Kabuki Twelfth Night and Kyogen Richard III: Shakespeare as a Cultural Catalyst

Summary

‘East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’, wrote Rudyard Kipling in 1892, at a time when Japan was not yet familiar with Shakespeare. Shakespeare's work began to be introduced to Japan in this period, one in which ‘Japanese contemporary theatre’ was identified with Kabuki. Inevitably, when a Shakespeare play was first successfully translated into Japanese by Shoyo Tsubouchi in 1884, it was in the Kabuki style, under the Kabuki-like title, The Strange Tale of Caesar: The Sword of Freedom and the Echo of its Sharp Blade. This version captured the public's fancy so much that many translators followed suit. Robun Kanagaki, the first Japanese to publish a section of a Shakespeare play (Hamlet) in translation (in 1875), adapted Hamlet in a Kabuki style in 1886. Keizou Kawashima, the first Japanese to translate an entire Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, in 1883, adapted Romeo and Juliet in 1886, also in a Kabuki style. The first of Shakespeare's plays to be performed in Japan was a Kabuki adaptation of the trial scene from The Merchant of Venice, renamed after Issa Kobayashi's haiku, Money is Everything in This World, No Matter Which Cherry Blossoms are in Bloom (Sakuradoki Zenino Yononaka), performed in Osaka on 16 May 1885. It was and continues to be a common practice in Kabuki to perform only one scene from a long play.

Thus, the reception of Shakespeare's plays began through adaptations and it took some time until Shakespeare's plays were properly translated without Japanizing characters’ names. Hamlet and Ophelia were first given their names in the 1907 production of Hamlet. Japan has since assimilated Shakespeare's work and the Shakespeare of the West has become an integral part of the East. As is shown by Akira Kurosawa's films Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran (1985), which are prime examples of Japanese Shakespeares, Shakespeare has functioned as a cultural icon to adapt and appropriate. So many variations currently exist in Japan that one may, in effect, choose one's own Shakespeare. From manga Shakespeare to rock'n'roll Shakespeare, we have witnessed abundant appropriations and adaptations that prove the ways in which Shakespeare can be cooked and served on any cultural plate.