatre for the masses. Do you think you will be able to continue to work at these two separate levels? I know my audiences. The present social and financial situation does not permit me to do just one thing, just what pleases me. I would rather accept what the masses want. If they want to see TV stars act on stage in famous plays, let them. I load the plays up with my own opinions and views of what is artistically acceptable. Anna Karenina, in the production adapted by Hasegawa Shiro and directed by me, was a good example. How do you think we will be able to overcome Roen's shortcomings? Roen must be reorganized on the basis of smaller units, like study groups in factories or circles based on regional Roen organizations. These units must become bodies in industry and the regional organizations to carry 73

Page  74 on the cultural and intellectual work of the movement. They must never be satisfied with being merely theatre clubs. The cultural demands of the masses are not always specific; They don't necessarily want theatre, music, or literature per se. They want something that encompasses all areas of art at once, including a lot of things just for fun. We must use theatre as a total art in order to fulfill these diverse demands. Then, once we have gotten their attention in this way, we must figure out how the professional artist can help stimulate these groups of people to create for themselves. There were circles organized before the war, as part of the proletarian theatre movement, but their real purpose was to provide shelter for political activists and labor unionists. Cultural activities placed a bad second to politics. Today, though, the demands of the times have changed. We would be very reluctant to allow our theatre to become a political organization. It would do us considerable artistic damage, and, to us, artistic damage is equivalent to political damage. Shingeki people have always swayed back and forth between being professional artists and amateurs. Shingeki is like a mirage —it's there by all appearances, but when you reach out for it, it's gone. This is why we say "In constructing our theatre will we will destroy Theatre." Arnold Wesker, in trying (and, unfortunately, eventually failing) to construct his Centre 42, had an idea similar to ours. Like Wesker, we'd like to set up permanent centers where you would have a theatre, meeting rooms, restaurants, bookstores, and many other places for fun. We believe it would revitalize theatre. Do you think the idea is too unrealistic? You will never succeed so long as you try to go it alone. Everything depends upon how you bind yourselves to the working class. You see, what always happens is that the government, labor unions, or some other group intervenes and uses the facilities to their own advantage. Take the example of the Welfare Pension Halls [Kosei Nenkin Hall]. The halls were built with the interest on the money for pensions we pay t< Welfare Ministry. The amount of that interest is said to be about two million dollars annually. The Finance Ministry used to loan that money out and make more money until somebody found out and demanded that the government use it for something that would benefit the people directly. They finally built a few Welfare Pension Halls and sanatoriums. But the moment these halls were built, the management instantaneously became bureaucratic. I guess the labor unions were consulted as to what should happen in the halls. Unfortunately, the labor unions and the Communist and Socialist parties lack any creative or artistic imagination, so nothing happens there at all. The question in this case is how we are to take them back to ourselves. Not much hope of that, is there. You shouldn't let go of what you've finally gotten from them. There are a lot of things possible using these facilities. We must exercise our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. You will never be accepted by the masses if you stick to your little hole in the wall. That goes with the student movement, too. They think they're the only ones who are antiestablishment, but that's wrong. You should always keep your garrison as big as possible. We'd rather keep our garrison small —size is so often used to bluff people. 74

Page  75 If you're going to move, if you're going to work, there is going to be plenty of bluffing and compromising. I'm not saying it's good, but it's not always avoidable either. You've got a point, but we'll do what we can to prove you wrong. To change the subject, though.... One surprising thing about Japanese theatre today is that there are virtually no competent, professional theatre critics. Has this always been the case? You can't make a living by being a professional critic. So who comes in and does theatre criticism? Most of the time, it's assistant professors from the universities. They simply apply the results of their studies of theatre in other countries to what they see here. They seldom study Japanese theatre itself. They have no idea of what's really going on. The unbelievably poor reviews of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Tokyo performances come to mind. If foreign artists who perform in Japan get any feedback at all, they must think Japanese are a bunch of featherbrains. Most critics deal with theatre as an exercise in writing when they start their careers. Later, they move on to literary or social criticism. Like Eto Jun. Yes, his case is rather typical. When he finished school, most of his critical writing was devoted to theatre. Now, he writes about "civilization." The newspapers have their reviews written by reporters who have not been trained at all as theatre critics. They are just ordinary reporters who may be interested in theatre. The newspaDers take advantage of their interest and make them write reviews in addition to their regular work. I sympathize with them. The day they become good at writing reviews is the day they are transferred somewhere to write about good housekeeping. If a reporter's really good, he'll cover police news. He will never write theatre reviews again. Then, there aren't any critics who write reviews professionally? I can think of two men, but they don't have any sense of theatre or any personal standards. They change their criteria according to the companies they review. I wouldn't be very surprised if they praised the outrageous things they do because they have been asked to do so by the public relations men of the commercial companies. On the other hand, they are sometimes unreasonably hard on Shingeki productions. Their being harsh is fine, as long as they say something. Unfortunately, their reviews usually reveal little more than their incompetence. How do you think this dearth of critics has affected the development of Shingeki? Most of the time we ignore reviews, because they are valueless. But, I do believe we are much the worse for the absence of a dialogue between good critics and ourselves. Reviews seem equally valueless for readers as well. There has never 75

Page  76 been an attempt to define the purpose and function of theatre criticism. In Japan, theatre is still being treated as just another art form and not as something that could lead to an understanding of one's entire culture. At the same time, Shingeki is being treated as bigger than life. Compared to Kabuki, which consumes 300,000 people a year, Shingeki annually attracts an audience of only 50,000. Socially, Shingeki's importance is nominal. Would you say that the newspapers have traditionally been Shingeki sympathizers? Sure, but that doesn't give them the right to go and say all the incredible things they do, as if they were our wealthy patrons and we their concubines. You see, they apply different criteria to different kinds of productions. They give favorable reviews to the small underground productions —they're afraid of being called old-fashioned if they don't. Do I sound paranoid? No, the papers really don't know what to make of us. They're intimidated. But, I personally am pleased with the emergence of young critics who are themselves directors and playwrights. They are, however, highly subjective and one-sided. It is as if they were members of the movement's military band. I don't mind if they're ferocious, but they are hard to communicate with. We have verbal battles, but no arguments or discussions. Their language is also different from ours. Whether or not I agree with them, I've first got to figure out what is being said on the page before me —and that's not always easy. Where must Shingeki proceed from here? While constantly repeating the processes of refinement and synthesis, the theatre will grow increasingly diverse. Actors must expand their range and become capable of almost anything. I still hope that theatre will become something more intellectual, "theatre for the age of science," as Brecht put it. It seems to me that Shingeki today, especially that of younger people, has a tendency to be extremely subjective. At this rate, I'm afraid you're going to burn yourselves out before you accomplish anything. I don't mean to repeat, but I want to emphasize the importance of consolidation with the masses. Japanese society will never change unless the masses change, unless they come to realize that they belong to a certain class in society. Each individual theatre company can maintain its own artistic position, but socially we should remain united. I sincerely hope to work with young people by discovering some of the things we have in common. When the system is always ready to split you apart, it does not make sense to be antagonistic toward each other. All else remaining equal, it is extremely doubtful that the masses, or the workers, if you like, are going to achieve class consciousness as a matter of course. That's why the role of art, of the cultural movement, must be given high priority. You are right, but while you sit around talking, the mass media are out there doing everything in their power to prevent the workers from 76

Page  77 realizing who they are, don't you see? Since we don't possess the mass media's total, concentrated power, we've got to stick together and pool what resources we do have. All we can do is what we want to do. It's awfully hard to conceive of what good might come of a union with other Shingeki groups. To do what you want to do is fine. That doesn't mean, however, that you have to deny everything that has come before. Your attitude of pushing people who are also against the establishment aside and classifying them as part of the establishment is, to me, an expression of your immaturity and weakness. Even Shingeki will vanish someday. *This interview was conducted at the Actor's Theatre in Tokyo on January 10 and February 5, 1970. Interviewing Mr. Senda were Yamamoto Kiyokazu, Kazuko F. Goodman, and David Goodman. page 47: Designing posters for the proletarian theatre movement in Germany, ca. 1929 page 49: Senda Koreya and his wife Kishi Teruko at their home, ca. 1968 page 51 upper: From Morn to Midnight (Tsukiji Little Theatre, 1924) lower: Walter Hasenclever's Man (Tsukiji Little Theatre, 1925). Senda is the third seated figure on the right. page 52: A room in the home of Hijikata Yoshi (the seated figure third from the right), used as an office while the Tsukiji was being planned. page 54: Karl Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) as produced by the Tsukiji Little Theatre in 1924. Senda is on the left. page 57 left: Expressionist set, ca. 1928; details unknown. right: Meyerhold's "Biochemics" page 61: Beggars' Play page 62 left: Faust (Shinkyo Gekidan, 1936). Senda's Mephistopheles speaks to Faust through a window. right: Nagatsuka Takashi's Tsuchi [Earth] as produced by the Shin Tsukiji Gekidan in 1933. page 65: The Haiyuza troupe's first production, The Inspector General (1946) page 66 upper: The Threepenny Opera, produced by Haiyuza. left center: The Threepenny Opera, produced by Haiyuza. lower left: The Merry Wives of Windsor with Senda as Falstaff (Haiyuza, 1952). lower right: Senda's Tartuffe 77

Page  78 IShingeki literally means "new theatre." The word was coined around 1907 to denote a kind of theatre different from Kabuki or Shinpa [Kabuki-style modern theatre]. The Shingeki movement, whose purpose it was to create modern theatre in Japan, was founded by Shimamura Hogetsu, Osanai Kaoru, Ichikawa Sadanji, and others during the last years of the twentieth century's first decade, twenty years later than their European counterparts. 2The Tsukiji Little Theatre [Tsukiji Shogekij]b was a theatre company and building. It opened with the production fof Seeschlacht [Sea Battle] by Reinhard Goering and Chekhov's The Swan Song on June 14, 1924. The company existed until 1929 when it was split into several different companies. The people who stayed with the Tsukiji were called "Theatre Company Tsukiji Little Theatre." 3Hakama is a divided skirt worn over the kimono in men's formal wear. 4The Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 took place at 11:58 on the morning of September I, 1923. 90,000 people died, 100,000 were injured; 680,000 buildings were burned down, and 14,000 collapsed. 5Senda was so shocked, in fact, that he changed his name to commemorate the experience. Senda was mistaken for a Korean and nearly killed at a place near Sendagaya station in Tokyo, and his name derives from that place. Senda was born Ito Kunio. 6Dsugi Sakae [1885-1923]. Japanese anarcho-syndicalist who introduced Kropotkin to Japan. He was one of the few people who worked to keep the socialist movement alive during the first World War, and he published a journal Rodo Undo [The Labor Movement], which influential in the foundation of Japan's first labor unions. He was murdered, along with his wife Ito Noe, by the police during the confusion surrounding the Great Tokyo Earthquake. 7Hijikata Yoshi [1898-1959] 0Osanai Kaoru [1881-1928] Playwright, director, poet, critic. Founded the Free Theatre [Jiyu Gekijo] in 1909. He wrote, in his "Plan for the Free Theatre," that the purpose of founding the company was to "bring forth the age of modern theatre in Japan with translated European plays." He traveled widely to the Soviet Union, France, and England. He played an important part in introducing the Moscow Art Theatre, Gordon Craig, and Max Reinhardt to Japan. He was one of the first Japanese to theorize the importance of the role of directors in the theatre. Until the foundation of the Tsukiji Little Theatre, he had continually expressed his dissatisfaction with Japanese playwrights, and when the Tsukiji opened, he declared that it would produce only European plays for a period of two years. 9Kishida Kunio [1890-1954] A writer and director, Kishida studied French drama at Tokyo Imperial University. He founded Bungakuza, one of the most important Shingeki troupes even today, in 1937 along with Iwata Toy5 and Kubota Mantaro. These three men declared when they founded Bungakuza, "We must now turn away from political, pedantic theatre and offer the masses real food for the mind." IOYamamoto Yuzo [1887- ] Playwright and novelist, his plays include Eiji Goroshi [Murder of an Infant], Seimei no Kamuri [Crown of Life], and Doshi no Hitobito CComrades]. IIKikuchi Kan [1888-1948] Novelist and playwright, Kikuchi's palys include Chichi Kaeru [Father Returns] Tojuro's Love [T'ojuro no Koi] and many more. His long, popular novels were very successful. He started the literary magazine Bungei Shunju which has grown to be one of the most important monthly magazines today. 78

Page  79 16The problem of "recantation" or tenko [doing an about-face] has been one of the most difficult for Japanese leftists to deal with. Some, like Miyamoto Kenji who is the present chairman of the JCP, refused to recant and spent the entire war in prison; others, like Senda Koreya, recanted and were released. Recantation had grave personal and social consequences for the people involved, and it should be noted that Senda's discussion of the problem in such free and direct terms is extremely unusual. 17Tanaka Chikao [1905- ] One of the founders of the Haiyuza Company and a playwright whose first play Ofukuro [Mother] was written in 1933. He has been an extremely prolific writer known especially for his rich, heavy dialogue. 18Ishikawa Jun [1899- ] Novelist and playwright. His novels include Fugen LSamantabhadra] and Ogon Densetsu [A Golden Legend]; his plays include such works as Omae no Teki wa Omae Da [You're Your Own Worst Enemy]. 9Hasegawa Shiro [1909- ] Novelist, critic, poet, playwright; translator of Brecht, Lorca, and others. After graduating from college in 1937, Hasegawa took a job with the Southern Manchurian Railroad Company as a librarian. In 1942 he quit and was drafted two years later in 1944. Captured by the Red Army in the U.S.S.R., he was sent to Siberia —his experiences there are recorded in his Tales of Siberia [Siberia Monogatari] published in 1952. His most recent dramatic work, produced by Haiyuza, is Heitai Shibai [A Play for Soldiers]. 20The Actor's Theatre Drama School [Haiyuza Yoseijo] was started in 1950. It acted as a part of the Actor's Theatre until 1967 when it was transferred to Toho University of Art. 21 2Shingeki Chushingura was written by Fukuda Yoshiyuki and directed by Senda Koreya. It was produced by Haiyuza in January 1970. The play is a modern take-off on the well-known Kabuki play which relates the tale of the forty-seven ronin. 79

Page  80 L THINK TANK ON IMAGES Where The Engineers Take A Stand. 00000000** @ @0.0 0 @ 0 0*@@.@@@@@@@ 0 * *0 0 *ha~ * 0 @0.9?. 0 0 * 10 0 *@@.@ @@@ D 00 * @0 000000000 *@@@0o Image-Dynamics Systems nac Incorporated No. 2-7 Nishi-Azabu 1-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo. (03)-404-2321. Cable Address! "Cameranac Tokyo' i

The Trinity of Modern Theatre

Tsuno Kaitaropp. 81

Page  81 TSUNO KAITARO

Page  82 Several years ago, Tsuno Kaitaro suggested that what was needed in Japanese theatre were professional critics, and this had special meaning in the context, for in Japan there are only scholars of theatre whose job it is to know and entertainment columnists whose job it is to report. Tsuno's critic, however, made it his business to work. His function was to be that of thinker and theoretician while his purpose was to take an active role in the guidance of actual productions. He was to be the best possible blend of Brecht's esoteric philosopher and pragmatic dramaturg. As he worked to fulfill his self-defined goals, it became clear to Tsuno that the birth of a Japanese critic would also require the birth of a new language of criticism. With the publication of his first book A Criticism of Tragedy [LHigeki no Hihan] Tokyo: Shobunsha, 1970) it has become possible to view the progress he has made. The essay which follows comprises the last chapter of Tsuno's book. In the language that he develops in the earlier portions of the book, Tsuno speaks of units of culture arranged in identifiable constellations as "modes." Modes are persistent and pervasive; they will change form, style, and reorganize themselves in order to persist. Modes are, in this sense, pernicious. Tsuno also speaks of modes as a "changeless continuity, " and he views with horror "a world whose rhythms not even the atomic bomb could alter. "1 In this article, Tsuno discusses three modes comprising the "trinity of modern theatre" but no less that of modern civilization. This trinity consists of humanism, representing the sole mode of modern thous tt, the compendium of principle. guiding Western civilization; tragedy, representing the sole mode of modern drama, the 82 codification and plotting out of what is to be understood as a "natural" course of events; and the theatre building, symbolized by its curtain, representing the sole mode of modern society, the organization and regimentation by coercion or the threat thereof of all interpersonal relations. In searching for an alternative to this trinity, Tsuno came upon Brecht's idea of a "Smoking Theatre." I even think that in a Shakespearean production one man in the stalls with a cigar could bring about the downfall of Western Art. He might as well light a time bomb as light his cigar. I would be delighted to see our public allowed to smoke during performances. And I'd be delighted mainly for the actors' sake. In my view it is quite impossible for the actor to play unnaturaZ, cramped and old-fashioned theatre to a man smoking in the stalls.2 It was in words like these written by the young Brecht that Tsuno felt he had found a point from which to launch his assaults on the trinity of modes, a point located in the structure of theatre itself. One other special use of language should be noted here. Tsuno uses "Western Europe" as an epithet the way he might have chosen "modern technological society" or "post industrial civilization. " He finds himself in modern theatre, and, therefore, his theatre tradition is founded upon the work of Aristotle, Goethe, Brecht, and Artaud. Mr. Tsuno is criticizing this tradition, his own tradition, in this essay. 3

Page  83 I go to the theatre. It is time. The lights dim. But not all of them. Up out of the darkness floats a red sign: "NO SMOKING" Fire Prevention Act, article 23, paragraph 2 (Theatres, etc.): At locations designated by the inspector it shall be necessary to affix a sign either directly in front of the audience or in some other easily visible place stating that smoking, the use of fire or flame, and the possession in such place of explosives or other dangerous commodities is strictly forbidden. Although I am a heavy smoker in whose hands fifty cigarettes a day are reduced to ash, for the next hour or so, until the now rising curtain again descends, I must not light a cigarette. Should I do so, I would be besieged by an onslaught of coughing and ahems, or, should it be during one of the fire officer's occasional tours of inspection, I would be fined "an amount not in excess of ten-thousand yen" in accordance with the law. I am a clog in the machinery not of the Smoking Theatre but of the flammable NoSmoking Theatre. The man who has accepted the restriction on smoking as a matter of course will also be left with no alternative but to recognize the second taboo: not to talk to the friend sitting next to him. Smokeless and silent —codified prohibitions and customary taboos unite to cast their bonds over our consciousness in the theatre almost naturally. Of course, touching or throwing things at the actors is forbidden. Clapping is to be confined to the ritualistic curtain call. Please supress the urge to whistle or catcall. When one goes to the last showing of a film on a Saturday night, in a theatre filled with smoke and carbon dioxide, one feels that the mere projected image of the movie actor's body is far more immediate to the audience than the stage actor, that the rise and fall of his breath is far more in concert with that of the turbulent, boisterous crowd. The bell rings. At the moment I crush my half-smoked cigarette automatically into the ashtray in the lobby before taking my seat, I unconsciously accept the entire string of prohibitions of which my act is only the beginning, and like the other people who have come to see I unhesitatingly accept my new identity. Now I am audience. And yet, resting in my seat, I experience an undeniable sensation, a feeling inexplicable by reference to the general nature of the audience experience. I am not merely an "onlooker," a solitary member of just any audience, but someone who affiliates himself with the modern audience, a peculiar spectating entity, endowed with its own fixed set of rules. Frankly, I derive my sense of "the modern" far more directly from the constrictive, inescapable sensation I experience as I sit in the theatre than from the fact that it is a historically descriptive term. It is almost as if I had tried to name my discomfort and had come up with no word more descriptive than "modern." Silly perhaps. Although I find myself amidst a crowd of other people, I have no choice but to keep my mouth shut and peer through the proscenium arch. I am as much alone as if I were reading a novel. The distinction is, however, that when I read I am fully responsible for my own silence. But what forces my silence on me in the theatre? Shifting back and forth in the 83

Page  84 fixed, uncomfortable chairs — the necessity to have a specific number of chairs bolted to the floor is today yet another of the statutory tethers binding the theatre —I remain continually, though incompletely, conscious that I am not at all sure. But the red lamp remains an unchanging facet of the visual environment —it has, after all, been carefully placed in a spot easily visible to everyone, as stipulated in section 23, paragrpah 2. It is impossible to repress the sensation that it is this villain who ruthlessly imposes upon me my solitude, my silence, my no-smoking. Above all else it is this passivity in the face of the deeply rooted knowledge that one is being cheated that is the most salient characteristic of the "modern audience." * I may be mistaken in thinking that the most salient aspect of an audience's modernity is this haunted passivity. Modernity, I suppose, must remain historically referential. As there didn't seem to be a better alternative, I began, a bit imprudently perhaps, using the phrase "modern audience." And having employed such an illustrious concept as "the modern" — regardless of what I may have meant by it in describing a particular kind of audience — I can feel myself being swept into the stream of history replete with its notations of day and year. I am already committed to the belief that however things may be today they were different once — they had to be different — and so I can no longer avoid some confrontation with history. The curtain was invented. Pastoral or mystic, when the dramatic arena, still maintaining the essential character of a celebration, was divided in two —the players here and the spectators there, the stage on the one hand and seats on the other —the modern in theatre was born. But this is an oversimplification. According to Melchinger's Theater der Gegenwart, for example, the curtain which hid the stage until a signal was given was in use long before modern times andcwas, in fact, part of the "archetypal theatre."4 It would thus be more accurate to say that theatre's modern era began when the curtain abjured the purely functional role of concealing the stage and became central to the structure of the theatre. Division by means of the proscenium arch and curtain came to be the dominant style of theatre design throughout Europe between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On that side of the proscenium, a-fine copy of the everyday world was reproduced and on this side demands were made for the greatest possible silence and reserve on the part of the audience. The proscenium is really an invisible wall, so for you to make noise or toss things would be equivalent to committing the crime of disturbing the peace or breaking and entering —you would be committing symbolic infractions of the law. Early demands for silence in the house did not bear the stigma of coercion implicit in the red no-smoking signs. I remember reading an almost ecstatic contribution to the program of the Tsukiji Little Theatre by a member of its audience. Declaring that he and his fellows were different from the audiences at the small Kabuki playhouses, he proposed that everyone should take his seat before the curtain rose and refrain from eating and drinking during the performance, and he even went so far as to demand of the theatre that it 84

