Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance

Kevin J. Wetmore is professor of theater at Loyola Marymount University. Keiko I. McDonald is professor of East Asian languages and literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. David Jortner is professor of communication arts and theater at Allegheny College.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Modern Japanese Theatre (Revisited)Part 2 Shingeki HistoryChapter 3 Why Did Sewamono Not Grow into Modern Realist Theatre?Chapter 4 The Rhetoric of the RealChapter 5 Moment(um) of Memory: Metapatterns in Japanese Theatre Since the 1960sChapter 6 The Quest for Salvation in Japan's Modern History: Four Plays by Akimoto MatsuyoChapter 7 Poison Women and National Identity in Postwar Japanese PerformanceChapter 8 Senda Koreya and the Tenko ParadigmPart 9 Experimental Theatre(s) and Border CrossingsChapter 10 Structureless in Structure: The Choreographic Tectonics of Hijikata Tatsumi's ButoChapter 11 Terayama in Amsterdam and the Internationalization of Experimental TheatreChapter 12 Super-kyogen: Radically Traditional Utopian ComediesChapter 13 Classical Japanese Performance in a Contemporary Context: A Traditional Strategy of JuxtapositionPart 14 Specific Plays and Productions in Modern JapanChapter 15 Illegitimate Child of Shingeki: Soganoya Gokuro and His Nonkina tosan (Easygoing Daddy)Chapter 16 Reflections of and on the Times: Morimoto Kaoru's A Woman's LifeChapter 17 Steeplechase: Mishima Yukio's Only Original Modern No PlayChapter 18 "Destroying the Audience's Alibi": Empathy and Ethics in Abe Kobo's Mihitsu no koiChapter 19 Divine Memory and Abject Reality: Miyagi Satoshi's Tenshu Monogatari and Simizu Shinjin's Bye Bye: The New PrimitiveChapter 20 From Scaretto to Kaze to tomo ni sarinu: Musical Adaptations of Gone with the Wind in JapanPart 21 A Super-kyogen ScriptChapter 22 Mutsugoro (Mudskippers)

This fascinating collection of essays commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of J. Thomas Rimer's seminal work,Toward a Modern Japanese Theatre (1974). The essays capture the complex strategies by which Japanese theatre artists, ranging from shingeki to the postmodern, exercise their craft. This edition is a must for those interested in the changing landscape of performing arts in Japan.