Review: January 2019 New Year Kabuki: Part One – Shinbashi Enbujo and the National Theatre of Japan

Part one of a two-part review.

Shinbashi Enbujo

The first performance of the afternoon was ‘Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura’, (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees), one of the three most popular plays of the Kabuki repertoire (which includes ‘Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy’, and ‘Chūshingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers’). The particular act of the play performed was ‘Torii Mae’, (Before the Gate of the Fushimi Inari Shrine). This part of the play focuses on the story of how Shizuka Gozen (Otani Hiromatsu) the lover of Minamoto Yoshitsune (Otani Tomaemon) who is following Yoshitsune on his flight from his older brother Yoritomo, is restrained in her attempts to follow Yoshitsune. To restrain his lover Shizuka Yoshitsune enlists the help of his retainer Satō Tadanobu (Nakamura Shidō) who is in fact not the real Tadanobu but is indeed a magical fox. As a fairly standard and very popular act from

Review: Shochiku Grand Kabuki – Salle Jean Vilar

Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris, France, 13 – 19 September 2018

‘Japonismes 2018: les âmes en résonance’ (souls in resonance) is a celebration of Japanese culture taking part in Paris and other cities in France to mark 160 years of friendship between France and Japan. As part of the celebrations two Kabuki actors, Nakamura Shidō II and Nakamura Shichinosuke II (whose grandfather Nakamura Kanzaburō XVII was one of the first Kabuki actors to perform Kabuki in Paris at

Theatre Review: Ninagawa Company ‘Macbeth’.

 

Presented by the Barbican in association with Thelma Holt, Saitama Arts Foundation and HoriPro Inc

Co-produced by The Japan Foundation

Barbican, London 5-8 October

Theatre Royal, Plymouth 13-14 October

After Yukio Ninagawa’s death nearly a year and a half ago in May 2016 his ‘Ninagawa Macbeth’ (and this is the only one of his Shakespearean productions he allowed to use his name) returned to London this year after a thirty year absence for a memorial run at the Barbican in London and the Theatre Royal in Plymouth with the help, amongst others, of

Review: The Old Jōruri Puppet Play ‘The Tale Of The High Priest Kōchi’

Performance was held on 2nd and 3rd June 2017 at the British Library.

The evening, attended by around 250 people, opened with a welcome from Mana Takatori, the Director General of the Japan Foundation, and Hamish Todd, the Head of East Asian Collections at the British Library. Then Professor Torigoe Bunzō described how the manuscript was discovered and how valuable it is given that it is the only extant original copy.

In 1962, when at the time he was a Professor at Waseda University, Torigoe Bunzō was teaching at Cambridge University and