Page  85 educate its audiences. Yet, if one considers that the play being produced at the Tsukiji Little Theatre at that time was either Six Characters in Search of an Author or Each in His Own Way, in either case the work of Luigi Pirandello, the asceticism of this contributor seems exceedingly strange. Could I possibly be mistaken? I would very much like to have seen the expression on the face of this prissy- theatre-goer as he confronted Pirandello's demonic, scandalous assaults on theatrical hush which had left his Parisian and Roman contemporaries gasping, "With Pirandello there's always this awful din!" I can imagine: Well before the final bell sounded he entered the theatre. With impeccably mannered silence he met his Pirandello, assiduously applied himself to eluding the wel I-traveled provocateur's honed malice, and sent him back from whence he came in an uninterrupted funereal pall. It is not long before this play-goer's tone —as if overcome by the joy born with the new age — brings to mind My Life in Art and Stanislavski's ill-concealed pride in the fact that the tumult of the old Russian playhouses had been eradicated by the advent of the Moscow Art Theatre. There is a double parallel to be drawn here. The silence of the Tsukiji Little Theatre did not stop at denigrating the boisterous atmosphere of the small Kabuki houses but went on to muffle contemporaries like Pirandello and their calls for an uproarious theatre. Similarly, it was not only the rejection of the din endemic to the old playhouses that stood behind the Moscow Art Theatre's proud repose but also the state of affairs which mercilessly crushed the experiments with festival plays, the plans for an uproarious theatre, of contemporary artists like Mayakovski and Meyerhold. From these facts of theatre history, we, like Melchinger, can easily arrive at the truistic conclusion that, just as curtains existed in ancient and medieval theatres, there may be curtainless theatres today. Peek-a-boo stages and open air arenas are the prototypical extremes of dramatic production, regardless of historical period or locale. However, when we no longer concern ourselves with all historical periods and locales but confine ourselves instead to our present situation, the fact remains that the hushed playhouse divided in two by a curtain is the victor to whom the spoils of modern theatre have gone. With the establishment of theatre's modern era, audience and actors applied themselves to the task of creating a fixed measure of distance —a "golden separation" —between the stage and the gallery. By inventing and maintaining this delicate separation, the modern playhouse became an arena where classification and amalgamation, individuation and unification could all be attained as easily as the hands of a clock sweep from one number to the next. Audiences chose thei.r passivity with a considerable degree of aggression and without a doubt really "participated" in the theatre. * The bell rings. The clamorous assembly quiets, and the curtain slowly rises. Curtain time! How many volumes of resplendent prose have been offered up by both those before and behind the curtain in description of this glorious moment? Actors, modern individual artists, from their hidden rehearsal rooms. Spectators from their places of life and work. They come from mutually exclusive places and enter the 85

Page  86 theatre through different doors. But now the thick fabric of the curtain, the last obstacle separating these people who have traversed so much of the distance that had lain between them rises, and they are about to meet for the first time. It was this moment when the curtain rose that was epitomized as the highpoint of modern theatre at its most flourishing, and it is this moment that older audiences speak of most fondly in recalling their lost Golden Age. It seems altogether fitting and proper that we recognize this curtain as being the living core of the modern theatre's magic, making individuation and unification integral parts of a single process. The curtain cuts people off from each other and from things, then binds them together only to sever their bonds again. Yet this great knife is, in fact, nothing more than a piece of cloth. Severance and union are in reality only illusions. Nevertheless, members of older audiences apparently had enough imagination to be able to regard this piece of cloth as definitive. And I suddenly recall the impressive passage from Goethe's WilheZm Meister's Theatrical Mission, recording the events of a certain Christmas eve near the end of the eighteenth century, when young Wilhelm saw his first puppet play. An unexpected spectacle opened before their eyes. The door to an adjoining room opened, but not as usual for running in and out. The entrance was filled with an unexpected splendor. A green carpet hung down from a table, tightly covering the lower part of the opening; above it there was a gateway closed by a mystical curtain that reached up high; and whatever might still have been seen of the doorway was concealed with a piece of green cloth. At first they al stood far away, but when their curiosity rose to the point where they wanted to see what glitter might hide behind the curtain, everyone was shown to his seat and asked in a friendly manner to wait patiently. Wilhelm was the only one who remained standing at a respectful distance, and he let his grandmother tell him two or three times before he also took his seat. Thus, everyone sat and was quiet, and with a whistle the curtain rose up high and revealed a bright red painted view into the temple. Karl Capek, on the other hand, describes a typical curtain raising in a modern theatre like this. Meanwhile, you, Mr. First Nighter, are sitting in your stall, looking at your watch, and saying: "It's high time they began the show." Ting-a-ling. The first curtain signal goes. The stage becomes dark and silent. One hears a few final blows of the hammer, the moving of heavy furniture, and excited voices.... Ting-a-ling. The curtain rises as the last stagehand slinks off; the lighted stage stands out clear from the darkness, and Clara, already on the stage, quickly makes the sign of the cross for luck.6 This is probably a scene out of a rather ordinary theatre in Prague during more or less the same years the Tsukiji Little Theatre was flourishing. The noise behind the curtain teases the spectators' curiosity, and when it has come to a head, the signal bell sounds, and the curtain is raised. Disregarding differences in time, place, and of course in the characteristics of the plays being produced, insofar as the 86

Page  87 rhythm of these few introductory moments are concerned, the theatre in Prague and that of Wilhelm's experience differ in not a single essential. For almost three hundred years, on countless evenings, we have faithfully recreated this prototype. But the magic is only a memory long lost, nothing more, and not for us alone. The fact that this was true even in the case of Wilhelm himself can be gathered from the way Goethe later made major revisions in Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Mission, rewriting it as Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and forcing Wilhelm's exciting experience into the framework of the sweet memories he relates to his beloved.7 The moment when a dream of theatre is born inside a young man is here placed in the very midst of the process which gave birth to modernity in theatre. Wilhelm's youthful years, so quickly gone, overlapped almost perfectly with the short youth of modern theatre in Germany. During the Christmas Eve festivities, a single piece of cloth suddenly appeared. As if driven by the shock of that instant, Wilhelm fell in with a vulgar, motley (medieval) band of itinerant players. Subsequently, he joined a modern, metropolitan theatre fully equipped with a permanent curtain and worked toward the establishment of a new "Folk Theatre" pervaded by the humanistic ideal of harmonious cooperation between free individuals. But the grown-up Wilhelm was not to experience twice a curtain-rise as wondrous as the one he had seen on that festive night. Before long he was bitterly disappointed and left the world of the theatre. * We have long since taken leave of Goethe and his Weimar Court Theatre, to say nothing of Capek's playhouse and the Tsukiji Little Theatre. Nearly all of the plays I have seen recently have rather matter-of-factly eliminated the curtain; they have been written in such a way as to in no way necessitate one. At this point, raising the curtain on a play is neither more nor less significant than opening the refrigerator door on a plate of leftovers. The curtain, having lost its power to enthrall, seems now in the process of being chased back into its role as an accessory concealing the stage until the appropriate time. The special mode of dramatic imagination called for by that separation which has been the sine qua non of modern theatre has lost its magic, its charm, its majesty, its power. Were the discussion to shift from the spatial divisions made by the curtain to those made in time, it would only demonstrate how very tedious ideas of compressing and expanding time by means of acts and intermissions have come to be. We don't even have to be dealing with the work of new playwrights; even in the work of people like Shakespeare or Namboku, we are today more inclined to view all plays as being in one "act" — if I may be forgiven for employing this concept of questionable utility. The intermission has consequently become nothing more than a purely practical interruption for primarily physiological purposes. Last summer, when the June Theatre performed Yamamoto Kiyokazu's Pirates at Kinokuniya Hall, rather than dropping the curtain we decided to use the fire shutter. Its descent took more than a minute. It did not simply cut through the air ruffling it in passage. The dull metal wall could not have descended more slowly through the ear-splitting' screech of the shutter and whine of the motor. I am certain no one doubted that the stage and the audience had been separated. We learned only later that the Piccolo Teatro di Milano had 87

Page  88 used the fire shutter in one of its productions of Pirandello in much the same way. Our experiment bespoke clearly the growing impotence of the curtain in our age, though it also remained sterile and powerless. Performing in a modern theatre building, the site of the curtain's Waterloo, should we continue to feel, with a mixture of nostalgia and irresolution, the need for a curtain effect, we mutter about how tasteless it would be to just leave the curtain up in the flies, become slightly annoyed with ourselves, but in the end cling to whatever else is at hand —even the fire shutter. Certain people complain that the dramatic imagination of the younger generation is going to hell. Of this we too are well aware. Unlike them, however, we realize that what is going to hell within us is the specifically modern mode of dramatic imagination. No one is certain what new modes will take its place. But if cloth is no good, then metal —a metal fire shutter. It was a Schweikian protest, a feeble attempt at humor directed at the structure of the NoSmoking Theatre by a group of people who had no alternative but to work there. The extraordinarily exaggerated force of that curtain fall, burdened by the passive compromise of its origins, resulted only in raising the stench of a pale, effete decadence. * As soon as modernism had been established in theatre, it was systematized and made a matter of custom. Cursing to ourselves we came to accept any number of its prohibitions. On the appointed day at the appointed time I arrive at the theatre and lower myself into the chair marked Bll or M2, but my hushed solitude is no longer accompanied by any sort of pride or joy, nor can it be supported by unspoken convictions about "the free individual" and "inner truth." It is almost impossible even to imagine circumstances in which raising the curtain could have been an eloquent statement of the egalitarian spirit. When they came to be guarded by innumerable red lamps, visible and invisible, not only those reading "no smoking," then "the free individual," "inner truth," and "the egalitarian spirit" —in fact modern humanism, which encompasses them all I —most conspicuously lost their former attraction. Alain Robbe-Grillet has said that "tragedy is the last invention of humanism, and he has insisted that distance be reestablished between objects and people; but I would prefer to reverse that definition and have it read, "Humanism is the last invention of tragedy."8 The idea that, having begun to lose its vigor and finding itself forced into a corner, modern humanism looked to the ironic reversing power of tragedy as a means to extend its life is one I find eminently reasonable and one I have consistently supported. Yet, in order for modern humanism to be able to partake of tragedy's rejuvenating waters, tragedy itself has had to be reinterpreted to conform with modern humanism, thus becoming something qualitatively new. A matter of mutual accommodation. In order for tragedy, born out of ancient Greece and transplanted from outdoor theatres and open theatres like Shakespeare's Globe, to be reborn in modern theatres and in possession of the special traits Robbe-Gri let and others have criticized, it was absolutely necessary, ironically enough, that the principles of individualism be established and, further, that we achieve a dialectical "cognizance" of the 88

Page  89 fact that this individualism was to be trampled beneath the fated totality called history and that only by thus oeing trampled could man achieve humanity. If the individualism and sense of the inner truth "safeguarded" by red lamps are humanism as it exists in contemporary society, then this cognizance is an integral if oblique part of them. It may not be altogether beside the point to note that the word "humanism" first came into general use in England sometime after 1830. That is, it became popular just as the industrial revolution commenced.9 By turning Robbe-Grillet's definition around, I should like to reemphasize the fact that the tragedy we habitually think of as having been transmitted from the deep past is actually and without the least doubt a product of Western Europe's modern age. We seem to be at the point of inadvertently forgetting that the old saws about tragedy's universality and immortality are only so much drivel. Quoting Hegel, Raymond Williams finds the origins of tragedy's modern i zation. To genuine tragic action it is essential that the principle of individual freedom and independence, or at least that of selfdetermination, the will to find in the self the free cause and source of the personal act and its consequences, should already have been aroused.10 Hegel, an ardent devotee of Greek tragedy, left embedded throughout his immense work on the dialectic his theory of meticulously methodized tragic irony (his theory of drama) —countless tragic metaphors, the ideas of enlightenment through suffering and the wisdom of ignorance, as well as others. Perhaps you will remember Hegel's famous comment included in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle criticizing the theory of tragedy held by the playwrights of Louis XIV's France for being based on a patent "misunderstanding" of Greek tragedy. Although Hegel's tragedy=history theory may be unquestionably brilliant, if the theory of tragedy held by the French playwrights was based upon a "misuderstanding," Hegel's theory, which a century later organized the same data into an inescapable antagonism between the independent individual and history, culminating in a sudden reconciliation, must also be regarded as a misunderstanding. It cannot be denied that it was during this period that a revolution of distinct importance in the long history of tragedy was taking place —albeit based on layer upon layer of perversion and misunderstanding, some greater and some lesser, all gradually worked into a single systematized whole. It is this very period of transition in German theatre which is described in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. The roving band of actors Wilhelm first joined performed their acrobatics, dances, magic, and other acts, openly displaying their urge toward unbridled sex and violence, in the courtyards of inns and city plazas. But with the emergence of new metropolitan playhouses their art unmistakably began to take on a deathly pale, the coloring of a remnant of bygone days feebly extending its life. In sum, what happened in European drama between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? I have tried to describe the enormous framework of modern drama —the structural trinity — which emerged during this period. * What we refer to as modern drama is drama supported by the universal doctrine of humanism, with tragedy as its sole mode, presented in a theatre divided in two by means 89

Page  90 of a curtain. * Each of these three essential elements comprising modern drama stipulates the existence of the others and is bound to them in an organic whole, so it is not possible for us to split them apart and treat each separately; we are always forced to deal with modern drama as a whole. Even were we to pulverize one of the elements, the structural trinity whould immediately regenerate itself on the basis of the other two. In J.L. Styan's Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern Comic Tragedy, the confusion of forms resulting from the twentieth century's wide variety of dramatic experimentation is viewed as an obvious matter of course, and the author contends that we have come to loiter about amidst the meaningless nomenclature of "tragi-comedy," "comic melodrama," "drama comique," "pseudodrama," and the like. We can, for the moment, admit to the truth of his findings insofar as they are an objective description of the status quo. Were we to examine the work of playwrights relatively faithful to the conventions of modern theatre —Kinoshita Junji, Sartre, Osborne, and Wesker, for example —we would find that the portion of their tragedy (drama) occupied by elements essentially comical or farcical is exceedingly large. Yet the confusion to which we have attempted to lend some semblance of stability through this eclectic taxonomy is actually far more profound. Even if it could be made absolutely clear that what we know today as tragedy is not pure tragedy but a specifically modern version of the same, so long as humanism and the proscenium arch —the other two fundamental components of modern theatre — remain unchanged, the profound confusion of modes we face will remain the mere confusion of forms Styan describes, and tragedy, the tragic mode, will retain its supremacy over theatre. The drama of the age stretching from Pirandello to Beckett —the age closest to us and therefore the most distant —demonstrates this clearly: after all is said and done, what remains to us today is not farce but pathos — farce can only be salt rubbed in our wounds. And what could be more indicative of this than the fact that we have lost our clowns? In our theatres where silence, systematized passivity, along with humanism and its vulgar fellow traveler liberalism, have managed to maintain their authority with the help of numberless prohibitions and red warning lamps, tragedy has paradoxically tried to reassert itself by recasting the clowns, who have always been content with the supporting roles of "little people," as slightly ashen heroes. Up until only a few years ago there were choruses of voices declaring the death of tragedy, expressing total disaffection with the idea of an invisible fourth wall, bemoaning the impotence of language in the theatre. Nevertheless, the situation remained in a precarious sort of balance. People like Arthur Miller, in his essay entitled "Tragedy and Common Man," could still contend that we have all lost sight of the fact that, as pessimism has always gone along with tragedy, tragedy forces the audience to embrace a far brighter way of looking at things than does comedy; and, if the truth were told, it is only in tragedy that an optimistic faith in man's perfectability exists.ll At this point, though, I cannot but think that Miller's views on tragedy's optimism are themselves altogether too optimistic. It may not have been so stunning a feat as turning 90

Page  91 clowns into heroes, but Miller has consistently dealt with little people and has tried to cast the "common man" as a tragic figure in the place of kings and princes. Together these feats of prestidigitation suggest but one thing —that the fate of the little people is tragedy's greatest stumbling block. Miller, who tried desperately to file tragedy down with the rasp of the common man, is obsessed with the concern that, should tragedy, which guarantees serenity through suffering and rebirth through colllapse, become the special prerogative of only the great and the beautiful, the little people would be left without hope. He tried, therefore, to apply the method of tragedy's modernization —the method that had exchanged ordinary citizens (independent individuals) for kings and noblemen —to the common man, i.e., to those nameless individuals whose only chance at an identity was to be found in phrases like "the people," "the masses," "the crowd." His belief that the tragic act was the only human act predifined the common man's misery as fated and inescapable and made the justification of that misery merely a matter of course. Mi Iller does not appear to realize it himself, but, loaded down with his good intentions, he forces on us —heroes and spectators — an almost pathological passivity. The ostensible state of affairs before us points in a direction opposite Mr. Miller's. One might well label our malaise "tragic" and try fitting it nicely into the framework of a single work of tragedy, but we simply cannot believe that by virtue of such acts the beacons of enlightenment and salvation will shine upon us. The more we try to describe truly tragic discontent, the more the both qualitatively and quantitatively devastating and pervasive malcontent of our age defies justification as tragic. What optimistic vision of the perfectability of man can we possibly draw from that aged salesman lying dead in the corner to which he had been driven? Miller is trying to teach an old dog new tricks. As everyone realizes in the pit of his stomach, the relationship between tragedy and humanism has lost the tension whereby each element formerly negated and simultaneously enriched the other and has become a relationship in which each element only hounds the other, impoverishing it. The pseudotragedy of our times is devoid of the locomotive energy of catharsis. All that remains is for textureless, unchanging misery and aimless good intentions to lie like immobile blobs eons apart. Not even fhe doctrine of humanism supports tragedy. All that stands behind it now is tepid, idiotic babblings of peace on earth, good will toward men. Headlines labeling traffic accidents and Vietnam massacres "tragic." * 1968. The American critic Susan Sontag visited North Vietnam. It was her first trip, and she could not forget that America was her country, that she was and American. Her sense of being American may also explain why she not only found herself in the midst of that desperately sad war but that she almost unconsciously strove to discover "something like the Jewish (and also 'Western') style of expressive suffering" in the language and actions of the Vietnamese, whose history as an invaded people is long.12 Contrary to her expectations, what she found was "a peaceful, viable, optimistic society."13 What is so convincing about Sontag's book is that she does not become 91

Page  92 ecstatic and abandon herself to that optimism. Rather, she continues to insist upon the simple sense of difference she was forced to embrace. Saying that after the war his family could come and take his body home, the Vietnamese placed the body of an American pilot they had shot down with small arms fire in the best casket available and buried him in a grave of mounded earth adorned with fragments of his plane; acts like this were completely beyond her comprehension. Would it help if she were to introduce the word humanism into the discussion? Not a chance. Wasn't the pilot the very man who had ravaged their land and murdered their families before their eyes? Theirs was an act for which she could not find a name, an act which therefore remained a shameless naked castaway grotesque in its superfluity. Why are they so generous, so civil? What power have they to so naively give breath to words like "love" and "courage"? Why do they express their regard for America and Americans so effluently? Unable to find even a single answer to these questions, she began to see the people's incredibly straightforward words and actions as masks. But in this state of total incomprehension a process of return begins in Sontag's mind; her eyes gradually turn back to the Western European culture out of which she had come. Taking as an example Western etiquette and manners, Miss Sontag notes that "a latent hint of insincerity a mild imputation of coercion" remain like deep stains on polite conduct in Western society.14 A social act (customary regard for others) and valid emotion (true sincerity) can never be united there. And what is more, it is the belief that this lack of unity constitutes the human condition that rules that society. It is from these conditions that the West European's peculiar "taste for irony" has grown. For us, politeness means conventions of amiable behavior people have agreed to practice, whether or not they "really" feel like it, because their "real" feelings aren't consistently civil or generous enough to guarantee a working social order.... Irony becomes essential as a mode of indicating the truth, a whole life-truth: namely that we both mean and don't mean what we're saying and doing.15 Clearly, what stands behind the union of humanism and tragedy of which I spoke earlier is this "taste for irony." Tragic irony —sometimes called the sense of tragedy, sometimes called the spirit of drama —pervades all of West European culture. It is supported by the "taste for irony" which governs everyday speech and action, and its most conspicuous characteristic is its indomitable insistence upon justification. Should humanistic principles be brought to their logical conclusion, we would ourselves find it far easier to relate to the potential suffering-ridden reversal of fate implied in the "style of expressive suffering" than to a blemishless optimism. At the very least the former spans the gap between language and reality and is thus an easier way of approaching "truth." It is appropriately complicated and refined as well. Nevertheless, confronted with her state of incomprehension, Susan Sontag was forced to recognize an entirely different modal system, that is, a culture that demands no "taste for irony." Theirs is not the "style of expressive suffering" —not because of any reserve displayed before this ostensible representative 92

Page  93 of the invaders, and not because they wear masks, but simply because the Vietnamese have, during their "tragic" (Sontag has no other word) historical experience, employed a mode different from that of Western Europeans. The Vietnamese farmers' burial of that American pilot was not an act of what we call humanism. As she begins to think of it as an act performed for its beauty —beautiful for reasons Miss Sontag finds difficult to fathom —she simultaneously begins to acclimate herself to Vietnamese society. Miss Sontag in Hanoi is entirely different from Arnold Wesker, who visited Cuba and found in its vivacious, truly human revolution something Utopian. While with his supple receptivity he carefully documented the progress of the revolution, Wesker eventually summarized everything he had seen as "an expression of humanism," and since this automatically made humanism a universal standard by which all might equally well be judged, Wesker went on to criticize Cuban culture's disorder and uniformity from that point of view. In other words, Wesker, who had used Cuban realities to criticize Western Europe, used Western European doctrines to pass judgment on Cuba. Sontag also came to speak more and more sympathetically of North Vietnam's "optimistic society," but her sympathy remained always within the realm of direct experience and did not allow her the accustomed power to generalize. Her empathy does not imply that in the end all the world is one under the reign of humanism; on the contrary, it is founded on the discovery that the world is made up of numberless differently textured worlds. Exasperated with the West and Westerners who doubt not that their vocabulary will govern the earth, she finally adds that even these Westerners know that they are unhappy and that their lives are cramped and savorless and embittered. If that discontent isn't channeled off to be repaired by the kind of psycho-therapeutic awareness which robs it of social and political, of historical, dimension, the wide prevalence of unfocused unhappiness in modern Western culture could be the beginning of real knowledge.16 * To put all of this into the context of this essay, what Susan Sontag is talking about in her book is the false promise of tragedy in our age. She is suggesting that although the "psycho-therapy" of tragedy has lost its power of "catharsis through irony," it continues to function, draining off energy, neutralizing it, so that it cannot be militated as the "beginning of real knowledge." Modern Western culture is a modal system with a finely honed sense of tragedy at center. But with this sense of tragedy as our key, we can clear the approach to neither of the unhappinesses oppressing the little people of the world — neither genocidal mass murder like that in Vietnam nor the "unfocused unhappiness" which permeates our daily lives. The longer we persist in employing that modal system, the more distant the possibilties of authentic awareness will grow. Tragedy, humanism, and then the theatre divided in two by a curtain —I said earlier that this structural trinity could not be transcended by attacking the parts separately but that the connections between them had to be broken. It seems to me, however, that the deterioration of the relationship between tragedy and humanism has already 93

