Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0037/00372.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 9KB | 173 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00372}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Japan
On Stage}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{International Society for Educational Information, Inc.}
$Affiliation{Embassy of Japan, Washington DC}
$Subject{japanese
dance
film
japan
number
yose
rakugo
manzai
movie
works}
$Date{1989}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        The Japan of Today
Author:      International Society for Educational Information, Inc.
Affiliation: Embassy of Japan, Washington DC
Date:        1989

On Stage

Recent trends

     In recent years Japanese choreographers have composed a number of
adaptations of Western works, including Faust and Carmen, combining techniques
of Japanese classical dance with those of Western dance. Though such efforts
are still in the experimental stage, they have begun to liberate female
dancers in particular from the rigid restraints on expression imposed by
traditional Japanese dance, introducing a bolder, more expansive kind of
movement. Western dance, which is widely studied and performed in Japan, has
not only influenced but also been influenced by Japanese classical dance.
Examples include The Kabuki, a ballet version of the kabuki classic Kanadehon
Chushingura by Maurice Bejart of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne, and flamenco
adaptations of such standards of the kabuki repertoire as Dojoji and
Sagimusume.

Modern dance

     The history of modern dance in Japan dates back to 1912, when the Teikoku
Gekijo (Imperial Theater) invited an opera director and dance instructor
from the United Kingdom to teach in Japan. Among the instructor's students, a
few went on to form the nucleus of modern dance in Japan. Buto, Japan's
original contribution to modern dance, emerged in the 1960s and now enjoys
considerable popularity in North America and Europe. Founded by Hijikata
Tatsumi, the innovative genre is carried on today by such dance troupes as
Sankaijuku and Byakkosha and by Ono Kazuo.

Vaudeville

     The Japanese have a single category that comprises the comic genres
rakugo and manzai, storytelling, jugglery, and similar native forms of
vaudeville-type entertainment. These are called yose entertainments, after the
intimate Japanese-style vaudeville theater where such entertainments are
commonly performed.

     In the past most yose theaters seated the spectators on tatami mats in
Japanese-style wooden buildings, but the urbanization that swept Japan after
World War II has left little trace of the traditional variety hall; today
many of them take up one sections of a modern concrete building. In March 1979
a traditional yose-type theater was set up in Tokyo's National Theater as part
of a campaign to preserve and propagate the traditional performing arts
subsumed under the term yose. Performances, mainly of rakugo, are held there
20 days a month.

Rakugo

     Possibly the most representative form of yose entertainment is rakugo,
a traditional Japanese style of comic monologue. The performer, known as a
rakugoka, customarily dons a kimono, sits on a square cushion, and uses only
a fan and hand towel for props. The monologue begins with a prologue known as
the makura, which sets the stage for the story itself and winds up with a
punch line known as the ochi.

     Because most rakugo monologues date back to the Edo (1603-1868) and Meiji
(1868-1912) eras, when the form developed and reached its peak, much of the
content reflects an entirely different life style from that with which
today's listeners are familiar, and as a result traditional rakugo has lost
some of the broad-based popular appeal it once enjoyed. In response to this
trend, a number of performers have applied themselves to the creation of new
stories more in tune with contemporary living.

Manzai

     Another popular standby of yose entertainment is manzai. This form of
comic dialogue evolved out of the customary New Year's performances by
itinerant entertainers, who feted the occasion with singing and dancing and,
later, witty repartee. Since the 1930s manzai has captured wide audiences with
its comic duos who appear in Western garb and banter cleverly on themes drawn
from contemporary daily life. In Osaka manzai at one time even eclipsed rakugo
as the main attraction in the yose program. With the advent of television,
moreover, manzai readily adapted itself to the medium, changing day by day as
it incorporated music, slapstick, and other elements.

Other yose entertainments

     Two other representative yose genres are kodan, or storytelling, and
naniwa bushi, a kind of narrative ballad also known as rokyoku. Though these
genres once enjoyed a high degree of popularity, their moralistic Confucian
message does not often fall on receptive ears in this day and age.
Nonetheless, the romance of sewa kodan and the musical qualities of rokyoku
still strike a responsive chord in many.

     Such light entertainment as jugglery and cutting elaborate shapes out of
paper remain part of the standard yose program, providing diversion between
acts of manzai or rakugo, but unfortunately a lack of successors is
threatening these genres with extinction.

Film

     The decade of the 1950s marked a golden age for Japanese film, with
annual attendance at movie theaters peaking at 1.1 billion in 1958. The
artistic quality of the period is evident in such works as Kurosawa Akira's
Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai), Ozu Yasujiro's Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo
Story), and Mizoguchi Kenji's Ugetsu Monogatari (Ugetsu), all of which won
both national and international acclaim.

     The advent of television in the 1960s triggered a rapid decline in the
number of moviegoers, and the popularization of videos in the 1980s has led to
a leveling out of this number at a relatively low level of 150 million. The
combined total of foreign and Japanese releases in 1987 was 370, with the
number of foreign films exceeding Japanese by a ratio of two to one.

Changes in the world of Japanese film

     Though the golden age of Japanese film appears to have receded into the
past, the Japanese movie industry has managed to keep abreast of the times by
introducing various changes. For example, as the number of moviegoers has
declined, there has been a rise in the number of small movie theaters with a
capacity of around 300 people. Unlike the movie theater chains that show the
same movie simultaneously in several cinemas and cities, these small theaters
present a film in only one cinema in each of a few cities. Appearing in
response to the proliferation of videos and the diversification of individual
tastes, they concentrate on showing worthwhile films that are not commercially
viable for larger cinemas and are not widely available on video. This
phenomenon inevitably has led to the creation of new distribution channels and
the establishment of small yet original distribution firms and movie theaters.

     A related development has been the organization in the 1980s of several
international film festivals in Japan, the largest being the biennial Tokyo
International Film Festival, which was first held in 1985. These festivals are
popular because they enable movie buffs to view important films from around
the world that are rarely shown on other occasions. The festivals tend to be
concentrated in Tokyo and other major cities, but recently smaller cities also
have been getting in on the act. The Yufuin Film Festival, which is held once
a year in Oita Prefecture, features new works by contemporary Japanese
directors.

A new generation of directors

     As in the United States, television stations in Japan have been playing
an increasingly prominent role in film production in recent years. The 1986
box office hit Koneko Monogatari (The Adventures of Chatran) was produced
mainly by a television station. This trend has boosted the number of
opportunities for producing films, which in turn has led to the emergence of a
new generation of directors characterized by their unique ideas and visions.
The receptiveness of the Japanese audience to a broad range of works and the
diversification of their interests have helped to support the activities of
these directors. Among them, Itami Juzo, who began his career as an actor, has
achieved much fame both in Japan and overseas with such works as Marusa no
Onna (A Taxing Woman) and Tampopo (Tampopo).

     Faced with the difficulty of obtaining the necessary capital for
production and the reality that only a small number of works eventually become
money-earners, many of these directors try to increase the opportunities to
show their works by participating in foreign film festivals. Consequently,
some of them have gained more recognition abroad than in their home country.