Page  94 gone quite far —we have simply neglected to realize this fact. What then of their relationship with the theatre? When all three elements unite in support of each other, their trinity musters no inappreciable power. And the role played by the theatre in this relationship is particularly large. The theatre is not merely a concept or an ideology. In the theatre a single sheet of cloth guarantees a special form of dramatic imagination, and that piece of cloth survives not only by virtue of modern social custom, but also because it enjoys the protection of legally codified, coercive force. Trying to free theatre from this structure which we believe to be growing more and more feeble, we find ourselves, much to our own chagrin, writhing and squirming in its grasp. Then how can Brecht's Smoking Theatre be made possible? * Toward the end of 1968 we performed Brecht's Drums in the Night. Most of the criticism we received might be summed up in the words of a certain faithful Brechtian: As in the case of the June Theatre's production of Drums in the Night, for example, arranging stop-motion scenes, lining up songs outside the flow of the story, and moreover quoting a revolutionary and in itself superb speech by Rosa Luxemburg at the outset in the hope of insuring the critical attention of the audience do not contribute to the plot itself. As these techniques serve only to set up another stream of emotion separate from the plot, they do not alienate but only encourage identification.17 As I read and listened to this stream of criticism, I was suddenly taken by the rather elementary question of the extent to which the essence of Brecht's drama might be realized in a place stubbornly occupied by the supposedly weakening trinity of modern theatre. Brecht spoke of his dream of the Smoking Theatre, but to what extent was Brecht himself, playwright and director that he was, able to demolish this trinity and why? Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a clear answer to either of these questions. Nor am I at all clear about the concepts of "identification" and "alienation" which the critic above, an enthusiastic disciple of Brecht, used as infallible divining rods. Exactly how can the distinction between "identification" and "alienation" be made for one action, a single song, a lone scene in the theatre? Take for example the famous last scene in Drums in the Night. The hero, Andrew Kraggler, a soldier back from the wars, bellows just before curtain fall, "Stop that romantic gaping!... " He hurls his drum at the moon, but it is only a paper lantern, and it falls into a waterless imitation river. This must be a scene aimed at achieving alienation, but in order for a challenge like "Stop that romantic gaping!" to make any sense, there must be romantic gaping going on somewhere in the theatre —most probably in the audience. Consequently, the process of identification is a necessary prerequisite to alienation. No joke. On the contrary, I find it impossible to believe that Kraggler's offhandedly screaming "Stop that romantic gaping!" is anything but supremely romantic. In this case identification and alienation are melded together so tightly that they can almost be seen as a single process. No one can deny that Andrew Kraggler was a product of the young Brecht's imagination or that the play occupied so special a place among Brecht's works that it could be published only

Page  95 with the playwright's critical comments affixed. Nevertheless, this same sort of dynamic dualism that destroys as it creates is also visible in Brecht's other works, albeit in a somewhat less blatant form. Brecht's heroes —Mack the Knife, Mother Courage, Shen Te-Shui Ta, Galileo —are without question fascinating. For the most part, Brecht seldom relinquishes his grasp on "plot" and "hero," two techniques as old as theatre itself. In other words, his plays are structured around a central core, and should we take continuing interest in his work, a considerable degree of identification would be demanded of us. Need we only believe that this identification is always a trap cunningly laid to capture us for alienation, that only temporarily unto plot goes theory, unto the hero goes emotion, and that character B is predicated on the existence of A and is eventually to be fused with him? This convenient, super-logical notion of identification for the sake of alienation does not put Brecht outside the framework of modern theatre, for it in no way exceeds what the playwrights of pure modern theatre have been thinking and actually creating within its confines We have no reason to regard Brecht as being any different. Identification for the sake of alienation is nothing more than a technique for supporting the best products of twentieth century theatre which have tied together the spirit of rationalism and the mystery of the theatre. Pirandello and Chekov employed the same techniques and, inheriting all their experience, Sartre wrote plays like Dirty Hands and The Condemned of Altona. Brecht's alienation theories in no way challenge the fundamental nature of modern theatre but instead have grown directly out of it and have played an integral role within it. * The Berliner Ensemble is Brecht's theatre. Though all I know of it derives from seeing photographs, reading over records of productions, and hearing stories brought back by people who have experienced it directly, I cannot help but think that their work meets the highest standards of modern theatre —and nothing more. There is a massive proscenium arch, and a curtain bearing the emblem of the dove clearly separates the audience from the stage. There might even be red no-smoking lamps as well. Brecht began his career as an open rebel against the customs and aura of the modern playhouse. And even after the end of his scandalous period of whistling and catcalling, making frontal assaults on bourgeois playhouses, he more selfconsciously than ever persisted in his opposition to the curtain's division of the theatre. The Smoking Theatre was a dream Brecht developed during this time. The fact that his ideal theatre would have been modeled after a boxing ring is well known, and, as can easily be seen in photographs of the production of Measures Taken, the stage was actually set in an immense space like a gymnasium and in both size and shape was made to look exactly like a boxing ring. And yet, returning to his country after many years of exile, Brecht chose a theatre equipped with an obstinate proscenium arch in which to continue his work during the second half of his life, and he closed himself up inside it with a flourish. Paint the aggressive dove of peace Of my brother Picasso On the large curtain. Behind it stretch a wire To hang lightly fluttering curtains.18 A curtain remains a curtain regardless of whether it is embroidered 95

Page  96 with the dove of peace, a bunch of grapes, or a sea gull. This is a particularly noticeable indication of the difference in Brecht before and after the war. Despite the fact that formerly when Brecht spoke of a playhouse we were able to conjure up the image of an antitheatrical space encompassing city streets and boxing rings, the same word used by Brecht since the war is hard to separate from the image of the curtain embroidered with Picasso's dove. The audiences of the Berliner Ensemble, like those at the Theatre National Populaire or the Nissei Theatre in Tokyo, are not likely to be seen lounging in their seats puffing away on cigarettes or cigars. Faced with a series of real problems, at some point Brecht discarded the dream of a Smoking Theatre. Could he really have believed that the proscenium could be transcended and that the public could stop being outsiders simply through his experiments with multiscened plays, printed legends, discussions, and the accurate development of detail, while all the time he insisted on plot and hero as dramatic prerequisites? His behavior'might, on the other hand, have been a supremely Brechtian stratagem aimed at gaining time. There is hardly a single word of Brecht's that did not contain some sardonic nuance to shock the cultural commissars of the Democratic People's Republic, who kept critical eyes on his theatrical activities and barely hesitated to complain. Power buried viper Brecht's poison in the modern theatre wall. And it is conceivable that Brecht adopted the strategy of turning obstacles into barricades. This, however, hardly alters the fact that Brecht did in fact choose a theatre equipped with a curtain. And that is not all: he even went so far as to express the hope that directors around the world who produced his plays would faithfully obey the detailed "model books" he made the standard for Berliner Ensemble productions. For a man who had so tenaciously persisted in employing the method of critical adaptation, this might seem a somewhat unusual demand to make. It was almost as if he had come up with a kind of drama which would satisfy everyone and which could be performed in any theatre in the world —socialist or capitalist —so long as it was equipped with a curtain of luxuriant fabric. So long as the division between audience and stage stubbornly persists, there will be tragedy, and there will be the humanism tragedy supports. In other words, no matter how Brecht himself might protest, the possibility does remain that we will be fascinated by Mother Courage not as an alienated individual but as an eternal one. This is inherent in the nature of modern theatre. Be it even in the theatres of socialist countries (one look at the Moscow Art Theatre should suffice!) both the "public" and the "workers" are entities with only one point of view: they cannot avoid being partitioned off as a modern audience. Nor is this true only for the audience. Forced back onto their side of the curtain, actors too can only be viewed in one way —they are partitioned off as "modern actors." And then Brecht into the bargain —that is what Sartre means by formalism. * I do not mean by this to squeeze Brecht into the framework of modern drama, condemning everything right and left as if no distinctions were to be made. Rather, I am trying to make clear the fact that we, in our productions at commercial theatres like Kinokuniya Hall and HaiyGza, share with Brecht the limitations he faced as he shut himself up —was forced to shut himself up —in the Berliner Ensemble, and I am trying in this way, 96

Page  97 not to absolutize Brecht or to make him our supreme referent, but instead to work out a means by which we can bring Brecht back into our theatre as a more vital, dynamic influence. For example, the critic who addressed himself to our production of Drums in the Night earlier criticized an avant-garde troupe that seemed to have blissfully sold out to the capitalist market system: One look at Brecht performed in the Nissei Theatre or Beckett in Kinokuniya Hall makes it perfectly clear that when a theatre group forsakes the tense relationship [of egalitarian criticism] with the audience, even the most radical dramatic experiments are soon caught up in the drama market and deprived of their energy, their value." Robing himself in this perfectly vacuous correctness the critic plunges into a grimy cynicism, implying that nothing can be said or done as long as this drama market remains unchanged. This seems to be something of a fashionable style of argument these days, not peculiar to this critic, aimed at allowing one to defend one's principles and make a good show without ever saying anything. The reason I have tried to point out Brecht's limitations, moreover, has been because I could think of no way better to deal with this current cynical philosophy than to "alienate" the Brecht mummified and vulgarized by it. I have no objection to their criticisms of Brecht as he appears in the Nissei Theatre or Kinokuniya Hall, but what of the Brecht of the Berliner Ensemble? Unless we begin to re-pose our questions from this standpoint we will be able to probe no more deeply than some abstract standard of correctness or orthodoxy might allow. Were this "drama market" —the system, if you prefer —the extent of our problems, things would be simple enough. We would merely put the coming revolution before theatre and without a second thought throw ourselves body and soul into the political movement. But what the Brecht of the Berliner Ensemble shows us is the unmistakable fact that we are at this moment, in this place, concerned with a structural entity that will remain unchanged even if capitalism is replaced by something entirely different. It is absolutely impossible to believe that a true revolution has taken place where it has proven impossible even to destroy the trinity of modern drama. These critics' belief that nothing at all can be done is made possible by their misguided faith that everything will change with the arrival of the revolution. Clinging tightly to their optimism, they forfeit the ability to perceive just what that "everything" might be. Only after everything has in fact changed will these gentlemen first discover what everything was supposed to have been. That is how they avoid facing present realities. And that is how the realization of the Smoking Theatre is chased far back into the future. * It goes without saying that the state of affairs in which the people cease to be outsiders is the sine qua non for the establishment of the Smoking Theatre.19 "I wished at once to be among the enchanters and the enchanted...."20 On that frothing, boisterous Christmas Eve Wilhelm first saw a puppet play, though his mind was absorbed with the act of viewing, he was already conscious of its insufficiency. "I wished... at once to have a secret hand in the play, and to enjoy, as a looker-on, the pleasure of illusion."21 It is a dream shared by all modern spectators, not just Wilhelm, and a dream that only they —cut off 97

Page  98 from the stage by the curtain — could in fact have. One might even suggest that it was to them alone that the privileged joy of this dream was granted. One cannot, however, overlook the fact that that joy is tinged with disappointment. While they proudly accepted their role as "people who watch," there was a sense of dissatisfaction squatting sullenly in the pit of their stomachs. In the modern theatre, where the forces of unification and individuation oppose each other, when one speaks of, for example, audience identification, what one means is not only an imaginary unification with the fate of the characters but also the special way in which a modern audience relates to the actors holding forth on the opposite side of the curtain. Silence. No smoking. The actors have gotten some special dispensation —or so it seems to an audience subject to the coercion of that long string of prohibitions. Imagining just how good the actors must feel comprises a large portion of the audience's pleasure in the modern theatre. Joy and pleasure can only be vicarious experiences insofar as they are only a matter of identification across space and disfance. It would hardly be surprising if the audience should come to want to possess that pleasure directly for themselves. And not only the audience feels this way either. As for the pleasure taken by the actors, it is, for the most part, a mere reflection of the pleasure the audience must be experiencing. What does all this amount to? A bunch of people opposing each other, sandwiching the proscenium, believing that the real pleasure, the real joy —direct experience, if you will —lies on the other side of that proscenium and that they are experiencing only its reflection. In all probability real joy and pure direct experience do not exist in the modern theatre at all. Wilhelm's simple hopes — everyone has some memory of once having shared them —eloquently describe the dilemma. He wants to see while being seen, to be seen while seeing. No, it's not quite that simple. He wants to involve himself simultaneously in all dimensions of human experience at once. While we embrace the suspicion that theatre is one of the few places where this might be possible, modern actors and audiences have long since lost any such hope. Popular phrases like "audience participation " only reflect the spectator's sneaking suspicion that the people on the stage are having one hell of a lot more fun than he is; and the actor's sense that if the audience would only share their enjoyment with the poor people on stage his work would be a lot more rewarding. The people must cease to be outsiders, and "the people" includes both audience and actors. * If we refuse to cast off to the very limits of some Utopian time the idea of the Smoking Theatre which Brecht developed as a young man and discarded as an old one, how might we make it a reality in our own time? I have continued this essay in an attempt to respond to this question, but I too have begun to be uncertain whether the Smoking Theatre can be a theatre at all. The most advanced type of theatre I can think of would be a mobile multiform theatre that could be adapted as either a proscenium stage or a theatrein-the-round, or transformed into the "gallery-style" stage that Artaud imagined. Yet this resembles in not even the least respect a theatre supported by powerful modes or ideas capable of displacing tragedy and the humanistic notions of individual freedom and independence. In the final analysis, this multiform theatre would be nothing

Page  99 more than an attempt to meet the immediate crisis in modern theatre with structural improvements. And what is more, we may rest assured that we will not be allowed to smoke in it. Should we prove excessively zealous in our pursuit of the Smoking Theatre we might be forced to settle for a tidy little cafe theatre or the like. The idea of puffing away on a cigarette while watching a play is a most enjoyable and harmless one taken by itself, but in this society, the act of smoking a cigarette and that of seeing a play —both of which are normal, everyday activities when taken alone —cannot be performed in the same place at the same time. In January 1968, Kara Juro and the Situation Theatre pitched their red tent in the park at the west exit of Shinjuku Station and tried to perform one of their plays, but they were prevented from doing so by the intervention of the riot police. They had, during the previous year, repeatedly submitted the prescribed applications for permission to use the park, but as their petitions had been consistently ignored, they decided to go ahead anyway and take the punishment eventually dished out to them. To jump from the frying pan of modern theatre buildings governed by fire prevention laws is to find oneself in the fire of park ordinances, traffic control codes, public health regulations, and public safety statutes. The fact that it is absolutely forbidden to smoke in the theatre and the fact that one cannot perform a play in a place where tabacco is smoked truly have us coming and going. Try to escape the red no-smoking lamps. One false move and the riot police will see that you are safely returned to the warm confines of the modern theatre. Much as we would like to believe that our drama is serendipitous, the fact of the matter is that we are driven, coerced into the sole place where drama is legally tolerated: the modern theatre building. Despite its mildmannered exterior, the Smoking Theatre of necessity finds itself in diametric opposition to this society. It is for this reason that we can say that the young Brecht, in off-handedly tossing out the notion of the Smoking Theatre, actually launched a frontal attack on the critical relationship between the social order, law, and modern theatre — its guaranteed freedom, its passive, habitual independence. The Smoking Theatre may not be a theatre at all but a movement, a movement to see theatre consistently performed where one may also freely enjoy smoking. *The masks on the title page of this article are from Theatre Center 68/70's production of Saito Ren's Trust D.E. The masks were created by the actors, supervised by Abe Nobuyuki. 99

Page  100 I"Of Baths, Brothels, and Hell," trans. David Goodman, Concerned Theatre Japan Vol. I, No. I, Spring 1970 2John Willett, Brecht on Theatre (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964) PP. 8-9 3"Biwa and Beatles," CTJ Special Introductory Issue, pp. 6-32 4Siegfried Melchinger, Theater der Gegenwart (1956) 5Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters theatrasche Sendung, Book I Chapter 2 6Karl Capek, How a Play is Produced, trans. P. Beaumont Wadsworth (London, 1928) 7see Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, trans. Thomas Carlyle (New York: Collier Books, 1962) 8Alain Robbe-GriI let, Pour un Nouveau Roman (Paris: Les Edition de Minuit, 1963) pp. 53-54 "La tragedie apparatt done comme la dernitre invention de I'humanisme pour ne rien laisser 6chaper." 9Fukase Motohiro, Fukase Motohiro-Shu, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1968) p. 176 I0Raymond Williams, Modern Tragedy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966) p. 33 1Arthur Miller, "Tragedy and Common Man," The New York Times, February 27, 1949 L it begins first at Takano -the fashion of the young in shinjuku, city of the world 12Susan Sontag, York: Farrar, 1968) p. 57 3Sontag, p. 58 14Sontag,.p. 44 5Sontag, p. 44 Trip to Hanoi (New Straus, and Giroux, 16Sontag, p. 89 171shiguro Hideo, "Boryokuteki Shihai no Ronri" [The Logic of Rule by Violence] Shin Nihon Bungaku, Apri I 1969 Bertolt Brecht, Schriften Zum Theater, trans. Mar I is and Amadio Arboleda, p. 261 9see Walter Benjamin, Was ist episches Theater? (1939) 20Goethe, Apprenticeship, p. 36 21Goethe, Apprenticeship, p. 36 4 I ~S~u~67 100

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Page  118 Ekin (real name Hirose Doi) lived in the domain of Tosa, now Kochi prefecture in Shikoku, during the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji period (1813 -1876). He went by the trade name of Kinzo and was known as eshi no Kinzo (Kinzo the painter), which was further reduced to a combination of initial characters, Ekin, the name by which he is best known today. I would like to start with a question: Why has Ekin been virtually unknown and consequently denied the critical attention he deserves? Certainly, the fact that he was an artist physically removed from the cultural mainstream played a part, but it does not explain the reluctance —with a very few exceptions —of the people of his home province to hold him in esteem. To the critical eye of members of the warrior and merchant classes, Ekin's Kabuki pictures were vulgar and tawdry, the entertainments and consumption art of the masses. Ekin could not but have anticipated upper-class revulsion against his work, and it is likely that he welcomed it, for Ekin spares no pains to make clear the distinction between "us" and "them." Thus, with the exception of the common people of his day, Ekin has never been highly valued or even much noticed. Our problem today, however, lies in the very nature of our modernity, and our modernity's notion of art, which has relegated Ekin to oblivion, making it impossible to rediscover him through evaluation and critical appraisal of his relevance. The modern concept of art in Japan has kept Ekin well outside our field of vision, and it therefore implies a certain point of view vis-a-vis that concept to introduce Ekin to the general public. Implicit in that position is a certain respect for popularity —the idea that an art form can be creative and revolutionary only to the extent that it is popular. It implies a liberation of the concept of art. We must rediscover and reevaluate Ekin's work as a part of our heritage that might allow us to transcend our modernity, and not in order to indulge ourselves in the quaint and bizarre aspects of the art of faraway places. When I first saw Ekin's work, it was in a very quiet room. I was overwhelmed, shocked. It was not an ideal way of encountering Ekin, but it did have certain advantages: I was prevented, in this way, from simply dismissing Ekin's intense individuality as part of the natural poetry of popular celebrations. It is, nevertheless, the relationship between Ekin's work and communal festivals that is most important in coming to terms with him. My experience aside, Ekin's Kabuki paintings must really be seen as they have always been seen —displayed as panels 1.8 meters square, i lluminated by lanterns and naked candles, on platforms set up during summer festivals on temple grounds, along the approaches to shrines, or beneath the eves of houses in the city. It must be the night of a summer festival, and both the dark shadows of night and artificial I lumination are necessary. Lantern light makes the paintings emerge out of the darkness, and candles set below, licking at the paintings, bring them to life. The candles even begin to seem like the implements of some mysterious ritual, invading the dark to replace the intense summer sun of that country to the south. People approach the light, and, as they have in years past, peer through the darkness at scenes 118

Page  119 I IA-44, I 1, - 'g 4 ( IV *1 1

Page  120 ordinarily taboo. Their eyes wander over every corner of the paintings as they follow the stories they depict, and they explode each detail, magnifying it. Ekin's paintings demand as much. The atmosphere of the Bon Festival, for welcoming the spirits of the dead back on their annual visit to earth, and the sense of release peculiar to summer festival nights stimulate people and help them to communicate with the extraordinary drama depicted on the screens. Ekin's three basic colors, red, green, and black, also move long dormant emotions. Red, the color of profuse blood, is not there merely to be grotesque; Ekin's use of the pigment makes it possible to discern two different kinds of red —the red of pleasure and pain and that of bewitchment and release. Ekin's paintings send chi lls of horror up and down the spines of his viewers, they force upon them a sense of anxious excitement, but they never close them up in the dark and humid well of despair. In sum, Ekin's paintings contend with the festival itself, win out, and come to rule the festival night. The paintings lend a concrete and magnified presence to the complex, refracted energy derived from the pain, joy, dread, and din peculiar to the liberating, and yet supernaturally alive, summer festival night, and then they serve to agitate and provoke that night in return. The festival itself becomes an event supported by the power of the paintings to distill and actualize the energy of the summer night, to inject the festival with a new and more potent form of energy. Even the natural darkness of the summer night itself is an integral part of the art. The art is thus "total." The fact that Ekin's paintings are of Kabuki, another total art form, is no coincidence either. In fact, they would never have existed without their relationship with Kabuki theatre. But the Kabuki that we know today is considerably different from that known to Ekin. The decadence found in the Kabuki of the Bunka and Bunsei periods (1804-1830) was the result, in part at least, of the development of the Kabuki spirit, directly linked with primal urges, within the people. In rural theatres, however, the expression of this Kabuki spirit differed considerably from the way it found expres 120

Page  121 sion in the theatres of the cities, for the rural theatres were in constant touch with popular religions and entertainments. In rural theatres, evil, preternatural energy was not always transmuted into abstract beauty but, chaotic and confused, it was released violently by the pagan, distorting spirit of the theatre. Ekin's Kabuki pictures truly had much in common with the potentials peculiar to rural Kabuki. Ekin took these potentials and tried to realize them in a different medium —that of tempera painting. One of the best examples of this technique is to be found in "Suzugamori" (see plate 1 Ekin's "Suzugamori" demonstrates his exaggerated use of the fiction implicit in the highly stylized techniques of Kabuki acting. By refusing human-drama content, Kabuki is able to achieve moments of pure, stylized beauty. It may be said that the drama to be found in this "content void" is peculiar to Kabuki. What Ekin did was to amplify it. Employing Kabuki's special variety of drama and magnifying it, Ekin transmutes the sense of nothingness into the power of destruction: the destructive power of the void. The homosexually erotic Gonpachi, dressed as a youth, is cruel but not deranged and is given a certain lofty strength. Ekin's dark, audacious wit took Kabuki's antiemotional stylization and turned it into the force of destruction Ekin's drawings lead me to think that the ideals of Kabuki, the original aspirations that were implicit in Kabuki's birth but not necessarily ever appearing on stage, began to break through with the chaos and decadence of the last decades of the Tokugawa era. Special attention must be paid, however, to the fact that the intensity of "Suzugamori," created by the rejection of human emotions through the unreality of Kabuki stylization, seems exceptional among Ekin's works. This is not simply because Suzugamori was originally written and performed as a Kabuki play while Ekin took most of his material from spoken monologue pieces [gidayu-mono], most of which were adapted for the stage, but also because Ekin derived his sense of color and composition for tempera painting from 121

Page  122 the rhythm and melody of these recital pieces (plates 3 8 9 The provincial theatres of his day provided Ekin with the background for his art. The theatre in Akaoka, for instance, was maintained and developed by a community pervaded by the tension between two groups —the lower class population of farmers, craftsmen, and fishermen, and the higher class population of merchants. Consequently, as the theatre developed, the conflicting interests of these two groups vied for control —one was the element of superstition and folk religion that is an inseparable part of the latent energy of the deprived, and the other was the open-minded, pleasure-seeking spirit of the merchant class. Ekin gave radically explicit form to the energies of the community, but this did not imply a move away r from the masses and up to "art:" his work was, at all times, " popular." Nevertheless, while Ekin's art remained close to the i,, masses, it never lost the power to agitate and provoke them. By remaining conscious of his own 16 identity, Ekin was able to avoid being swallowed up. Ekin was the son of an ordinary lower class family, but he studied painting in Edo [Tokyo] in the Kano school, the most influential school of painting of the time, and was appointed court painter ^ by the lord of the Tosa fief upon his return. His behavior, however, was so scandalous that he was soon relieved of his post. f Thus, Ekin had come full circle and returned to the masses from whom he had sprung. Following the road lain open to him as an r~- "outlaw," Ekin immersed himself in the latent energies of the masses. Or, to put it another way, Ekin's outlaw character was disciplined and channeled by the latent energy of the masses to whom he returned. Ekin's humor is also related to the fact that he was a popular 122

Page  123 'I t A K Mt. P..&L% *1 -- CM - I iI 1 4 1 WAIL- I i?.- V I -, -., I11.1,, " --., ', I.'..,',.,e ""W '00 I I Z,,:, le, A%- F ISLAND A .QZ pooppl, ll-

Page  124 making political and artistic authority seem meaningless. Take a look, for example, at the crest on the costume of the warrior, the villain of his particular story, in plate 11. In short, by addressing himself to the multiple levels of understanding of the masses, Ekin made his art a medium of the masses and freed it from the rigid standards of morality. Ekin produced tempera Kabuki paintings during the last days of the old regime. In contrast to the work of most of the artists of his day, his was neither static nor interpretative. At the same time, his work did not depict the life of the common people in the realistic terms peculiar to modern civilization. This does not mean that Ekin was incapable of realism; his "Scroll of the Manners and Customs of Tosa" [Tosa Nenju Fuzoku Emaki ] is filled with delightful, realistic scenes. Nevertheless, Ekin's true value lies in the fact that he transformed the complex emotions of the masses, their psychology, into intense expressions of destructive, liberating energy by employing an ultranatural, materialistic realism that can, by no means be reduced to the pure realism of sketches from life. References: Hirosue, Tamotsu, and Fujimura, Kinichiro, "Tosa no Shibai-E" ["The Theatre Pictures of Tosa"] Taiy5, April 1966 Hirosue, Tamotsu, and Fujimura, Kinichiro, Ekin: Bakumatsu Tosa no Shibai-E [Ekin: The Theatre Pictures of Pre-Restoration Tosa] Tokyo: Miraisha, 1968. The article above is an abbreviation and translation of the essay by Hirosue that appears in this volume. Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by Yada Kinichiro and are taken from the volume published by Mirai-sha. artist. Ekin often superimposes a joke (sometimes sexual) on an intense dramatic situation. If, for a moment, we allow our eyes to wander away from a painting's central tragic theme, we are likely to realize that the structure of the painting is such that the central tragic situation is being peered at by pairs of mocking eyes (see plate 4 This technique conveys a message, but that is not all. By injecting his pictures with obscene, mischievous laughter, Ekin creates a sense of impropriety. This sense of impropriety forces the energy of tragedy to blend with the people's sense of freedom, and it causes a multiplication of images resulting from the alternate concentration and diffusion of people's attention. Ekin's humor is audacious, with a stroke of the brush 124

The Songs and Revolution of Bharathi

David Luddenpp. 125

Page  125 David Ludden ~ ndf n, en' Whnten peplo coona conreImvdt end ther w subjuation thytokar`utotehad of ruin-lasutue attehaeafthipoelssoiloitn.I is in the in teres icla Ossile for thsseue them ins a doito fnustoe domnane. he aruoe to tose iveted of oiiaoei cultural dominatine of tradtoaedctoi mlctyrpeet sttd nenin oudemnth estblshed~e~ oarderitisreouin ofapartiulr rtst inth niilphase ofantialsmoent Hei uramania i hrathiyr or sml Bhrthi a poet of TamieI, thelanuage~ of th i rtfy thremilo pole nSut Ida. H lied beween18an 19, durting thelI first outbursts of ~the nat ionalst movemet i nda we tegoudor asli for a lnstuge thtedd nt inrvolutioi~n'but inh thie capiut ulation o heipeil it1 pOwer. The0~ re~voIOlut ion ~never Lmat erialized as! an ared coflIc betee legion o6~~ 6f imeialists ad ntionailisats but at its Incpton lonfg lbe-flore 'this,e nt ur y' raho cooils ug eitws ndd o f re volu6tionaryo proprios Bh~rathi'sbsngs~ and potr played eta oe ntebrho beininro the evoltinry deoonztonpoess anJtllu form hisartint akeimooiialeuainbtas thati h forrinpenden,ut he Y ine~te ionno tironsitoTmpety ong, an languaget s wel emre, o nyt e nigo h go e oltcIg when Ini be nt ehsoy 5ento onc T -ailtsrth entt Ie n a e of th t0 vfd n grupinSut I It ert rI hl th ofSt thke nIrher S n~rttrdto i t I I n os I d~tIs

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Page  127 I z, :: , 1 1 1, I

Page  128 W must ns t th wisdom of for ign I nd ri reer t ork off n gr in I ur Jove ncien tales h ye lost their ignity. Other I nds must see and love their artistry and greet them with respect. When a soul is born of true tight, it shines in every word. When the love of art and poetry grows like a flood over the earth, all the fallen blindmen will regain their eyes and honor. For they taste the the clear nectar of Tamil song. Here on earth they know the deathless beauty of the gods. The first Tamil daily newspaper wsb gun in 1880. It was of necessity con rvative attempt to b in the p0 itic I events of the day to the ms s of Tamil peop e. It ws foun e by a patriot who sought to undermine th English nopoly on news prsent ti n. In 1904 l3harathi joined 4-h p per' st ff $ tr n I tor of nqlish p eche o news articles. In the next fw ye rs, poUt cal event were to conspire to giV ition I fo us an a pubVc outl t hi songs an poet y. Asweh V team from the invasi n ofG mbo i nd th re n m creb ~ Kent St 4- J s n St te n Au ust, rgi, spe ifi a ts of ov hmenta r p sion and b ut lity c n ch ng poVtc I cVmt ov night In In Ia, th p rti to in ofeng I inIQ5 by the ambit? u& v &ao Lor urz KW such noc tw nce lrorc fly enou h it w hi vt obv te c V on tw n Muslitn nd Hindu in lrtd straltion fly t... p II u t 4- t vet tue ote fir tntio rnlzt n r INn Ab' o 8cr s goods w uP 4 1 nrf rt a t v w ,th t ru fo f nt rtnI 10 1- 1 taNtini n s tch b a Nrcj ho nI fo 4-h rs p9ttv pr ndt sn-I' ri

Page  129 whic thubje movmen and~tl 8hrtiasotyweebsd Also~ in 196 aspat I h Swaesh Mvemnt Chdmarama Pia foned th wdsiSemhpCmayi MSoatdrs Itwa hefis evetualorivena out ofe" buieA Twogi yer atr i~a asjie habv e igied the pa$ssion for freedo You strcasit o fae. ~willl brtea k you, stare yor resolv in pi son.~ wil I parad my pwr inhdomita~bl~e. YouLi btring mase together with aO song o freedom.~ defyhthe crown:

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Page  132 co, I on, i a 'ata --;a:a~:: " dry:i~ ~~i~:~1~-i rt t re fi f andie br f dom. Th- s wase the be hniny tecylo evI n prsinTh afe th fa st -in mes f i nt p wit hs niiaio int r lboit. vn mne o eitr ped or h t p t m g d t c aroundhthi Wipveu one: inEgih n n i ai, h aildiy Xda ane u in the streets and marketi~f*plae adpblcmetnswsprne o e paper, and in its pages~~ ahrthispesapae ubil o h is sang wth hi. Me nterwy oefo ok tpe ol stent h music~~~~~~~j adfudteslelerigothit(:r on laer. he confronted their f~~~irs oiia nayi fteilsta hyfl abou thm eeryday Tha isthevale o sog asa mdiu, epecall amnga oliert popeisoldPate rmpbi vnt n ihltl awarenessof their wn plight In clonalmie, lataton o fatoy, hedrvin frceofth laboers s fear.I Th epeaect f rmwat, oeavne ment andlearing Thrugh eartheyare ut ff fom ech ther They-~tt:; ces ob cletv eol talan eoes mn nii dualwageearnrrs The relnqush teir anhod fr th rigt t survve. hey ave o poer a a rce, culure~ a ntion Allpowe is te foeignrst andit i thy wh mak hisoryin te coony Nativs hav no rideno curage no ill. ndt is. imgeofthm selves aslzhahn abrcmrnsi eptaeyeeywr thatisses rom he out ofThe an. It s tis slf~imae tat peretutesther pwelesnes an maes he stmuc eaierforth colonil iststo doin~ate tbcmsol atrlfrteepol to be ruled, for 6;t~~theyhae ecme ncpaleof ulngthmseve. he ar erde ytei ae rlgo, agae-b hirvr xitne Andl~~~~BI~:-:_:~ - thsdgaaini agtte eeymnt ftedyutli becom snintrIptothimid.TerlrrewteSuh ln'n evylk vrti aiebcmssca i bac rnsan upiity'~v thn n s cd Whte om owerul, ichducaeda worhy- n mcidn ~~f eml tin c ntita of th In Myh t cm r~

Page  133 in tl thXre h od Aff II cte to l thn st b fad Thycal him witch doctor.e He tuns teir oul i~th aword Ho mn thoa usan 'tortures?Kingsre eiv wha s given an r tectthe peeople — ohe Theis governmet sosonyfer Seeing itsh powerf

Page  134 I j 1111 ' f II A ty ~ nr a t ut ey t p1 y not nq r I I 1>;< r th r k n Anthycns th raasn. Ty we4 Te mnisu Ana ly tavTh the r fr 1 U y dt in h d Tetr isa C0fl S Thy owwek thyris nd faint, whn thy 1k L' e md d P, n fol win tttc fore ri hn n th s sor tan f ota r Qt r r. huh U o a 1 up sri ense1es $ Is Th h nt y ntpn rt I tlu tr 4u't t c, a h retn m ilstyf ye II $ f w$t 4

Page  135 t 11 1 44 14ro$ f th past came ft9m 11 V t$nlonthy r I PJ sNa thnvs$ vits d tr y, rews uf ntton ott on st wet h t t t Un rs htrv.< He shws. t~h sp op n Ity unIt 4 by c1tu h _og phyn P n, h 4 tene& t tet iv 1 z tions n rth'W tiThe n f t st nd ts ton- shl on $ re joyous - " f:. j 4 v vru I W 514 tri iiV And then he sp s f th pres nt l~issnqsr nnelnc 1 t whenh sings e si v yh ferthp vertythe starvtion t t ee I e copse" sstnd. Heuesth im aeltnns nat on, a bVnd p opte., 'bun chil r n fol w'ng th touch f foe qn h n r t I sp ks o t me ns y wh oh th eopt re k pt n thi t te. The r oppr sd n as f without an w th n he s ys The people olin to superst ti n, c yinq ou ft v1ils nd cu ses rther than IO irK to the pot at r at ties t at +eriWn t rsl very. Thy r sprat fr on noh Vtnrniflion pettyf usnd yet they are all pa acute y Th fo ce. They a fr rPent e h group lingin to it own Ife withou thinking of t powe they ye ii otivety to irnpr a their c n cond tion. The pso te do t ethe retnessof th irp tor he rpresent subjuga ion bec use they Ye blThded by s n fe. They do not see the?st c, the nolent books of mo I ity n s ci t duty, which they tt old in common, b caus they Pave th vCtchcr ft of th o a ner. Tb y lirid by his ruelty, hey re shack ad by their own fear T foreigne ecomes the bJ t of c th is. Igno in wh ever goc nay h ye co Th the pee t in t oonI I a a, dhr thi kes sub ervi nce i setf the n, iA tti or& nr the ne who control it, Sy asto in t e to yof the n tionat tWstoryb fore coloni I tim,h rn as the coloni per'od seem anunntur I nt r upt6n of the people s own historic I pro r ss. Thus, h x o t them t emove th nfr hal In ndmns n to ntnuetodeveo their Pi u ture the r wn n tion I hstory, once r He ho how &ntofe to nionhoo is a his oKot process n ho An r to iv n t n ti ns o the world, the n ian must tn-v ut thaseivst r wnfre nton, He r est ntp I vs I- el urn t t fMzz'ni in tly eral a t insP tFec > vrnentof peoptet on rot the' $ny S un- t tsaf, n res tHe Tb ruin r n n sprt, h ys' they 4rr t <thil eM&e ppt i a will ron sep 4 _Thar 4> kfrm he ft Whit an, a tork 1ntytf n r w fiqta a nt t tsp r d w hTh a ita r4 ey to Ip t ntv4 vit r t 444 hff MaP T 1 44 t 4t f 4 44' 4 4 'w 4 '44,

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Page  137 t Me nsor os on vhee f dst; ot Ka;i is ti f a nBh rat b hi s so ngs with M h rI at P i nger pe p e she wi nurtef the a cort,, eeam t into atte 'F c th ros thre p e ue o 'the ' e.g.The rationa throgh dinsciplarine, sf-denialtarnd of ei tine,ocial rda t -- ra. Wh i i t n o pra e b li. is the dutyoftheapeop oreorm t hir society Iian sh es wy thadtitwil hrathat more set t n th r t f e igious usongso ad adaptin g+t thatuhas come td o th rotgh i- n whto, i en tre bain of ha pt rl toh s ntonf fha hi a to t in t w so a igo msc nd the modern In thi rn tei c.iteis the s. the it htom eli a:, l^l ^.f1euds ariieqaliie wh;in ndian, Jfneq ue.'un:1 'd1... t.t ficati of the cntry f the fry eeo struggle. The s rio and 0 -si -H!ne ality ofver t tion f lit f.r:u;Iea, popular ign c e and i ea I andi rti 1;.,,1r ivlrafieOs —+thse -pare the eements that mu;ed: ts nd s of eveet it i radit that, ar:e, s 0t ff::as au-Aspi us if not' mana ry in the S3str li:'1 'fterature.:, Caste vdi ferencesy an'n d ls' t f:women i'+ n*:0.'socitiety8 are b0as I to d r li 3m,te^ iratureS of th ancient2 peid but there^ are platcesin the pfics and Tamil Vterature ere s pat a rre citicizd,t afn hrth i cf rites ' t hese. Hispurp se wastm n relig ida- -lik a free i tInatails onco mit ial respnsi re emberaed ad esl made an inega part ofe the soca cnciousness. a a nationalstioe. y s I, n pol teic y top c te n h m.^'^.^i~c'h1I

Page  138 hi rePi Qf T4 P th 4 pt S P T ft wi rir It Invor r utnv $ tel ttl n Li tihy Id tr lyt L at t b rb r $ MV f or tad yr a r Tehn sh pks rid turn w rn re st p P ywlt ar yIv Tb or op t st n fr1c tyn r V. Thew r$ tIe. Thdc N s V V **.. 7 W 4 4

Page  139 I ftern n I <I yf I> ke this 7 YurnustnvrIe, woYs, aefr f y Go isor nob rtn;no IL I1everc e t u, my love. Vfwe. nrw.?nPr grv1y I sriouseto e frid. nock irnwn tarn ehim, pit rhis ace, rPyjove. whenmi y nd I4fferirl I sen roun you, it does no ood tobeco we ry. The Is God full f ov wowill drivel all awy Laz ness js ou ruin. Dpnttdfyyu mater' ol hechildwocr spanstutte n I rn eco e d tru 1, y v. n t t re4TmiIN $ t ryou. y th Jinyun p Its It brst, I I n fathers r t 4 ( 7> 4 7

Page  140 n the nort Ni y In th south Op Th endi o h lies onth e st an wst. h s s the I rid of t e edas nd her h raisin was barn. This unconquer e In worShi p h r as your sod, my by There is no such thing as caste. To say families are high, or low, is a sin, The man full of love, justice, wisdom, learning — he is the great one, my child. You must show love to all living things, and know that God is Truth, You need a strong heart. This is the way to live, my child. In 1908 terrorism made its appearance in the Indian national movement —the first bomb was aimed at a 5ritish official and took the lives of two white women. The government moved to repress the revolt t its source. Introducing Law NO. 144 into the Indian Penal Code, they forbade the unlawful assembly of more than five persons and the incitement of in ividu I emotions to djsturb the p ace in any public plac . The song and meetings on the be oh in Madr s h C use in ny inc d nt of vidleri etween police an the people. The law obviously wac aimed at these g herings n a+ h nd-out lit r ture. A w rrant w s is ued for the rest of the e itor of nda n the in n whos na was registr d s editor s rested n >np isone. Bhar thi w s con yin to s e r fu in th r nch oloni I territory o Pondicher y, Wi hiri the bar sof teMrasesdency, nd tO cantinu publishing rndiaf am th fety 6 H H p6ers np per wer b med in it'sh mdi n canfiscat d on sight. Re like M z in, r me in exile fo hebo of Vs pro uctive ye s Cl h ebrn dto his h el rid fte it in ja<ty of Vs son s n poems de n wtten. He e ri gria led th In n cc2 rit w tmp leph nt in Mdras, in 121. He#V ye s w even I rof isdr iris ful We In paiiiC e lvry. re es: $ re n IITht ya a I ( r $ t ubV hiriq 44$ )<*'***'**** h av A S ArP I Hsei957) t ( s,19a) >1 d

Page  141 SOUNDS MAGAZINE A sahi Sonorama is a living news magazine, an ear-witness to the important events of history. Through recordings of actual sounds and live voices, it captures the almost convulsive changes in society, the most significant moments in history. Asahi Sonorama is a completely new medium without comparison. '70 New Year Issue Voices of Change and U pheaval XPeople Who Changed the Course of History t Lenin MacArthur Hitler Castro Mao Tze-tung Churchill de Gaulle Stalin.. Kennedy Roosevelt Tojo Yamamoto g-:i: Cohn-Bendit Oda '69 New Year Issue_ - Specials: What is the 1970 Renewal of the Security Treaty to Us?/ Nixon-Sato Diplomacy/Okinawa and the Problems of American Military Bases/Turbulence Accompanying the 1960 Renewal of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty/From the 1960 Security Treaty Crisis to 1970 February Issue Apollo 8 succeeds in translunar mission.! Tokyo U. in Turmoil Jan. 18th to 19th March Issue Radicals in 1970 —The Kanda Liberated District:Quartier Latin February 4, Strikes on Okinawa April Issue Civil Rights Movements in 1970 May Issue Special Feature: Okinawa June Issue Mao Tze-tung's Speech at the Ninth National Congress July Issue Universities Denounced: Yamamto Yoshitaka the representative of the Tokyo University Students' United Front August Issue Apollo 11: The First Human Voice from the Moon September Issue The Speeches of Che Guevara October Issue Paris in May: Singing Voices from the Barricades (taken from the documentary film of the ParisRevolution,May, 1968, "The Uprising." November Issue The Speeches of Ho Chi Minh December Issue Hani Goro on the Trials of Student Radicals NO.2 Asahi BIdg. ASAHI SONORAMA CO.,LTD Tk 6GnZa Chuo -ku _ Tokyo. TEL(563)6021-_9 I

Ballad of Soldiers

Hasegawa Shiro, lyrics; Tanikawa Gen, musicpp. 142

Page  142 BALLAD OF SOLDIERS lyrics by Hasegawa Shiro music by Tanikawa Gen A) Q)_ _ _ - - B) -- - - -. I- - - t C r-T1 a I - -- I vl- 4-+ - i tv 10.0 -- i — I I -- I - 0 — Io- 4- ow, - I - V., -- - c -— I= 0) *Stanzas A), B), and C) are repeated in each verse except the second to the last where A) is immediately followed by D). Gita o totte gen o hare Heitai no uta o utao Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Onboro bune ni tsumikomare Okuridasareta heitai yo Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Abura no umi ni ukandeta Bukkubukku no shikabane ga Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Janguru no oku ni hikaru mono Are wa chiisa na sharecobe Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Heitai wa ikita manma de Renga no shita ni uzumatta Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Gozo-roppu ga tobidashite Reito ni sareta heitai wa Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi -hoi Haru wa ura-ra no no no hate de Uji-mushi darake de dorodoro tokeru Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Shichi nenkan no toshitsuki sugite Kaette kita heitai mo iru Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Kotsutsumi in natta heitai wa Fureba karakara oto ga suru Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Sekken futatsu ni kutsushita nisoku Chirigami sarumata moratta yo Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Karada hanbun futtonde Garakuta ni natta heitai wa Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Ekimae hiroba de hamonika narasu Katte kuru zo to isamashiku Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Sarariman wa mitsuketa yo Rashu-awa no hajimari ni Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Ekimae hiroba no benchi no ue ni Shinda heitai Shinda heitai Shinda heitai... Shinde mo hamonika hanasazu ni Kuchi kara hamonika hanasazu ni Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi 142

Page  143 Take up your guitar and put it into tune. Sing a song of soldiers all together now. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Herded on a barnacled, bilge-water brig; Shipped out, waved goodbye, the soldier went to war. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Oil-slicked ocean waves were his Waterloo, His sea-sick carcass lay rolling in the brine. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi What's that shining there, in jungles deep and dark? Wind worn skull and bones basking in the light. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Still alive and breathing, the soldier disappeared — Bricks on bricks had buried him, we heard from him no more. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Liver, heart, kidneys, lungs, stomach, intestines, Blown to smithereens, he froze and decomposed. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Spring came to the steppe and warm breezes, too. Maggot maggot infested, the soldier slowly thawed. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi The days and nights of seven years came and went at last And some of the soldiers made it home again. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Some came home in packages bowed and neatly wrapped. Boxed bones, rattle-rattle, tell-tale shake. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Soap, socks, toilet paper's all we have to give, In appreciation for the life you've had to live. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Half his body left behind and half brought home again; There he is, the human wreck, can't imagine where he's been! Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi His repatriated half plays harmonica, Sings ballads of the war and begs for its bread. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi A commuting businessman found him lying there — It just so happens that the rush hour had begun. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi Laid out on a bench in front of the station, The dead soldier The dead soldier The dead soldier... Dead fingers welded to his harmonica, Dead lips welded to his harmonica. Hayohoi-hayohoi-hayohoi-hoi 143

John Silver: The Beggar of Love

Kara Juropp. 144

Page  144 I..,.PI,. iolk" 46 '40. "Ol 14 4111 -k. 1 4

Page  145 II i Y I:I v i 4i / -

Page  146 I ~ T RED TENT p ing lo- +k BankI shopping street Fuji Taiy Bank Bank North Exit to Tachikawa Ex Behind Kichijoji Meiten Kaikan TENT Olympic Village Meiji Shrine We invite our readers to take advantage of a truly rare opportunity. The Beggar of Love, which appears in English on the following pages, will premier simultaneously in Tokyo and Naha, Okinawa, on August 1. Curtain time is 7:00 P.M., and admission is ~500 in Tokyo and $1.50 in Okinawa. Performances will take place in the red tent of the Situation Theatre which will be located just off Kokusai D5ri, next to the RyUkyU Bank and across the street from the Okinawa Times, from August 1 through 10 in Naha. In Tokyo, performances will also be held in a red tent pitched within the grounds of the Kitaya Inari Shrine, near Harajuku Station, August 1, 2, 3; behind the Kichijoji Meiten Kaikan, August 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 1 6, 20, 21, 22, and 23; and within the grounds of Yushima Tenjin Shrine in Kichij6ji August 29 and 30. The Situation Theatre will also perform The Beggar of Love in Sapporo during September as they continue their Tokyo performances. Further information may be obtained through The Situation Theatre [Joky6 Gekij6], telephone (03)314-4640. The play will, of course, be performed in Japanese. Seats will not be reserved, and those wishing to attend are urged to arrive at least twenty minutes early. under the title Ai no Kojiki in the March to Shibuya at ion H --- —-- 0 i 0 4 — Shibuya Kitaya Inari Shrine This play was originally published 1970 issue of Umi. Copyright 1970 by Kara Juro translation Copyright 1970 by David Goodman Caution: This play is fully protected, in whole, in part or in any form under the copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Empire including the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and is subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, radio, television, recitation, public reading, and any method of photographic reproduction are strictly reserved. For professional and amateur rights all inquiries should be directed to Concerned Theatre Japan Co., Ltd., Hikari-cho 2-13-25, Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo 185, Japan. 146

Page  147 Ii I The Cabaret In-shin 147

Page  148 Somewhere in the city, in the shadow of tall buildingss A snow drift of litter. An old public toilet. Only the sound of water flushing is violent, energetic. Grass sprouts beside the cement trough of the urinal; in the jamb of the door to the ladies' room on the right green-bottle flies teem. The late afternoon sun shines through a high window. A street light comes on in the hasty evening, and the sound of a hurdy-gurdy can be heard from a nearby department store. Aunty Midori 1 is squatting on the cement before the urinal and vomiting. Taguchi is rubbing Midori's back. Aunty Midori: Thank you, sonny. Taquchi: Is that enough? Midori: Yes, that's enough, sonny. Taguchi: Are you feeling better now? Midori: Just leave me alone, sonny. Taguchi: You really are feeling better, aren't you? Midori: Hey, how come you're paying so much attention to me? Taguchi: Does it annoy you? Midori: I can take care of myself. I've never even rubbed my wife's back. How come you rubbed mine? Taguchi: Because you didn't seem to be feeling wel I. Midori: There's nothing wrong with me. Taguchi: But you're white as a sheet. IJapanese readers would recognize Aunty Midori immediately as being a policelady who stands at busy intersections near schools to help children cross the street. Aunty Midori is dressed in the normal police-lady uniform of green smock and yellow, inverted sailor's cap. Aunty Midori also carries a yellow flag with which to signal cars to stop. 148

Page  149 Midori: Tired, thatts all. Just tired. I'll bet you get exhausted when you're tired, too. Taguchi: Yes. Well, I'll be getting home now. Midori: Wait a minute. The portal of youth —it's broken. Taguchi: What? Midori: Your zipper. Taguchi: I can take care of this with a snap. Midori: Where are you going? You going home? Taguchi: Yes. Midori: Come on, rub my back a little more. Taguchi: Okay. Midori: Rub my back, and I'1 l give you something nice. Taguchi: I don't want anything. Midori: As you like, but come a bit closer. Taguchi: But...I've got to get going now. Midori: Somebody nice waiting for you? A woman maybe? Taguchi: A woman? Insurance salesmen like me can't afford the luxury of keeping women waiting. Midori: Women are best kept waiting. Taguchi: I live alone. 149

Page  150 Midori: You must be lonely. A bed that's never made, and cigarette ashes all over the floor. You've never so much as taken a woman there, and you've led your serious life. Am I right? Taguchi: I'm good for nothing! Midori: What do you mean, good for nothing? Taguchi: There's nothing special about me. From junior high school to now, I've done about average. I'm a common man who fits nicely into his nook and grows older and older. That's me. Midori: Nobody grows older at your age. Taguchi: Yes, but the calendar in my apartment gets older. Year year I've got nothing to write on it. Midori: Why don't you buy a new one? Taguchi: But I haven't got anything to write on it. Midori: Look, you're just a late bloomer, that's all. You've got talent. You're just too cautious. Taguchi: Do you really think so? Midori: Indeed I do. Taguchi: I have to go to the bath, so I'll be on my way now. Midori: Which bath are you going to? Taguchi: The Sweet-Flag Bath on the other side of the road. Midori: Today all the baths are closed. It's the sixteenth, a vacation. You know as well as I do that it's a holiday everywhere when the new moon falls on a Monday. Taguchi: That's awful —the baths are on vacation. 150

Page  151 Midori: Awfu I? Taguchi: I mean, I haven't got anything else to do. Midori: Come closer. Taquchi: Huh? Midori: Come here and rub my back. Taguchi: Are you stil I feeling badly? Midori: I just want someone to be nice to me. Taguchi: Nice? Midori: Consider it, my friend, there's not a man in this world as sweet as me. In the wilting heat, dressed like this, I'm there to watch over everyone's traffic safety. I pour my heart into my work and for only three-hundred and fifty yen a day. Taguchi: I understand. Midori: Yes, but not everyone understands as well as you. They all think I'm some kind of cricket in winter. Taguchi: Makes my teeth chatter. Midori: Something wrong with your teeth? Taguchi: No, you were just talking about being a cricket in winter, and.... Midori: I'm just a prodigal who's about over the hi Il. Come, rub my back. The sunts almost set, but I'm so... I'm still warm, see? Taguchi: (touching him): Yes. 151

Page  152 Midori: I've got a fever. going to burn up. When the sun goes down, I feel like I'm Taguchi: You're pretty warm all right. Are you breaking out, maybe? Midori: In a rash of love, yes. Taguchi: Love!? Midori: Is it funny? Taguchi: No. It's just that I've never heard a man use that word so distinctly before. Midori: Embarrassed? Taguchi: Mm. Midori: Alas, to my chagrin, I fear of this rash of love.... I fear I might just die (Taguchi is silent) Come closer and rub my back gently. Taguchi: Yes, but the bath.... Midori: If you don't mind a Taguchi: A shower of piss!? shower, you can take one here. No thanks. Midori: How could you think I'd even suggest such a vulgar thing. We'll collect water from the tap in that funnel over there, see, and I'll splash it on you through the window. Taguchi: But this is a public toilet. Midori: Don't worry. Nobody' I come. The other day I negotiated with the city of Tokyo and had them make this my study after six. So just make yourself at home. Ah, that year, that summer, just you and me and Sea of Japan! Benbow, Benbow! 152

Page  153 Taguchi: Huh? Midori: Benbow, Binbow! Taguchi: What? Midori: Binbow, Binbow! Taguchi: What's "Binbow, Binbow!"? Midori: Oh, darling, can't you just hear the sound of the sea? This is our Fortress Binbow! Taguchi: You changed your tone aZZ of a sudden. Midori: I can't help it. My poor little heart is just going all mushy. Taguchi: See! It's that "heart" business. Midori: Don't you care for things all of a sudden? Taguchi: Er... when they're necessary, I suppose. Midori: So you prefer necessary things all of a sudden. Taguchi: Well... when they're well rooted in necessity. Midori: Yet, I am as rootless as blades of grass in the wind. (sings): O Flint of Fortress Binbow, His tail was cold or was it hot? Did he stand or did he not? Take a word from me. O screams to rend the ocean waves Across the sea, the vast Black Sea, What was it like, what did you see? Flint of Fortress Binbow. O scenes so terrible, hard to believe, Over the lull, black motionless lull, What did you hear, what could you cull, 153

Page  154 Flint laid low with fear? O Flint of Fortress Binbow, His tail was cold or was it hot? Did he stand or did he not? Take a word from me. Taguchi: You kept up with this "Binbow" business, and I was sure you were going to sing me some silly ditty, but the song's got more to it than I thought. Midori: Why don't you rub my back some more? Taguchi: Have you considered getting yourself a vibrator? Midori: It's better by hand. Taguchi: But it's tiring. Midori: Tiring? That's beside the point. Why, I'm always rubbing him down. Taguchi: Huh? Midori: The concrete wall. Taguchi: You mean you're giving the wall rubdowns? Midori: I figure he must be tired. He just stands there all day long, and at night he complains about feeling rundown. Look, even the toilet bowl is yawning. So you give them a rubdown, a massage. It's the only decent thing to do. There's even a saying, "Geysers of life spring from a good massage." See? Like I was saying, if I don't take care of him, he'll be upset. He wants someone to treat him nice. Just a friendly word or two, that's all he asks. An elderly man enters to relieve himself. He stands before the urinal, shifting back and forth. Midori, nothing escaping him, sneaks quietly up behind. Midori (at the top of his lungs): Waaaa!!!! Old Man: Aaaaa!!!! What?.. 154

Page  155 Midori: Who said you could go pissing in somebody else's sink? Old Man: What? Midori: You heard me. Old Man: This is a public toilet. Midori: It's me house. Old Man: Your house? Midori: I live here. This is where I make my living. Old Man: Here? Midori: You're standing in the kitchen sink! Old Man: You must be joking. Why, yesterday —even before that —I've always come here and done just the same thing. Midori: But this is my house after six, starting today. Old Man: Come, come, my friend, It's not as if the war had just ended. Give me one good reason why people have got to live in public toilets. Midori: You've got a lot of nerve, standing up and saying that. As if you had any idea what the postwar period meant —to yourself much less me. I am living here now —that's all there is to me. Muchakoji's probably written it on a fan somewhere: "Without flowers, what is man?"2 That... that... that's the point! 2"Muchakoji" is a perversion of the name of a famous Japanese novelist and playwright Mushakoji Saneatsu (1885- ). Mushakoji was the leader of the literary "White Birch School" [Shirakaba-ha] around 1910. This group was very idealistic and placed heavy emphasis on the development of individuality. Mushakoji holds the view that the human race is ever reaching for a higher destiny and that man contributes most to the attainment of that higher destiny by striving for his own perfection. Mushak5ji has done a great deal of watercolor drawing to go with his moralistic sayings on the nature of human life. They became so popular that today they are printed on a wide variety of objects. 155

Page  156 Old Man: You keep this up and I'll see that the police hear about you. Midori: I'm not doing anything the cops would want to know. Old Man: You are! Midori: I am not! Old Man: You are! Midori: I am not, I was not, I have not! Old Man: Ah! You're studying grammar! Midori: Anything wrong with that? Old Man: You're just not taking this seriously. You're trying to make a fool of me. I know it —just because I'm doing The Guardmen. 3 Midori: But the Guardmen, they're the biggest celebrities in the city, aren't they? Old Man: Yes, but they're really just a bunch of errand boys. When they first came on television, everybody at my house saw me as you do. But then they caught on that I wasn't Utsui Ken. I didn't think it was gonna work in the first place. I mean, like I don't wear such good suits. Before long, they stopped watching The Guardmen so often. They watched less and less. They stopped watching altogether. One look at me and they'd start making ugly faces. Do they hate me? How about it, do you think everybody hates me? Every time I hold a pair of chopsticks. Every time I pick up my briefcase. Every time I put on my shoes. Every time I come home and open the front door. Every time I take off my hat. Everytime I get ready for bed. "Ah, Utsui Ken wasn't like that at all!" that's what they're thinking, all of them! (He is sobbing.) 3The Guardmen is a television series —one of Japanese television's longest running and most successful —about a group of men, "guardmen," who function as a sort of private or parapolice force; they are hired by clients as private detectives, body guards, security police, and so forth. Utsui Ken is one of the actors appearing in this series and is extremely popular — comparable, perhaps, to Lee Marvin. The Guardmen is produced by TBS [Tokyo Broadcasting System] which has its headquarters and studios in Akasaka, Tokyo. 156

Page  157 Midori: You've just thought about it too much, that's all. Old Man: Not at all. My wife said I didn't have to come home any more, Sakiko the bastard. "If you don't like it, just try stacking yourself up against Utsui Ken!" Uchui Ken, she says. And Ichiro, the little fart, he laughs at me, "Go on, get on the boob-tube along side him and see," he says. Midori: You better just leave her alone. Old Man: I can't leave her alone. She's saying I don't have to come home any more. Midori: You think she's serious? Old Man: She's serious, all right. I tried going home once. As soon as I walked in the door she threw my briefcase out in the rain, Sakiko the bastard. Midori: Seems to have something of a mean streak, doesn't she. Old Man: You understand things pretty good. After that, the night I had my briefcase thrown out in the rain, I went down to TBS in Akasaka. Midori: What for? Old Man: See, I'd just read it in TV Guide, about their doing The Guardmen live at the studio. So straight I went through the lobby and into the studio. And sure enough, they'd already started. Just towards the end, there was this place where Utsui Ken says, "Society is to blame!" and the music goes "da-da-da-dang!" Right? Well, this is where I come in, I thought, and I ran out screaming, "It's the home that is to blame!" —but before I could stack myself up against Utsui Ken, I blasted right into this camera coming in from the side. Midori: But you got on the tube, didn't you? Old Man: Just my hand. Midori: That's too bad. 157

Page  158 Old Man: That's not the half of it. The camera fell over and got busted. Now I gotta be on The Guardmen until I die to pay them back for it. Sakiko the bastard, she won't even give me money for cigarettes. Midori: Aaa! Old Man: You just sighed, "Aaa!" didn't you! Midori: Huh? Old Man: Fink! You're getting fed up with me, aren't you —you're trying to make a fool out of me, I can tell! (He raises his hand to his forehead and nervously struggles to keep his face from view.) Ah! I shouldn't have spoken! How could I have been so foolish! Stop it! Stop it! Don't look at me that way!!! Midori: What are you talking about? Old Man (changing his tone and manner to that of a sports announcer): Ah! He's raised his voice. Next he'll be raising his hand to strike me! Midori: Fool! Old Man (hand to his head): Such malicious abuse! He belches it forth with no regard for truth or falsehood! He's completely out of control! Midori: Look who's talking. Taguchi (at a place apart from the others): You'd best leave him alone. Midori: Mm. Old Man (viewing Taguchi suspiciously out of the corner of his eye): Ah! There's another one with him —they seem to be bosom buddies —they're conspiring against me! Midori: Shut up, will you! Old Man: Two against one —they've threatened to murder me! Now, ladies and gentlemen, that's what I call teamwork! 158

Page  159 A young girl dressed in a sailor-suit enters. Girl: I'm home! Midori: Welcome home, Orchid Flower. Old Man: My goodness, ladies and gentlemen, a most attractive young girl has come home to this dreadful place. What should I do? Let's switch down to the batter's box and Smily Aota.4 Girl: Who's he, Gramps? Old Man stares at Midori and Girl. Midori: He's a TV station. Old Man (as if taking up the microphone): Well now, Smily, did you hear that? Yes, yes, I heard it, all right. Girl: Oh, Gramps, there's a man who said he wanted to meet you. I bought him with me. Midori: Who is it, Orchid Flower? Utsui Ken's face appears at the entrance. Old Man: Oh my God! It's him! Che-che-che Okera, the cripple, rolls himself in in his box. He is wearing an Utsui Ken mask made from the cover photo of a weekly magazine. Che: Good evening, gentlemen, my dear. It ma) be too late for introductions, but time is money, as they say. I am the wanderer, Che-che-che Okera. Girl: My name is Orchid Flower. Taguchi: I am Taguchi of Asahi Life Insurance. 4Smily Aota, one of the best baseball players to appear after the war. "Smily" is a nickname affixed by the translator and has no basis in reality. 159

Page  160 Che (to Old Man): And you, my friend? Midori: He's overflow from The Guardmen. All: Overflow, huh? Old Man (completely taken aback): Incredible unity. They're at it again, making a fool of me. Why must I be made a fool of by these scum in this stinky hole, Sakiko? Midori: So get your ass back to Sakiko, Guardman. Old Man: Listen here, I 'l get you for this —from now on I'm Guardman the Avenger! Oh! Now I'm making a fool of myself! Old Man exits leaving four people on the stage. Beyond the window it is night. All are silent. Midori: Orchid Flower, you'd best be getting ready to set up shop. Girl: Ch'an-ho hsien. (She takes off her sailor-suit and begins to put on Korean clothes in a coner to the right.) Che and Midori are silent. Taguchi (approaching Girl): He mentioned something about setting up shop? What sort of shop might it be? Girl (as she is changing:) Huh? Midori: Orchid Flower, give Mr. Taguchi a drink. Girl: Ch'an-ho hsien. (She fills a cup from a bottle on the shelf and flings it at Taguchi.) Taguchi: Listen, you're in junior high school, aren't you? Girl: Yessir —eighth grade, middle course, Gakushuin Junior High School. Taguchi: And evenings you set up shop, is that right? 160

Page  161 Girl: Ch'an-ho hsien. Taguchi: And what sort of shop might it be? Girl: A Korean cabaret. Taguchi: A Korean cabaret!? Girl: Starting tonight, this is the Korean cabaret Pu-shee. (She sings): Just twixt China and Korea You'll find the lands of Pu-shee. Lesser Pu-shee and Greater Pu-shee As deep as deep can be. (She does not even glance at Taguchi.) You'll find not a drop of water There in the Lesser Pu-shee; But it'll drown a man in minutes, Be he six or five-foot three. Go strike it rich in Pu-shee: sell life insurance to the drowning men of Pu-shee. (She hangs the paper lantern of the Cabaret Pu-shee over the entrance to the public toilet. The flickering light of the candle dances over her face. Staring at it she sings): With each spring I remember The flower that fell in Pu-shee. Englulfed as she bloomed, she mastered All forty-eight ways to please. This desolate flesh then washed ashore Beneath the rainbow that followed the storm. (Suddenly to Taguchi) Don't just stand there, go out and do the shopping —we've got nothing to go with the drinks. Taguchi: What's that? 5Gakushuin. A private school located in Tokyo, Gakushuin was founded in 1877 as the Peers' School. Since the end of the war it has been open to the public, but it remains a highly prestigious school. Gakushuin is a completely self-sufficient educational institution, with everything from a kindergarten to graduate departments. It is still attended by the rich and noble: the Crown Prince studied there, and his son is attending now. 161

Page  162 Girl: I noticed on the way home from school —they're sel ling popcorn on Candy Strip.6 Che: It just so happens I bought some on my way. Here you are. (He takes the popcorn out of his wagon and throws it to Girl.) Girl: How nice of you, Mr. Che-che-che Okera. (To Taguchi) Al I right, then you go buy a swal low's nest for the soup. Taguchi: Where? Girl: Kita-Senju. Taguchi: You've got to be kidding! Girl: Take a climb up the chimney in Kita-Senju and tell them Orchid Flower sent you. Che: Pardon me, but I brought that nest, too. Here you are. (And he throws the swallow 's nest.) Girl: But you're a cripple. How did you climb the chimney, Mr. Che-che-che Okera? Che: I didn't have to —it was a gift of the city sun. Girl: We Il, will wonders never cease! Taguchi: Much obliged, Mr. Che-che-che Okera. Che: That's all right, Asahi Life. Girl (to Taguchi): Go and get french-fried fireflies, then, will you. Taguchi: Is the sight of me that offensive? Girl: What did you say? Taguchi: My presence is distasteful to you, isn't it.

Page  163 Girl: It's just that I get depressed with young men hanging around. Taguchi: But I'm not in your way or anything, am I? Girl: How about going back to your office already? Taguchi: I didn't think you'd say that to me. Girl: I'm not woman enough to say it, is that it? Taguchi: Just be quiet now. Girl: If I'm quiet, the first thing you'll say is "Talk to me!" Che: Now, now, Orchid Flower, let's not be quarreling before the Cabaret Pu-shee opens. Girl: All right, Mr. Che-che-che Okera. (To Taguchi) Just don't be hanging around me, that's all. Girl moves to the lantern at the entrance, casually leans against the walZ, and, with an expression Zike that of any bar mistress, puts a cigarette in her mouth and lights it. Taguchi stands rigidly erect. There is the loud sound of water flushing from the ladies' toilet at the rear. Che rolls himself over to the man in green clothes. Midori: It didn't take you long to find me, did it, Che. Che: StilI, it took some searching. Midori: I didn't think you were still alive, Che. Che: Are you happy? 6Candy Strip [Ameyoko] was located in one of the wholesaling districts of Tokyo after the war. It was a place where American foods and other goods were sold, and it functioned as a blackmarket for American soldiers who wanted to sell foodstuffs and other commodities for cash. 163

Page  164 Midori: How about you? Che: I don't feel happy about anything any more. But I figured I'd meet up with you again someday. Midori: What happened to your legs? Che: No money, no legs. That's what's made me the half a man I am. But you sure picked a great spot for your little establishment, didn't you. Midori: Close to the harbor and everything. Che: What do you mean "close to the harbor"? Midori: Just behind here. Che: The Superhighway Commission Building's behind here. Midori: To all outward appearances. But look, Che, see how the salt sea breeze blows right in here? Che: Hey, you trying to remind me of ships again? Midori: But Che, this' is the unforgettable Pu-shee! Che: What are you trying to make me do this time? Midori: Come on, have I ever made anybody do anything? I'm not such a big deal as all that. Che: You're our old saber scar. Midori: What do you mean I'm an old scar? Che: Our vile-looking scar. Midori: Come off it —what do you think this is, some kind of TV quiz show? 164

Page  165 Che (suddenly losing his accent): I always used to think that as a man grew older, his scars. But the history a man lives through, he's gotten used to it, it's like his old lady's flesh just gets fatter in its own sweet way, but something salty about the scar. It tickles your there's the smell of the sea. so would shit, once box. The there's nose, and Midori: Just take a look at me, will you, Che-che-che Okera. About the most Aunty Midori can do is accept carnations from the children. But listen, Che, as soon as I take that bright red carnation in hand, the color fades and the carnation turns white. That's not all, either. My body will soak up anything red —it's scary. It'd be best if one of these days, I'd be waving my yellow flag, helping the children to cross the street, and get run over like a puppy. Che: Hey, I meet you after all this time —what's all living and dying? this about Midori: Ah, Taguchi, won't you come here for a minute? Taguchi: Sure. Midori: Be much obliged if you'd rub my back. Taguchi: Aren't you feeling well again? Midori: Ah, it's only my old affliction, that's all. already a lump forming on my back. Taguchi (rubbing): Here, you mean? See, there's Midori: Everywhere. What do you think is stored up Blood —not mine —the blood of strangers. inside it? Che (his accent returned): The blood of the people of Pu-shee, heh-heh-heh. And my legs remain at the bottom of Pu-shee. Midori: Not bad, Taguchi, not bad at all. (Breaking into song) 165

Page  166 0 Flint of Fortress Binbow His tail was cold or was it hot? Did he stand or did he not? Take a word from me. 0 screams to rend the ocean waves, (Suddenly turning to the entrance of the bar and bellowing) You're to find a man with one leg, Orchid Flower... You're to find a man with only one leg! Girl (drowsily): Sure. (She draws slowly on her cigarette.) Che: And don't let anybody know what you're looking for, either. Girl: Sure. Midori (as Taguchi is rubbing his back): Hey, listen, how come you went to work for Asahi Life Insurance? Taguchi: For my family. Midori: For your family Che, you hear that? Che: Yeah —it's been a long time, too. Taguchi: My father died, and my mother took in work at home. My being an only child, I had to look for a job early. Midori: What kind of work did your mom do? Taguchi: She made artificial flowers. Midori: Artificial flowers? Taguchi: Yes, she took paper flowers and dyed them. In order for me to have enough to eat, she used to work straight through the night. Midori: You mean your mother? You mean she dyes paper flowers? Taguchi: Yes, that's what you call making artificial flowers. 166

Page  167 Midori: And the paper flowers really go all red and blue? Is that right? Taguchi: It was so pretty. I peeked from under the covers as she worked all night long beneath that single, dim bare bulb. Midori sobs. Che: Mm. Taguchi: Is something the matter? Midori: You're so sweet! Everything you do is so meticulous! (Suddenly changing his tone) You should've looked for a job a lot sooner! How come you didn't try harder to help her! Idiot! Taguchi: But I had years of compulsory education.... Midori: That nonsense? You should've quit! Imbecile! Taguchi: But society would hardly.... Midori: Stand for it? If that's the way society is, screw it! Why the hell should you stand for society? Taguchi: But I am only one man...if I protest too much against society, it would only cause my mother greater pain. Midori: You mean there's no way for you to make both you and your mother happy? Taguchi: Go ahead, laugh at my impotence. Midori: Will it help if I laugh? Taguchi: No, it won't help at all. Midori: Then who's gonna laugh, you goddam idiot! Taguchi stops rubbing his back. 167

Page  168 See! The minute I get angry you quit rubbing my back! That's the pity of it all! Midori: When I was your age, I asked that great buckwagon in the sky how best to live for my parents, for myself —whether or not I should go to Manchuria. Taguchi: And that's when you went to Pu-shee. Midori: Wait a minute! When I first met you, you said you lived alone in an apartment. What's happened to your mother, huh? Where'd you stash her! Taguchi continues to rub his back. Your mother, making artificial flowers! Taguchi: She died. Midori: What? Taguchi: She died during that cold winter last year. Midori is silent. Taguchi: I asked her to please stop taking in work since I'd found a job, but she just went on painting paper flowers. That was in the bitter cold month of February.... When I woke up, it was as if she had lain face down in mountain fields of blue artificial flowers. There were so many —flowers wrapping around her, overflowing —it could have been the sea. Midori: The sea!? Taguchi: Yes. Midori: What was your mother's name? Taguchi: They called her Koharu. Midori is silent. Che the cripple, obviously trying to supress something, rises from his box and —he has legs! As if to hide what he is feeling, he makes for the urinal and there pretends to relieve himself. 168

Page  169 Midori: Your mother —she had that kind of name, didn't she. But tell me, why do you speak of her so romantically, the way you do? Taguchi: She always seems so far away, I.... Girl (singing): With each spring I remember The flower that fell in Pu-shee. Engulfed as she bloomed, she mastered Al I forty-eight ways to please. This desolate flesh then washed ashore Beneath the rainbow that followed the storm. Policeman 1, who has suddenly appeared in the entrance, grabs Girl by the arm. Policeman 1: Caught in the act! Oh, still young, aren't you. Old Man and Policeman 2 appear next. Che jumps back in his box. Old Man: These are the ones, officer, it's them I want to have arrested. Policeman 2: All right, all right. (He looks around inside the public toilet.) What are you guys doing here? Midori: Huh? Policeman 2: I'm asking you what the hell you think you're doing here! This is a public toilet for public use. When you've taken care of your business here, you get your asses out and quick. All are silent. People who rendevous in public toilets are viewed as perverts. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Hey, what are you being so goddam quiet about! Come on! Just exactly what are you doing here? Midori: Huh? 7"Koharu" is the heroine of all of Kara's John Silver plays. She waits and watches for John Silver. The name Koharu itself is archaic, but it is a name peculiarly appropriate to a woman who waits for a romantic figure I ike SiIver. 169

Page  170 Policeman 2: What a bunch of suspicious characters. Don't you guys understand what I've been telling you? Midori: No. Policeman 2: You don't understand? Midori: No. Policeman 2: Now look, I'm asking you what the fuck you're up to in here. Midori: You suddenly barge into our little establishment and demand to know what we're doing here —would you mind telling me what this is all about? Policeman 2: What's that? Old Man: You see, this is the way the'y talk. Didn't I tell you? Midori: Are you always running into department stores and coffee shops and screaming at the crowds, "What the fuck do you guys think you're doing in here!"? Old Man: You see, this is the way they talk. Didn't I tell you? Policeman 2: Now just hold on, hold on! (to Midori) I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Midori: I don't understand you very well either. Policeman 2: You talk about this place the same way you'd talk about a department store or a coffee shop. But this is a fundamentally different sort of place from a department store or a coffee shop, see. This is a public lavatory. That implies not that here is a place for the masses to mingle, but that here is a place for the execution of formal business proceedings. Ordinarily, in public facilities of this nature, a person will take approximately two minutes to answer nature's call. He will pass water and not words with his fellows. Sad as it may seem, they part without speaking. Who in heaven's name ever heard of somebody doing his homework, holding a song fest, or drinking himself under the table in a public toilet?! Who! You, nonetheless, have mingled for hours and have conducted friendly relations here, have you not! 170

Page  171 And are you not, in fact, occupying this public place before my very eyes? The public lavatory must not be occupied. A plaza where a man comes to relieve himself in solitude, his profile bowed, lost in thought —this is the commonly held image of a public toilet. Nevertheless, you have gone so far as to hang a paper lantern at the entrance and are conducting business of a somewhat dubious character. Now, what the hell do you think you're doing! Midori: Your honor, this is a cabaret. Policeman 2: A cabaret!? Midori: This is a Korean cabaret where we serve drinks, sing a song or two, and soon as they're drunk put our patrons on a ship and take them wherever they want to go. Policeman 2: Who gave you permission! This area is zoned for scenery. Who was it that gave you permission? Midori: Superiors. Old Man: You see, this is the way they talk. Didn't I tell you? Policeman 2: Superiors? What do you mean "superiors"? Midori: My superiors. Policeman 2: What kind of superiors —make some sense, will you. Midori: My superiors above me. Policeman 2: Where above you? Midori: In the sky. Old Man: See, this is the way they talk. Policeman 2: They're in the sky, are they, these superiors of yours? 171

Page  172 Midori: Yes, their buckboard.... (He suddenly rushes forward, strikes Policeman 1 who is detaining Girl, and embraces her himself.) -Policeman 2: You... what do you think you're doing! Policeman 1: Put up a fight, will you! As Midori is grabbed, his face appears in the light. His yellow hat flies off, and a sword-scarred face appears from beneath it. Policeman 2: Ah! Policeman 1 and 2 stop in their tracks. Midori: Otani! Umada! Where the hell do you think this is! This is the Cabaret Pu-shee! Umada (Policeman 2): Why, it's...it's Nizo, Nizo of the S.S. Brilliant! Old Man: Just ohe coincidence after another. Umada: You doing that Aunty Mindori bit? Nizo (Midori): Yeah. You fuzz? Otani (Policeman 1): We're on the force, all right, but that needn't stand between us, Nizo. Nizo: Come on inside! This is me place. Che (from deep within): It's been a long time, ain't it, Otani, Umada. It's me! Umada: You're.... Che: "Chinese" Che, the river pilot. Umada: Ah, Che-che-che Okera, with the long pole! 172

Page  173 Otani: Now I remember! You're Che, the guy who always stood up on deck working his pole! Che: Those were my three-legged days —now I'm left with only the middle one. Umada: Well, that's one thing that hasn't changed —you never leave your pole! Nizo laughs and everyone joins him. Old Man (nervously scurrying about): Mr. Policeman, I... what should I do? Umada: Become the bouncer at this club, why don't you. Old Man: Ah! The police are making a fool of me! Will the world never cease making a fool of me? The lost Guardman, where will he find the will to live? Well, Smily Aota in the batter's box, I'm turning the mike back to you. (He exits meekly.) Nizo: Well now, the Cabaret Pu-shee's doors are open, and the guests are all assembled —righto, Flint? Umada: Hey, lay off the mimicry, Nizo. Nizo: Hear that, Flint? He wants me to lay off the mimicry. Che (making Flint the parrot's voice): A bottle of rum. A bottle of rum. Otani: Quit it Che-che-che. Nizo: You that worried about him, you pirate police? Umada and Otani: Are you kidding? Girl (suddenly): What's more important is what you're going to do about this bruise on my arm, the one I got from you blockheads when you captured me. Otani: I'm sorry, young lady. 173

Page  174 Umada: Who's this kid anyway? Nizo: Let it pass, Orchid Flower. They're not much, but they're still customers. I'll introduce you. This young lady's the only survivor of that little incident... Umada: You mean somebody survived? Otani: There was one, wasn't there —the fourteenth Korean. Nizo: She's that Korean. Umada: How long's it been since then, though? Otani: Forty years —you trying to tell us this kid is?... Umada and Otani (laughing, they throw back their heads and stare at Girl): Hmm... not bad. Otani: How about this young one over here? Nizo: That's Asahi Life Insurance. Umada and Otani: Asahi Life!? Umada: Now listen, what's Asahi Life doing in with a bunch of pirates? Nizo: Data processing, me hardies! Che (mimicking Flint): Caring nothing for it, he had his life insured. Caring nothing for it, he had his life insured. Girl: That's an imitation of the parrot Flint. (singing): O Flint of Fortress Binbow His tail was cold or was it hot? Did he stand or did he not? Take a word from me. O screams to rend the ocean waves, Across the sea, the vast Black Sea, 174

Page  175 All: What was it like, what did you see? Flint of Fortress Binbow. Girl: O scenes so terrible, hard to believe, Over the lull, black motionless lull, All: What did you hear, what could you cull, Flint laid low with fear? Suddenly, the sound of a peg-legged man walking becomes audible. Everyone freezes. Girl: What's wrong with you all? Nizo: Sh! Umada: It's him. That's his crutch. Otani: They say he joined the Patriotic Manchurian Development Corps, after twelve years at hard labor in the mines, and died there.8 All: Who the hell are you talking about? Nizo: John Silver —John Si ver of Pu-shee. A song can be heard in the distance. Seventy-four men on the dead man's chest — Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest! Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Che: That's his song. Umada: What the hell does he have to come back for in this day and age? Nizo: It ain't us Silver's coming to meet. 8Patriotic Manchurian Development Corps was organized after the Manchurian Incident for the purpose of encouraging Japanese emigration to Manchuria. By 1941, over 100,000 Japanese colonists had settled in 89 places, and by 1944 there was a record number of 220,000 Japanese colonists in rural centers in Manchuria. Such colonists were repatriated at the end of the war. 175

Page  176 All: Then who? Nizo: Orchid Flower, you were his woman, weren't you. Girl: When do you mean? Nizo: During the twenties, Orchid Flower, when you were sti I I very young. Girl: Wait a minute, I've grown so old, I've lost track of time. The sound of the crutch stops. The door to the ladies' room opens with a bang. And one can see straight through to the sea at broad daylight —that sparkling, glittering sea. A black, one-legged shadow, only half exposed, slowly seems to enter. Girl: (facing the shadow): Oh, it's you. Blackout II 111 Red Lilacs of Pu-shee The curtain opens onto what might as well be a harbor in Manchuria. There is the sound of a ship's bell. In the background, a darkened bar, its patrons motionless as shadow puppets. Downstage, a wharf illuminated by a dim electric light. The sound of a fog horn. 176

Page  177 Embracing each other, a demobilized soldier, shouldering his pack, and a Korean woman (none other than Girl) appear together. Demobilized Soldier 1 (shaking Girl): Look, Lil, the harbor lights! Lil: Yes, dearest, and that's the sound of the fog horn. Soldier: We've made it, Lil. You've been swell. Lil: You've been swell, too —now you'll be able to return to Japan. Soldier: That's right. When we get back to Japan, we'll open a public bath. Lil: But what of your wife back home? I'll only be a burden to you. Soon you'll grow to hate me, I know it. Soldier: I'll split up with my wife, you wait and see. Just trust me. Lil: I am a foreigner. If you take me with you to your country, you will only be treated with contempt.9 Soldier: What are you talking about! Times like these can't go on forever. Lil: If only that were true, if only that were... (She breaks down in a fit of coughing.) Soldier: Lil! What's wrong? Lil: It's all right. Dearest, do you think I'm going to die? Soldier: Don't talk nonsense, silly! Lil: Dearest, please go ahead without me. 91n the original text of this play, the word here translated as "foreigner" is sankokujin. The word literally means "foreigner" but is used exclusively with reference to Chinese and Koreans. It should also be noted that Koreans living in Japan are, even today, subject to severe discrimination and 177

Page  178 Soldier: Stop it now. After all we've been through. Come, Lil, let's get on board the ship. A one-legged soldier on crutches appears. He resembles Umada. Man: The ship's full. Soldier: But the Ogura unit, A company, second division hasn't embarked yet! Man: The Ogura unit left this morning. Soldier: That can't be! Hey, who are you anyway? Man: I'm from Silver's platoon. Soldier: Okay, then let us in with you. Man: I wonder if you'd really blend in well enough. Soldier: Please! Man: All right, let's see what I can do... You carrying anything? Soldier: Huh? Man: Like caramels or something? Soldier: I haven't any caramels. Man: I loves 'em. Lil: Offer him your gold teeth —you haven't much choice. Soldier: I haven't got any gold teeth left —we traded them for your medicine, remember? Lil: So we did... 178

Page  179 Soldier: Please! I'll do anything. Use me as you would a horse or cow, please! Man: Doesn't your foreign wife have any gold teeth? Soldier (shielding the woman): None! Man: She does look as though she might have some. Soldier: No, she hasn't. Lil (coughing suddenly): Dearest, go on alone. I am done for. When you've arrived, wave to me in my grave from the Island of Sado. Soldier: Li I!! Man: Your wife, she's sick, ain't she. Soldier: Lil —hold on —l'll go and get you some water. Lil: The boat will sail. Hurry, get on board first! Soldier: Lil I I'll be right back! (He runs off to get some water.) The one-legged man and Lil are alone. Lil is coughing violently. Man: (cramming his mouth with caramels): Madame, I ask you, what is health? Lil: What?! Man: Despite comprehensive medical care, this is still an age when men die. You are most fortunate, madame. You are still able to fall i ll of your own accord. Lil: What are you saying! Man: Madame, is this your first marriage? Lil: What do you.. 179

Page  180 Man: My wife married in her twilight years. Madame, be ye chaste? Lil: Listen, please take care of my man. Man: Yes, of course. Lil: Will he be able to sail on this ship? Man: If he can't I'll see that he gets to where he's going some other way. Lil: What's that? Man: I mean, I'll see he gets on a nice romantic schooner. Madame, your cheeks are so very warm. (He touches her.) There's no fear of your dying. Just how the the furnace of your body roars against the cold. Madame, I'll have your gold teeth! (He looms up over her.) Lil: Aaaaaa —What are you doing!! Help, somebody!... Man: Try to be a little quieter, madame, future proprietress of a publ ic bath that you are.... (He closes his hands about her neck.) The bell of a departing ship rings violently. The stage darkens. Having killed the woman, he rises and leaves. Soldier 1 appears carrying a cup of water. Soldier: Lil, here's some water. Lil: Soldier: Li I! Hold on! (He recoils finding she is not breathing.) Who did it! Lil! Who did It! Through the sound of the fog horn, a song can be heard in the distance. It grows dark. Across the Manchurian plains, The Asian continent; From the east Where the Yellow Sea begins, From its wave-washed shores, We'll build a bridge 180

Page  181 A thousand miles north To carry the culture of Asian Prosperity. The Southern Manchurian Railroad moves forward. And with it the second defense battalion, My platoon. The lights come up. Embracing each other, Demobilized Soldier 2 and Peanuts enter. This Korean woman also bears some resemblance to the Girl Orchid Flower. Demobilized Soldier 2 (shaking the woman): Look, Peanuts, the harbor lights! Peanuts: Yes, dearest, and that's the sound of the fog horn. Soldier: We've made it, Peanuts. You've been swell. Peanuts: You've been swell, too —now you'll be able to return to Japan. Soldier: That's right. When we get back to Japan, we'll open a Iluggage store. Peanuts: But what of your wife back home? I'll only be a burden to you. Soon you'll grow to hate me, I know it. Soldier: I'll split up with my wife, you wait and see. Just trust me. Peanuts: I am a foreigner. If you take me with you to your country, you will only be treated with contempt. Soldier: What are you talking about! Times like these can't go on forever. Peanuts: If only that were true, if only that were... (She breakss down in a fit of coughing.) Soldier: Peanuts! What's wrong? Peanuts: It's all right. Dearest, do you think I'm going to die? Soldier: Don't talk nonsense, silly! Peanuts: Dearest, please go ahead without me. 181

Page  182 Soldier: Stop it now. After all we've been through. Come, Peanuts, let's get on board the ship. A one-legged soldier appears. It is Otani in disguise. Man: The ship's full. Soldier: But the Taguchi unit, A company, second division hasn't embarked yet! Man: The Taguchi unit left this morning. Soldier: That can't be! Hey, who are you anyway? Man: I'm from Silver's platoon. Soldier: Okay, then let us in with you. Man: I wonder if you'd really blend in well enough. Soldier: Please! Man: All right, let's see what I can do.. you carrying anything? Soldier: Huh? Man: Like caramels or something? Soldier: I haven't any caramels. Man: I loves 'em. Peanuts: Offer him your gold teeth —you haven't much choice. Soldier: I haven't got any gold teeth —we traded them for your medicine, remember? Peanuts: So we did... 182

Page  183 Soldie' Please! I'll do anything. Use me as you would a horse or cow, please! Man: Doesn't your foreign wife have any gold teeth? Soldier (shielding the woman): None! Man: She does look as though she might have some. Soldier: No, she hasn't. Peanuts (coughing suddenly): Dearest, go on alone. I am done for. When you've arrived, wave to me in my grave from the Island of Sado. Soldier: Peanuts!! Man: Your wife, she's sick, ain't she. Soldier: Peanuts —hold on —I'll go and get you some water. Peanuts: The boat will sail. Hurry, get on board first! Soldier: Peanuts! I'll be right back! (He runs off to get some water.) The one-legged man and Peanuts are alone. Peanuts is coughing violently. Man: Madame, I ask you, what is health? Peanuts: What?! Man: Despite comprehensive medical care, this is still an age when men die. You are most fortunate, madame. You are still able to fall ill of your own accord. Peanuts: What are you saying! Man: Madame, is this your first marriage? Peanuts: What do you.... 183

Page  184 Man: My wife married in her twilight years. Madame, be ye chaste? Peanuts: Listen, please take care of my man. Man: Yes, of course. Peanuts: Will he be able to sail on this ship? Man: If he can't, I'll see that he gets to where he's going some other way. Peanuts: What's that? Man: I mean, I'll see he gets on a nice romantic schooner. Madame, your cheeks are so very warm. (He touches her.) There's no fear of your dying. Just see how the furnace of your body roars against the cold. Madame, I' I ll have your gold teeth! (He looms up over her.) Peanuts: Aaaaaa —What are you doing! Help, somebody!... Man: Try to be a little quieter, madame, future proprietress of a luggage store that you are. Let's tan a little hide together! (He closes his hands about her neck.) The bell of a departing ship rings violently. The stage darkens. Having killed the woman, he rises and leaves. Soldier 2 appears carrying a cup of water. Soldier: Peanuts, here's some water. Peanuts: Soldier: Peanuts! Hold on! (He recoils finding she is not breathing.) Who did it! Peanuts! Who did it! Through the sound of the fog horn, singing can be heard in the distance. It grows dark. A Manchurian song resounds. The bar in the background all at once springs to life —threadbare demobilized soldiers are singing a song of the Southern Manchurian Railroad. Beyond the ladies' room can be seen the nighttime Chinese sea. The Bartender is "Chinese" Che. A peg-legged man appears at the entrance to the tavern. It is Umada. Sitting at a table to the left, he yells his order. 184

Page  185 Umada: Sake! Bartender, bring me sake! Bartender: Forget it! Your bill is already as long as my arm. Umada: I'll pay you —just bring me bottles, one after another! Bartender: That's what you say, but what you pay with, huh? Umada: Look! (He takes a fistful of gold teeth from his pocket and shows him.) Bartender: You a dentist? Umada: At home I am. I'm head of the Silver Clinic. Bartender: You a big shot? Umada: Sake! I said sake! And I'll have the regular caramels to go with it. Bartender: You a big shot? Umada: What? Bartender: You a big shot? Umada: I ride roughshod over Pu-shee, I do. Bartender: Maybe you make as much water in bed as there is in all Pu-shee? Umada: Swine, hold your tongue! A bar hostess approaches, her eyes fixed on the gold teeth. Hostess: Baby, let me sing you a song. A girl, an only child, Her little sister with her, Burned up and died In a waterless river. 185

Page  186 A blindman found them; A cripple brought them up. The deaf-mute reported that A cripple brought them up. A one-legged man played by Otani appears at the door and sits at Umada's table. Without a word, he pulls a handful of gold teeth from his pocket and puts them together with Umada's. The Bartender watches this avariciously. And looking at the proceedings out of the corner of her eye, the Hostess continues singing her song. A girl, an only child, Her little sister with her... Yet another one-legged man played by Nizo appears at the entrance. He joins Umadaand Utani at their table. He also takes gold teeth from his pocket and makes a mound of them on the table. Bartender (his eyes wide with amazement): Three dentists. They're putting gold teeth on the table. Nizo: Thirteen men on the dead man's chest — Yo-ho-ho, and thirty gold teeth! Umada, Otani, and Nizo: Yo-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho! Hostess: Aren't you gonna give me one? Umada: You want to get that paw bit by a gold tooth, whore? Nizo (to the Hostess): Baby, now we can go home. Hostess: Eh? Nizo: When we get home, what kind of business you want to go into? (He draws her to him.) Baby, I'll tell you what —we'll open a little restaurant. Hostess: Hey, what are you doing! Nizo: We'll open a little restaurant, and you'll be the main course — Marinated Continental Clap. Bartender (approaching, he separates Nizo and the Hostess): Don't be filling her mind with your filth, mister. 186

Page  187 Nizo: She that important to you? Bartender: She's the only one there is. Women these days is hard to find. Nizo: They're all getting murdered. Umada: A treacherous port this is. (To the Bartender) Hey, that hand, open it! Bartender: What's wrong? Umada: Acting like you're going to help the woman! What you got in your hand? Bartender: Nothing in my hand. Umada: Come off it! You got gold teeth! Bartender: I don't have any gold teeth. Otani: You ain't fooling anybody! (He forces the Bartender's fist open.) Bartender (looking at the gold teeth in his hand): Now when could my teeth have fallen out? Do you know? You don't know? Knowing is the beginning of knowledge. Thus hastily do I flee! (He tries to escape.) Nizo: You bastard! (He takes after him.) Bartender: Ah! I'm going to... I'm going to... fall! (He falls over, but as soon as he pulls himself to his feet again he postures in a karate stance.) Taaa-ooooo! Ke-ke-ke-ke! Unperturbed, the other customers are helping themselves to drinks. Umada, Otani, and Nizo also ignore him and look after the gold teeth. The Bartender stands alone at the ready. At the door, a flower girl (Orchid Flower) appears. She glances about the room and, sighting the men at the table to the left, makes straight for them. Girl: Buy a flower. Please, sir. 187

Page  188 Nizo: What kind of flowers might they be? Girl: Orchid flowers. Nizo: I'1 take one off your hands, my dear. Bartender: Watch out for your molars! Girl gives Nizo one flower. He gives her a few farthings in return, and together the men return to assessing their gold teeth. Girl remains standing where she is. Nizo: It's all right, you can be on your way now. Girl: Um, it's er... about the money. Nizo: I gave it to you already, remember? Girl: Yes, but it wasn't enough. Nizo: Not enough? Girl: Not at all enough. Nizo: Well, how much do you want, my dear? Girl: Those gold teeth, all of them. The three men look up staring intently at Girl. Nizo: Not al I of them? Girl: It's me, sir. Nizo, Umada, and Otani: Mm? Girl: Here you are, al I three of you. Have you forgotten my face? At the harbor, I'm the fourteenth woman you raped. 188

Page  189 Nizo: Miss, I don't think we know what you're talking about, but... didn't you just say you were the fourteenth one attacked? According to a rumor circulating around here, what you mean is the thirteenth, isn't it? Girl: No, I was the fourteenth to be raped. My name is Orchid Flower. The charm my mother gave me that I wore against my breast restored breath to my body. Nizo: Young lady of a faraway land, I fear you were dreaming. It was so cold outside, you got a little frostbite. The fact that you thought you'd been strangled... it was nothing but the Manchurian Freeze blowing down from the north. Girl: But he had a crutch and was filled with high-sounding words just like you. The only difference was this parrot on his shoulder saying "Gimme a flower. Gimme a flower." What happened to the parrot? You didn't get hungry and eat him with your sake, did you? Now that I look at you, you do bear more of a resemblance to the parrot than him. Nizo: You'd better watch your tongue, my pretty. Girl: A lot of nerve you've got, you bastards. Those gold teeth are ours — mine and my sisters'. You're not taking them home or anyplace! Nizo: Wait a minute, love, you seem to be a bit mixed up. These gold teeth are the assets of our dental clinic. Did you personally have any gold teeth stolen? Girl: Now what's a girl like me going to be doing with a mouthful of gold teeth? All I've got is cavities. Nizo: Then how come you figure these belonged to the women who got attacked? Girl: I just know, that's all. Nizo: Why? Girl: One-legged Japanese all call themselves Silver. You guys fit the bill. Nizo: Who's one-legged? 189

Page  190 Girl: Don't try and wangle your way out of it. Nizo: Who's one-legged? (He stands up and walks with his crutch over his shoulder.) Umada and Otani also rise and walk clapping their hands. Nizo: We're not one-legged. The three men march around Girl singing. Thirteen men on the dead man's chest — Yo-ho-ho, and thirty gold teeth! Yo-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho! Girl: It can't be! Bartender: Then why do you carry crutches? Nizo: You can't make much of a living as a dentist, so we've decided to set bones on the side. Hostess (laughing loudly, sings): A blindman found them; A cripple brought them up. The deaf-mute reported theat A cripple brought them up. Nizo: You couldn't have been the fourteenth one attacked. Maybe you heard it from the deaf-mute. Girl: No, I didn't. He put his hands around my neck and said, "It's cold,. my dear, isn't it." Nizo: And then? Girl: He loomed up to throttle me with all his might. He bathed me in his hot breath. Maybe if I'd been loooking into his eyes.. ah, perhaps he wasn't trying to strangle me... his breath was so warm...that man. Maybe he didn't try to strangle me... Nizo: See, it was only a dream...you were dreaming. There were only thirteen women attacked. Girl: And you're the ones who did them in! (So saying, she grabs the gold teeth on the table and darts away.) f ii 9

Page  191 Umada: The little bitch! Otani: I thought she'd try something like this. Bartender: Ah! She beat me to it! (Tsk-ing in disgust) Call the MPs! MP! Nizo: Not the MPs! Bartender: Call the MPs! Girl makes for the door but collides with an MP who has just entered. Girl: Ah! (She looks up at the MP.) MP slips around Girl and comes slowly, and what do you know! Heavily he moves to the center are upon him. to the bar. He walks he's only got one leg! of the bar. All eyes Girl (to the One-legged MP): You always show up at the end, don't you. BLACKOUT The Bartender Che-che-che Okera moves to stage center. 112 The Manchuri an Freeze of love Bartender (sings): Take a piss from the Great Wall of China And a rainbow domes the Gobi. 191

Page  192 (without an accent) April 23, 1923. A boat captained by the Russian Mikhailovitch Chimeizo was attacked by pirates off of Nicolayevsk. Four Chinese, eight Russians, and a Korean fell into the hell swirl of the Northern Sea but only after their blood had begun to rust the swords and pistols of their assailants. They were carrying 180 kegs of salted salmon, fifteen barrels of whale oil, 120 drums of petrol, three engines, and 3000 salted salmon as yet unpacked. In 1924, the ringleader of the gang, Silver by name, was captured with his henchmen Umada and Otani at their hideout in Chiba prefecture. Silver was sentenced to 12 years in prison, Otani seven years, and Umada five. But Silver was released after three years, while Otani and Umada served only one. Then they crossed over into Manchuria. If memory serves, it was called the S.S. Brilliant Incident. (His accent returning) Now, night after night, the women of my country were raped by a one-legged soldier in the harbors of Manchuria. They called it the Silver Rush. But everyone confused it with the gold rush, and a good number of women lost their lives and more. A lot of one-legged men have come to my place and there's yet to be a good one in the lot. But I don't know Silver. And nobody knows Silver neither. There are plenty who pass for Silver, but no one's ever seen Silver himself. Nor Umada nor Otani neither, so they say. The rumors that creep from town to town have it that Silver was hit by a truck when he was with the Patriotic Manchurian Development Corps. They say he died there. Everyone thought so. Japanese pirates are all a bunch of dirty rats. After they murder you they take your gold teeth, they do. But we all thought, "Silver doesn't take gold teeth — Silver steals virgins' hearts." If you ask me, I think he sometimes misjudges and steals away old women's navels. Hmm... I wonder who I'm talking to? Ah, Orchid Flower's come in. Very well, all you eyeballs fixed upon me, we shall meet again. It is broad daylight in the tavern. The tables and so forth are just as they were. Girl (to the Bartender): Hide me, will you, mister. Bartender: My pale Orchid Flower, what seems to be the trouble? Girl: They're out to get me. They say they're going to maim me! Bartender: Maim you? What do you mean, Orchid Flower? Girl: They say they'll fix me so I won't be able to face the sun. Bartender: A young virgin like you? Girl: The three of them, they're lying for me with razors and the like!

Page  193 Bartender: To shave you? Girl: If that were all, I'd only be ashamed to go to the bath. No, they're out to kill me! Bartender: If I hide you, you give me something, maybe? Girl: The gold teeth I stole the other day, I'll give them all to you. Bartender: You'll give me those, will you? But if you hide here, Orchid Flower, they'll find you in no time. Girl: I know. That's why two or three days will be enough. Bartender: You have someplace to go after that? Girl: I'm thinking of roaming down to the Manchurian South to look for that man. Bartender: "That man"? Girl: The one-legged MP. Bartender: Orchid Flower, when will you realize? The only good one-legged man is a dead one-legged man. If it's love your after you'd best look for a good three-legged one. Girl: To a Manchurian orphan girl like me, there's no such thing as bad love. Just like my dead mother, I'll spend my life buffeted by the waves of the world, the single orchid flower of the one I love. Bartender: It's that sense of abandon, that's what's going to do you in. I won't waste my breath on you. You're fated to be used and forgotten. Girl: I don't care if I'm forgotten. I don't care if I'm murdered. If just once more I could hear him say, "It's cold, my dear, isn't it," he could kill me and leave the gold teeth. Bartender: Then you're ready to die for love, aren't you. 193

Page  194 Girl: When his parrot said, "Gimme a gold tooth. Gimme a gold tooth"? That's not really what he was saying at all. He was a saying, "A flower... a flower." On that frozen wharf, what did he need with a flower? Mister, his heart had been ravaged by the parched Manchurian Freeze. I'm the one who wronged him. When his hands circled my neck, I took if for granted that he wanted to kill me. But perhaps he was only staring at my mother's charm that hung against my breast. "It's cold, my dear, isn't it." His voice, that halting, faltering voice. I want to hear it once more. Bartender: As you like. I only wish I knew why virgins always talk like this and s-titl live longer than everybody else. Girl: Maybe I'll even be able to go back to Japan with him. Bartender: His betrothed is waiting for him over there. Girl: I wouldn't mind becoming his mistress. Bartender: Become what you like, but before you do, hand over the gold teeth. Girl: At this rate, how much have you collected? Bartender: I've still got a ways to go. When I get a little more, the family mouth gets paved with gold. (He exits.) Girl (Alone, she sits down on the table and dangles her legs. Remembering Silver's song, she tries singing it to herself ): Thirteen men on the dead man's chest... and then... and then.. how jid it go?... Thirteen men on the dead man's chest... and then... All of a sudden the lavatory door flies open and with the bright noonday sea at his back, a solitary onelegged man appears. On his shoulder sits a parrot. MP (shouting in a low voice): A bottle of rum, bartender, a bottle of rum! Girl jumps to her feet, trying to size up the newcomer. MP (Lighted from behind, his figure supported by a crutch is a black silhouette ): A bottle of rum, bartender! Girl: He's gone into the backroom.

Page  195 MP: Sorry, my dear, won't you bring me a bottle of rum in his place? Parrot: A flower... a flower. MP: Shut up, Flint. Girl, running and taking a bottle of rum, fearfully passes it to him. MP takes a long draught. Parrot: "Shut up, Flint! Shut up, Flint!" is it?! Girl: Mr. MP, do you remember me? Parrot: Watch your step, Silver. MP: Who were you now? Girl: That night, you were so close, you brought your face so very close. I'm Orchid Flower. Parrot: A flower... a flower. MP: Orchid Flower? Girl: Hurry up and remember! Or don't you want to? Why are men all like this? MP: I remember now. Girl: You've known all along, haven't you —ever since you walked in the door. MP: No, you see, I'm blind. Girl: What!? MP: Yes, it's been some time since then. I was punished and lost my sight. Girl: But... that time... you approached me... that night. 195

Page  196 MP: That cold night. You said your name was Orchid Flower. Flint here on my shoulder, he led me to you, that's all. I couldn't see your face, Orchid Flower. Girl: You were looking at the charm around my neck.... MP: Were you wearing a charm? Girl: Yes. MP: I'm sure it's lovely. Girl: Then what were you looking at with those eyes? MP: What eyes? Girl: I don't know how to put it... somehow, like you'd been possessed or something.. MP: My eyes burn. Inside, they're filled with blood. I'm blind — to beauty and everything else. Parrot: A flower... a flower. MP: You find a flower, Flint? Parrot: A flower. MP: Ah, you mean a Manchurian beauty fair as a flower. Girl: I... I thought I'd follow you. MP (pulling at his bottle): __________ Girl: You heard what I said just now, didn't you? I said I thought Itd follow you. MP: I'm not going anyplace. 196

Page  197 Girl: You mean you've had your fill of traveling? MP: I'd like to show you what it looks like inside my eyes. Girl: I can see i+ all now! MP: It's not something you see. Where I'm bound it smells of blood, and it's spinning round and round. Girl: And my dirty blood's not good enough for you, is that it? MP: Are the seas high, Flint? Parrot: Gwaa... gwaa.... Girl: See, he's telling you to listen to me. MP: All right then, my dear, answer my question. Are the seas high? Girl: I wonder. Feel for yourself. MP: __________ Girl: Tel Ime, what were you trying to do that night? You and I, we came this close to each other. You put your hands around my neck as you said, "It's cold, my dear, isn't it." You are blind, you say, but what about that hollow voice, those bloodshot eyes? MP: I thought I'd kill you. Girl: You couldn't have done it. MP: Yes. Like this. (He caresses her neck.) Your sweet smell, your soft breath. I was trying to put an end to it once and for all. Girl: What have I done to you? MP: _ _. _ _ _ _ _ 197

Page  198 Girl: Have I done something to make you kill me! I don't even know you. That was our first brief night together! What grudge do you bear me, MP? One-legged MP? MP: I've got not grudges and no regrets. Girl: Then why, why these hands? MP: Are you afraid of my hands, my dear? Girl: You always want your hands to do your talking for you. MP: These are iron hands. Girl: They're plastic hands, Mr. MP... aaa!... you're choking me! MP. Orchid Flower, say "I've come home!" Girl: Do I say that to you or to your hands? MP: Say "I've come home!" Girl: I don't know how far your hands will go, and I'm supposed to say "I've come home!"?... MP: You'l I say "I've come home!" Flint, are the seas high? Parrot: Girl: It... hurts. (She falls over with a thud.) MP (forces her up against the bathroom wall, still throttling her ): Starboard rudder, Flint! Starboard rudder!! Where the hell does she think this is?! An iron starboard rudder! This is the bloodslicked Northern Sea! Parrot: Gwaa! Koharu! Koharu! MP clutches at the void. The three men, carrying knives, have stabbed him in the back. He lurches forward and falls. The three men move forward on crutches. It is the three false Silvers: Umada, Otani, and Nizo.

Page  199 Ni zo (kicking Silver): Hundreds of miles from home, Umada: A cheap tavern in the Manchurian Freeze Otani: Amidst the cultural upheaval of Asian Development. Nizo: Immortal men are ghosts, Umada: And we are Otani: Pu-shee' s Nizo, Umada, and Otani: Antidental Gold Tooth Union! The Bartender Che-che-che Okera appears upstage left and coldly peruses the scene. Bartender: Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh! BLACKOUT Te Ghost hip of Flowers When the lights come up, it is the same specially adapted public toilet as in the first act. As if flowing over from Act II, Che-che-che Okera's laughing voice reverberates through the room. The door to the right is open, and with the sea in the background Girl and the Guardman lie facing each other on the ground. A knife stands erect in the Guardman's side. Nizo, Otani, and 199

Page  200 Umada stand down stage in the same mien as the three men before them and confront us. The sound of water running in the toilets. The sound of one-legged men walking can no longer be heard. Plaintive flamenco-style music plays. Che: Heh-heh-heh-heh! Nizo: Everything's the same as it was that day. Whenever I hear the changeless roar of the sea, brothers, I always think to myself: It's stupid to die. It's stupid to get killed. I can't say it makes much sense to live ashamed, but if this is shame, then the color of the sea and the sun too be shame itself. Umada: But brother, was that really Silver? Otani: What's that? Umada: Was that MP really Silver? Nizo: Was there ever anyone named Si Iver? Umada: Eh? Nizo: Anyone we get our hands on could be called Silver. Anybody can be Silver —it just depends on how he makes his entrance. The Guardman... or you... Umada (to Otani): Or you... Otani (to Nizo): Or you too. Nizo: The guy the world singles out...no, the ones we single out —they're always Silver. Hey, twirp, where do you think you're going? Taguchi (about to make his escape through the door): I was just about to make my escape through the door. Nizo: And where might you be going? Taguchi: To the bath. The bath's going to close soon, so. Nizo: 200

Page  201 I told you I'd take care of the bath for you, didn't I? Umada and Otani: I'lI take care of it for you too, Asahi Life. Taguchi: Yes, but I'm supposed to meet my wife in front of the bath... Nizo: Listen, in the first act you said you lived alone in a boarding house. Taguchi: Sometimes I do. Nizo: You're beyond me. It's all right, come on over here and rub my back. Umada: And mine. Otani: And mine too. Nizo: When the girl wakes up, we've got to get on board ship. Che! Hurry up and get rid of that Guardman. Che: Goddamit! How come you guys are always picking on cripples like me? Nizo: Quit talking Chinese! Che: What did you say? Nizo: I told you to lay off the crazy lingo! Che: I'm not speaking Chinese. It's not Japanese and it's not Chinese — it's a language without a country. In the first place, there's no such country as China at the moment anyway. Nizo: Enough! Just get rid of the Guardman and be quick about it. Che: You keep saying to get rid of him... but where? Nizo: In the river. Che: The river? There's no river around here. 201

Page  202 Nizo, Otani, and Umada sit at the table to the left. Taguchi massages their backs in turn. In the lavatory, the Girl sleeps on alone. Nizo takes a bottle of rum from the shelf and fills three glasses to the brim. The Man from Asahi Life rubs their backs in silence. Nizo: Cheerio! Umada and Otani: Cheerio! Bringing their glasses together in a toast, the three men shout, "Yo-ho-ho!" down the liquid, and sing: The Pirates' Song Many a long, hard road We've traveled since those days, Forty years at the pirate's trade. Red blood spray on the snow white mast. Victims thirteen each passing year And all of thirty gold teeth. In the sky, the red setting sun, And cans of mackerel in the sea. Like traveling rubbers we float downstream. If forty years have come and gone, Gold teeth have grown by forty fold How very long we've waited for Our blooming ship of flowers. Now to introduce ourselves, We are the pirates of love, The antidental gold tooth union, Pains in the ass. Nizo: Well now, brothers, shall we have you produce the fruits, as it were, of forty years of sweat and blood? To start, it is my great pleasure to be able to announce the results of the harvest reaped by the former bartender of Pu-shee, now the cripple of Senju, which I have in my custody. (He empties the contents of the bag on the table. the gold teeth pile noisily into a mound.) Keep your hands to yourselves. Listen, keep your hands... keep your fucking hands to yourself! Hands are the source of all evil.... Watch it, you sticky fingered ape! Otani: Ouch! Umada: Take it easy, brother. Nizo: You see, my passionate, avaricious brothers, Che is tough. Thirteen 202

Page  203 gold teeth a year —forty years without missing a day, and here you have 520 gold teeth. First of all we'll divide these evenly. Asahi Life, what's 520 divided by four? Taguchi: 130. Nizo: No mistake then. Each of us takes 130 apiece to begin with. I'll just divide this mound roughly into four piles. (He divides the mound of gold teeth unevenly.) Nizo: The neon river. Che: Now how am I going to get rid of him in the neon river?... (So saying, he gets up out of his box, puts the Guardman over his shoulder and exits.) Umada: Hey, there's only two in Che's pile! Nizo: The rest must have fallen under the table, I'm sure. Otani looks under the table but finds nothing. Umada: Nizo, you bilge-brain, you're dividing them up without counting. Otani: He is? Nizo: I counted them. Umada: Then how come there's so many in your pile? Nizo: Some large ones must have accidently clustered together. There are bound to be big ones and small ones, after all. Umada: Then why don't we divide them by weight instead of number. Otani: You bastard, you want them all for yourself! Nizo: Settle down,brothers! You're losing calories. Otani: This is not a problem of nutrition! Umada: 203

Page  204 It's a problem of numbers! Nizo: All right, all right. Here's your share (to Otani), and here's yours. (He gives them each equal amounts.) Now we'll have no more petty bickering over numbers. I'm beat. Umada: We've got no complaints, but what about Che? What'll he say? Otani: Two out of 130, not much of a return on his investment. Nizo: Never mind about Che. We've disposed of the first portion of of our take... now then, my brothers, shall we have you take your turns? Umada: Shall we? Otani (looking at Umada): It's all right with me. Nizo: Come on, let's have your pirates' proofs of piracy. Umada, taking up his briefcase, glances at Otani. Nizo: That's a mighty fancy satchel you've got them in, ain't it. Otani (taking up his briefcase, he glances at Umada): You go first. Umada: It's all right by me, but I've got to take a piss. (He gets up and loiters before the urinal.) Nizo (to Otani): Come on, let's see what you've got. Otani: Um, it seems the lock's broken. Nizo: What are you idiots going on about at a time like this? You haven't opened savings accounts, now have you? Let me see that bag! (He snatches it away.) Otani: If you're going to open my bag, then you ought to open Umada's too. Nizo: Fair enough. (And he grabs Umada's case as well.) Umada (returning): 204

Page  205 Keep your hands off my stuff! Nizo: What!? Umada: Nizo, before you open that bag, I'd like you to keep in mind our forty years of hardship and suffering. Nizo: Not even the sharks will have a pirate's grumbling. Nizo opens the two bags Otani avert their eyes. cases. one after the other. Umada and Nizo takes something from their Nizo: What're these? Otani and Umada: Evi dence. Nizo: Of what? Umada: Petty larceny. Otani: Traffic violations. Nizo: You mean to tell me all you've got to evidence of petty larceny and traffic Umada: Nizo, try to understand —we've been a that's all. show for yourselves is violations? couple of two-bit policemen, Otani: The postwar wind was cruel. Nizo: And this is all you've got for treasure? Umada and Otani:... yes. Nizo (throwing the slips of paper into the air): Don't make me laugh, my pirates of democracy! This is all you brought, but you sure helped yourself to them gold teeth! Umada: You'd best get off your high horse, Nizo. Scraps of paper, evidence, you say, but we can still arrest you and write you out a slip of paper reading "vagrancy." We may not have any treasure, but we still have the talons of power. 205

Page  206 Nizo: You saying you're going to pull me in? Otani: That's entirely up to you. Nizo: The power you use to intimidate people's the same power that's got its teeth on your balls, you goddam pirates... Taguchi (who has been massaging shoulders): Excuse me, but please don't fight. Nizo: Shut up, Asahi Life! Taguchi flees to a corner. Umada: Nizo, you've been swaggering about and telling us there's something wrong with our booty, but the fact of the matter is that you still haven't shown us yours. Otani: You got some terrific booty that'll really knock us into our places, ain't you. An anti-establishment hippie-type like you must really have his hands into something to get us rich quick. Okay, let's have a look at it then, shall we? Nizo: This time it's me, is it? Umada: It's hats-off if your treasure's any good. Nizo: I'm the pirate of love. Umada: So what! Nizo: I've been standing at major intersections at lunchtime.. Otani: That's like you, a midday highwayman, huh? Umada: And your prey? Nizo: Chil dren. Umada and Otani: Kids! From around Gakushuin, no doubt. Listen, you're not the kidnapper we've been after, are you? 206

Page  207 Ni zo: If I saw them just once more, I'd like to give them everything back. Umada: You mean the treasure? Otani: Before that, let's have a look at it, Nizo. Suddenly Otani and Umada pounce upon Nizo and thrust their hands into the pockets of his green outfit. Otani bursts out laughing as he displays the children's shoes, rulers, lunchboxes, and so forth. You see this treasure?! Umada, this here's treasure you don't lay your eyes on everyday. Nizo: I've been thinking that if I could only see those children once more I'd like to return that stuff. Umada bursts out laughing. Otani (returning the shoes and the like): Tee-hee-hee-hee!... A pirate who looks after elementary school children! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! All of a sudden, a knife rips through Otani 's suit. Gaaaaa!!! You done it! You son-of-a... Otani clutches at the air and falls. Nizo (removing his knife): The cock-sucker laughed at my treasure —the blood and sweat of my piracy of love. Umada: Nizo, this is how we've ended up. Thirteen victims and thirty gold teeth a year, that's the way it was when the rhythm of the times beat with more violence. It's been 25 years. Pirates of democracy like us, who sail tranquil seas: it ain't us that's changed —it's the booty. Nizo, a piece of evidence or a pair of children's shoes were grand treasure for us. But we've lost our common treasures see. We only move farther and farther apart, we drifting pirates of the present. Let's take advantage of this night in the Cabaret Pu-shee, split the remaining gold teeth between us, and go our separate ways. Nizo: I'm not falling for any of your sweet talk, Umada. Your theory of the limits of piracy makes sense enough, but you've been too long on the force, and you've lost sight of the sea. I leave tonight. The ship'll be here any minute —I'll get on board and be off to Manchuria again. Umada: You can't see how the wind blows in the world anymore, can you 207

Page  208 Nizo? There is no Manchuria anymore, and no boat's on its way. Nizo: It looks like this time I'm the one's gonna get screwed by this world of yours, but let me tell you one thing, Umada. Just as anyone can become Silver if his entrance is right, anybody can become Silver depending on how he leaves the stage. The ship will come, I know it. Umada: The only ship that'll come for you is the ship of death. You've gone senile; and your eyes refuse to see. Nizo: I can see all right, the Northern Sea.. Umada: There is no Northern Sea, no Manchuria. You've even forgotten the Manchurian waterways. Nizo:: That girl will open her eyes any minute. She'll be my guide, that Orchid Flower. Umada: That lost child of time? Dragging herself where she will. All right, but I'll just take these gold teeth to make up the payments on your pension. Nizo: Keep your hands off them teeth or this knife'll find its mark. Umada: You've forgotten my trade, you bastard... Can't you see the pistol in my hand? Nizo: Someday I'd like to try it and see which comes first, Manchuria or my pension. The two men, with the mound of gold teeth between them, continue their silent tug of war. The Man from Asahi Life watches them from his comer. Suddenly, Nizo and Umada lunge over the table and grapple with each other. There is shouting and the report of a pistol. Nizo has been shot through the forehead. The knife is lodged in Umada's chest. Just as the two men fall, the mound of gold teeth collapses with a landslide hiss. Break. The roar of the sea can be heard. The steam whistle of a ship, too, is approaching. The Girl who had been lying on the floor of the public toilet comes back to life and slowly rises. Girl (finding Taguchi huddled in the darkness): Who is it? Who's there? 208

Page  209 Taguchi appears trembling with fear. Were you the MP? Were you the one-legged MP? Taguchi: Where do you think this is? Girl: Pu-shee, isn't it? Taguchi: It's a public toilet. It's a public toilet and there's just been a murder here. Girl: In Pu-shee, murders happen as a matter of course. This is the Manchurian Incident, after all. Taguchi: What was the daily routine like for pirates, I wonder? Girl: Pirates have no routine. Taguchi: Eh? Girl: Their days are filled with love and gore; they hardly have time to stand around and gossip. What are you, anyway, a bell-hop or a dumpling salesman, maybe? Taguchi: I 'm a white col lar worker from Asahi Life. Girl: That must have been a long time ago. But excuse me, I've got to get on the boat with him. Taguchi: With the man who strangled you? Girl: He wasn't serious. He was just remembering something, I'm sure. Goodbye, Mr. Insurance Salesman. I'll be his staff and guide him through unknown waters. I'II steal him away from your country. The sound of waves lapping at the shore is violent. On the sea beyond the toilet, a ghost ship appears. Look! It's our ship of love. Ah! What a wonderful day! Girl, facing the ship, breaks into a run. She is about to exit, but two Detectives stand obstructively between the lavatory and the picture of the ship. They catch Girl. 209

Page  210 Detective 1: You'll come to the station with us. We're holding you as a witness to murder and the attempted disposal of the body. Girl: Eh!? Detective 2 (enters leading the handcuffed Che-che-che Okera): This idiot tried to dispose of a corpse in the middle of Ginza last night. Che: I was throwing him in the neon river, I was. Detective 2: You probably escaped from some nut house. Detective 1 (to Girl): Okay, come along. Girl: I'll miss the boat! His ship is waiting! Detective 1: Ship? What are you talking about? This one's not all there either. (He exits with Girl) Girl (from off-stage): I've got to get aboard that ship! I'm going to get on Silver's ship! Let me go! Let me go, I said! Ilbonsaran! Japanese pig! Ilbonsaran! Taguchi and Detective 2, who leads Che, are left on stage. The Detective has discovered three more bodies and reels back in surprise. Detective 2 (to Taguchi): You saw everything, didn't you. Taguchi: I've seen nothing. Detective 2: Liar! Che (finding the gold teeth): My teeth! My gold teeth! Detective 2: Idiot! (He beats Che.) Taguchi (to Detective 2): I'm a pirate! I'm a pirate! The pirate of Asahi Life! I've come to get you —all of you. I'm the pirate of Asahi Life! Detective 2: Shown your real colors, have you! You're under arrest, too! 210

Page  211 Detective 2, struggling with Taguchi, takes Che and exits. The two Detectives return and carry the fallen Nizo, Otani, and Umada off on a stretcher. Break. The unchanged public toilet. The doors are closed. Nearby, the commotion of a cabaret can be heard. A lone passer-by hurriedly enters to relieve himself and stands before the urinal. Suddenly, the door flies open. With a roar, the sea breaks and at the same time the One-Legged MP looms up like a guardian at the gate. The passer-by chokes with horror. MP: Orchid Flower! Where are you, Orchid Flower!! Parrot: A flower... a flower! MP: Orchid Flower!! And the pirates behind him sing: Thirteen men on the dead man's chest — Yo-ho-ho, and thirty gold teeth! Yo-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho! Drink and the devil had done for the rest — Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Yo-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho! With one man of her crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five. Yo-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho! The pirates' procession passes through the audience. The roar and crash of the sea. The world is on the verge of collapse. 211

Page  212 What more can we say? I L Concerned Theatre Japan Hikari-cho 2-13-25 Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo 185 Japan Please send me Theatre Japan. in my national scription is for and handling. a one-year subscription to Concerned I enclose U.S.$10.00 or the equivalent currency. I understand that my subfour issues, including sea-mail postage Bookdealers and Individuals are also advised that subscriptions to and single issues of Concerned Theatre Japan are available from Wittenborn and Co., 1018 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10021, U.S.A.; or from the Japan Publications Trading Co., Ltd., P.O. Box 5030 Tokyo International, Tokyo, Japan.

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The World as Public Toilet

Yamamoto Kiyokazupp. 214

Page  214 THE WORLD AS PUBLIC TOILET YAMAMOTO KIYOKAZU The magazine Umi came out with a special issue on theatre last March entitled, "Theatre as Environment." Included were an essay on Artaud, an interview with Julian Beck and Judith Malina, an essay on Grotowski by Jan Kott, as well as two plays —Edward Albee's Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Kara Jro5's The Beggar of Love. Of the magazine's 264 pages, the plays occupied 80. Umi calls itself "a general magazine of the arts." In Japan, this sort of general literary magazine —edited with novels and criticism at center and either maintaining or trying to cultivate a stable readership —was aware enough of theatrical issues to devote an entire issue to them. This is a fact. But it is also a fact that to all intents and purposes this was the first time any such attempt to deal with theatre had been made by a major Japanese periodical. This may be enough to illustrate the place of theatre in this country. But the really significant thing about the Umi special was the fact that a work by Kara Jro5 was chosen as representative of contemporary Japanese playwriting. Beginnings Kara's days as a student were spent in college dramatics at Meiji University. After gradua tion he participated in the now defunct theatre troupe Seinen Geijutsu Za [Seigei], but then there is a sudden break in Kara's career. Central to his reminiscences of this period is the experience of working at a striptease in Asakusa, one of Tokyo's oldest entertainment districts. The Kara who debuted in a red tent with Petticoat O-Sen: A Rhapsody of Love and Duty, a play of peculiar power, freshness, cruelty, and violence, was a playwright and director, not to speak of actor, whose early career had hardly bespoken his promise. Actually, however, in October 1966, the year before the appearance of their red tent, Kara and his Situation Theatre created and for three days performed Petticoat O-Sen: A Tale of Forgetfulness out of doors at Toyamagahara in Tokyo. It seems to have been a concert hall before the war, but now its roof and walls have disappeared, and only the plain concrete stage remains. Behind there is a public toilet, and in front there is just a field of tall grass. It is the kind of hidden clearing that's so rare in Tokyo. As soon as we had spread 120 rough straw mats around the stage to make it seem more like an open air theatre, the local 214

Page  215 neighborhood association joined forces with the police and took it upon themselves to cut the mats up, and they did everything they could to get rid of us. We had plenty of chances to lay into the police chief, pul I up stakes, and move on, but the show had to go on for three days, and so, thinking like pimps, we behaved publicly like a pack of idiots, saving our gripes for later. But it was cold and the place wasn't the most centrally located, so in three days only seventy people showed up. Looking back at it now, it seems to me that those people must have been the real cream of theatregoers. 1 Kara and the Situation Theatre tried performing in a variety of different places before they finally settled on their red tent. It is important here to note that nearly all theatre in Japan has been performed in rented halls. In Tokyo alone there are approximately twenty such places some of which are well equipped for professional productions and others of which, used for a variety of other purposes, are not. Kara and his fellows were doubtless hampered by the rules and regulations pursuant to the use of these auditoriums. It was also during this period that the "small theatre movement" began. Young people in theatre began to actively pursue their own goals and came to control their own theatres. These "theatres" took the form of narrow basement rooms, rooms over coffee shops, and the assembly halls of Buddhist temples. Kara's group also got their own theatre, but not a corner of a building with thick, immobile walls. Their theatre was a "building" in its own right, easily moved from place to place, put up or taken down in fifteen hurried minutes. Their theatre occupied the same physical space as any of the others which appeared at the time, but that space was qualitatively entirely different. Its color was red. Folded, it measured a meter long, a meter and a half wide, and thirty centimeters thick. The Situation Theatre began for me when I visited their red tent during the summer of 1967. Beside the main hall of the Hanazono Shrine —a rare spot in Shinjuku, like a gaping hole in the bustle of the city —a tent, lighted from without, shown a deep vermillion. A radio interviewer, tape recorder slung over his shoulder, approached members of the audience as they entered the park. At the time, Kara, the red tent, and the Situation Theatre, were little more than a curiosity, a bit hard to figure out but for that very reason worthy of interest. The dirt floor of the theatre was spread with straw matting, and as you entered you were handed a small cushion filled with foam rubber. If memory serves, admission was 500 yen [$1.40]. The tent rose high over the performance area in front and gradually descended toward the entrance. For the next two and a half years, the red tent was pitched all over the country and displayed its considerable powers of attraction. Kara continued his activities as playwright and critic with remarkable energy, showing not the slightest signs of fatigue. In 1968 his collection of plays Petticoat O-Sen was published and it was followed the next year by another collection, John Silver. Yet, the first time his plays were carried in a magazine was in November 1968 when the theatre magazine Shingeki published his Virgin Mask. Under the direction of Suzuki Tadashi, the Waseda Little Theatre produced Virgin Mask, and this marked the first time one of Kara's plays had been performed by a group other than the Situation Theatre. 215

Page  216 It was also for Virgin Mask that Kara was awarded with the most coveted award in Japanese theatre, the Kishida Prize for Playwriting. Then, with truly impressive speed, Kara wrote his two newest plays Virgin City and The Beggar of Love. At this point the only ones who openly display disaffection with Kara are members of the old guard of Japanese modern theatre who, utterly occupied with their own past, seek only to preserve the withering visage of theatre as they knew it. Kara set out to attack and provoke established theatre. Now he and his troupe have unquestionably established themselves. But where Kara's career might lead him from here is completely a matter of conjecture. Language and Transformation The language of Kara Jur6's plays might well be compared to the pop-art language of cartoons. The Situation Theatre's audience never stops laughing. What they are seeing is funny. It is not the sort of humor that the spectator must first digest before it hits him; it is direct and rapidfire. It is almost violent. Bad puns, popular phrases, unexpected similes, strangely purposeful interruptions, exaggerated use of onomatopoeic words. These are nonchalantly reeled off one after the next. And with this, by these and all conceivable means, language goes through a bewildering transformation. Kara's language, which may seem haphazard at first, reveals tremendous attention paid to the sound and rhythm of words. And moreover the transformation of language leads naturally to the transformation of characters. The nucleus of Kara Juro's plays, in fact, might be said to be transformation itself. In the The Beggar of Love, Aunty Midori becomes the former pirate Nizo and a fake John Silver. In Petticoat O-Sen, just before the curtain falls, a character suddenly be comes O-Sen. It is for this reason that Kara's characters are often viewed as twins. In fact, in the first of the John Silver plays, a pair of hunchback twins appear as if they were two halves of a single female character and banter back and forth in a manner reminiscent of the Theatre of the Absurd. Those who appear on Kara's stage are not at all times single real characters —they always maintain the potential to become either characters diametrically opposite themselves or separate, similar characters. Nizo says that anyone can become John Silver depending on the quality of his entrance or exit. And nearly every male character in The Beggar of Love seems to become Si Iver at one time or another. Privileged Entities in Time With a bang! the door to the ladies' room flies open and there, beyond, is the brightly sunlit sea and John Silver —or his phantom. In contrast to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which Godot never appears, Kara has applied himself to the task of putting the ultimate image of Godot on stage. Whether it be John Silver or Petticoat O-Sen, Kara's heroes always appear at the end of a world ruled over by cripples and imbeciles, the dregs of mankind. His is a technique well worn in the service of the Romantics: "Beauty rises out of ugliness." But what distinguishes him from the Romantics is his sense of time and the theatre. In the essays which preface his first collection of plays, Kara defines the work of the theatre as being the realization of, the creation and/or discovery of "privileged entities." Such privileged entities are created through conflict with (the experience of pain inflicted by) the most physically present, imperatively relevant of the forces acting upon us —time and the city. To Kara, "reality" is time and the city; and it is 216

Page  217 only privileged entities —specifically, the theatre and actors — which can effectively conflict with reality, negating it. If there is such an expression as "dramatic imagination," it may be the dramatic force, active before the process of expression begins, inside each actor, each playwright, that urges toward a negation of reality. When, via the activities of those involved in creation upon the stage, this force begins to take form and grow, it is actualized; it appears as the privileged entityship of the actor or of the stage itself.2 Kara writes in his essay "The Periods of H.I.S.T.O.R.Y." "I still think that there are three periods in the history of the West while there is only a single enormous one in the history of Japan."3 The three periods to which Kara is referring are those which developed out of French classicism: the beginning, the middle, and the end. And to Kara it must look as if the West were now at "the end" trying to recal I "the beginning." In contrast, Japan's historical period is the "middle." It is "the dark." Kara has at his disposal two modes. The modern, Western, tragic mode and the pre-modern, Japanese, metempsychosic mode. Oedipus Rex is a perfect example of the former. Oedipus' career is linear —it has a beginning, a middle, and an end that frees him. Kara, however, operates on the basis of the latter mode in which there is only process, which is cyclical and constantly repeating. He plays these two modes off of each other —leading his viewers to expect something to happen, to expect the story to get somewhere, but always bringing them back to some twilight corner of uncerta i nty. For the sake of convenience, I said that this mode might be de scribed as "pre-modern Japanese," but for Kara, this sense of antilinear time which pervaded the pre-modern Japanese arts centering on Kabuki rose and in fact fell with it. When Kabuki died a hundred years ago, so did the anti-linear mode of time. It is Kara's intention to return this lost sense of time to view and, by so doing, to make theatre and the actor privileged entities capable of negating reality. Setting A single chair has been placed on the naked earth inside the tent. There is a man sitting in the chair and one standing, holding a razor. This is a barbershop. The examination room of a quack doctor, a coffee shop —in the tent, scenes are reduced to the barest essentials. In the plays before The Beggar of Love, the settings which had developed in the plays of Kara Juro were the barbershop, examination room, and cafe. If one discounts places like streetcorners, parks, and the like, it would not be at all I inaccurate to say that Kara limited himself to these three settings. Before The Beggar of Love, a Il of Kara's plays began and ended in the same fictional world. The total ly unreal nature of that world gave it its almost violent power. The violence of Kara's plays is not vectorless but is aimed unmistakably at the city. And for Kara, the city is one of Tokyo's busiest and most populated wards, Shinjuku. Shinjuku is where he first created his tent theatre, and Shinjuku is the organism that first tried to expel this foreign body from its system. Shinjuku is the place that nourished Kara and his troupe and that which has posed the greatest threat to them. Setting up his red tent there was an act of provocation, an assault upon the most thriving section of Tokyo — the embodiment of Japan's rapid postwar economic growth. 217

Page  218 With this play, however, Kara has begun to move away from the unreal settings of his earlier work and has chosen the public toilet in their stead. The public toilet is far more real than the barbershops, caf6s, and doctors' offices of his other plays. The public toilet becomes the Cabaret Pu-shee because Nizo and the Girl happen to set up shop there. But they really have no intention of conducting business. Rather, the cabaret is opened as the cite of a reunion of pirates who have survived through the years in whatever way they could. By virtue of their presence, Nizo and the Girl transform the real public toilet into a fictional environment. After the last of the pirates has lost his life, two new characters, who are unquestionably real, enter and return the place once more to its original identity. Although he has begun to change his tactics, Kara remains rooted in his city. The public toilet is the other side of the city, crowded and covered with neon lights and filled to overflowing with the activities of great and famous people. It is the diseased and malformed pubis of the city, so much the object of shame as to be alien even to its owner. Public toilets used to be a common sight in parks, at the foot of bridges, and in the damp shadows of fences running along back alleyways, but lately their number has decreased. Gradually, the city's frontage has perpetrated its invasion of the backalleys. The public toilet thus is an alien body lodged in the city. It is at once part of the city and its antithesis. "Somewhere in the city, in the shadow of tall buildings. A snowdrift of litter. An old public toilet." It is with this simple description that he begins his play, continuing with images of running water, a cement urinal trough, grass, and a swarm of green-bottle flies. He continues, but we can be sure that we shall never see any of these things. To be more precise, they will never appear on stage with their odors, noises, and dampness, because the public toilet, as it occupies some dark and dismal corner of the city, is also situated on the burnt over plain that once was a city. As it is a contemporary, functioning utility, it is also one of the few things, along with the public baths, left standing after the fire bombings of the Second World War. On the burnt over plain of UenoGeshazaka [in Tokyo], there were the singed remains of a public bath. To a kid like me, who could only imagine what the air-raids had been like by putting the old faucet that had been left there to my ear and listening, there were no grouchy old men and women, secret police or neighborhood associations to send you off to war. As far as my eyes could see, there was not so much as a single person to harm me. But by listening to the voice of that faucet lying on the ground, it was no longer difficult to know the meaning of devastation. That's why I say, people of my generation weren't raised by people's stern and reproving glances. We were surrounded and educated by faucets lying on the ground. My mind is too filled with things, like the descriptions of characters in Balzac's novels.4 Kara belongs to that generation of people who have no direct way of relating to the war. He grew up amidst the burned out ruins left after the war had ended. His childhood was the fault in time between the desolation of war and the overly ripe, now rotting, fruits of recovery. In that fault in time there was no wisp of human breath but only "faucets lying on 218

Page  219 the ground" to speak to him of experiences that were not his own. Families left homeless by the bombings lived in the public toilets. Some built shanties under bridges and along highways and traintracks, but these disappeared with the recovery of the city. The only place remaining today where people took refuge during and after the war is the public toilet. The public toilet is the perfect setting for Kara Juro's The Beggar of Love. It is the only place where the fire-ravaged level of the postwar city coincides with the city that both nourishes and threatens us, the city that is our environment today. Since the summer of 1967, Kara has tried to make his red tent a privileged entity within the heart of the city. But, as Tsuno Kaitaro points out elsewhere in this magazine, the city has not easily granted Kara and his theatre the privileged entityship they demand. The compromise with reality made in The Beggar of Love may be an indication of Kara's increasing awareness, born of two and a half year of experience, that the city itself is an entity whose reality is not so simply negated. 1"Koki" [Postface] Koshimaki O-Sen (Tokyo: Gendai Shicho Sha, 1968) p. 276 2"Bunkateki Scandalisto E" [To a Cultural Scanda monger] Koshimaki O-Sen, pp. 33-34 3"Shushifu no Kodan," Koshimaki O-Sen, p. 67 4"lma Gekiteki to wa Nani Ka" [What is Theatrical Today?] Koshimaki 0 -Sen, p. 17 Apologies The editors wish to express their apologies to Yada Kinichiro whose photograph of Kaison the Priest of Hitachi appeared without credit on page thirteen of CTJ's special introductory issue. Apologies must also be extended to Mitsuhashi Akira whose pictures of Birdie-Birdie and Trust D.E. also did not receive proper acknowledgment in the spring number. 219

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