The “bodies” to which Uchino Tadashi refers in his new book extend beyond the Japanese ones implied by the title. In addition to the human bodies of Japanese performers, Uchino includes global geographic and political bodies of aesthetic thought in an assessment of the challenges for conceptualizing and producing meaningful theatre and the arts in the twenty-first century. Uchino builds upon specifics of Japanese performance, especially after World War II, to propose his own definition of aesthetics in the twenty-first-century globe. That means there are two great values of this book, which rest on Uchino's position as a Japanese critic. One is his trenchant analysis of Japanese performance post-World War II – an analysis that expands our knowledge of those performances, and enriches the theoretical dialogue about what is effective and meaningful in Japan. Uchino works from the particular of Japan outward to the general of worldwide intercultural theatre practice. The second benefit of Uchino's book is his inquiry into contemporary performance praxis around the globe where the body is “the dominant vehicle of [the] performance practice” (p. 123). Ultimately he frames this as a dichotomy between contemporary Japanese theatre practice, which he sees as enclosed in itself, and global practice that Rustom Bharucha calls the “cross-border imaginary of resistance”.Footnote 1 By beginning with Japanese theatre practices post-World War II, Uchino creates a manifesto for theatrical creation in the twenty-first century.
The book has an introduction, eight chapters, three “interludes,” and an epilogue. All are revised versions of essays or public presentations published or given elsewhere between 1999 and 2007. This is a drawing together of Uchino's main ideas over that time span.
The chapters are mostly constructed as critiques and/or analyses of various theatrical performances of contemporary theatre in Japan. Many of those critiques are ones Uchino did of various performances he has seen in Japan since the early 1980s. However, as in Chapter 1, which discusses the introduction and performance of plays by Bertolt Brecht in Japan in 1932, he sometimes delves into archives to establish a historical context for plays being done today. By starting with Brecht in Japan, Uchino makes explicit the links between Japan and the rest of the world that he intends to expound upon in the rest of the book. The book's core is performances of groups in Japan, but Uchino draws in the global theatrical context from the beginning by talking about Brecht and the different perceptions of his work inside and outside Japan in 1998 at the hundredth anniversary of Brecht's birth.
The chapters follow a linear historical progression, allowing Uchino to move step by step through major theatrical trends in Japan – from shingeki 新劇, to angura アングラ, to “Little Theatre”, to “Quiet Theatre”, and on to early twenty-first-century developments. He looks closely at such notable theatrical figures in Japan as Senda Koreya 千田是也, Ninagawa Yukio 蜷川幸雄, Suzuki Tadashi 鈴木忠志, Kara Jūrō 唐十郎, Noda Hideki 野田秀樹, Kitamura Sō 北村想, Kōkami Shōji 鴻上尚史, Hirata Oriza 平田オリザ, Hitsujiya Shirotama 羊屋白玉, and Miyazawa Akio 宮沢章夫. In each case he offers his critical thoughts on what a particular practitioner and/or their theatre company has contributed to the evolution of theatre in Japan over the last half-century, and the larger sociopolitical significances of those changes. These chapters add significantly to our English language knowledge and interpretation of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Japanese theatre. Uchino's major conclusion in these chapters is that contemporary Japanese theatre is mostly insular and self-referential, using a static aesthetic sense that rarely challenges itself.
The one artist who Uchino optimistically believes is challenging this status quo is Miyazawa Akio. Uchino suggests that Miyazawa's work attempts to undo history and thus overcome a sense of theatrical “universality”. Uchino maintains that such “universality” is actually a re-inscription of an insular point of view. According to Uchino, Miyazawa is able to break down this “universality” by juxtaposing bodies trained in various performance genres. He uses actors from shingeki, angura, 1980s Little Theatre, dancers, and completely untrained performers. Uchino argues that by placing these bodies in the crucible of performance a fraction of history becomes undone.
The three “interludes” are the core of Uchino's manifesto about undoing history. Although they touch on aspects of certain Japanese contemporary performances, Uchino is using those events as a way to talk about what shapes global theatre aesthetics in the twenty-first century. Japan and Japanese aesthetics provide the foundation on which he builds his arguments. These three essays range through various concepts of beauty in Japan, beginning as early as the tenth-century Heian era, to aspects of Japanese sponsored intercultural performance in 2007. In these interludes, Uchino ties together concepts such as visual artist Murakami Takashi's 村上隆 “super-flat”, sociologist Kayama Rika's 香山 リカ “petit-nationalism”, and performance practices by groups as diverse as Dumb Type, Kaitai-sha 解体社, Seinen-dan 青年団, and Kegawa-zoku 毛皮族. In the third “interlude” and the Epilogue, Uchino opens up a global dialogue based on his political view of theatre and art, and what he sees as the direction live performance must take in the twenty-first century. In the third “interlude”, he places theatre within the context of David Harvey's The New Imperialism, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire. Uchino's ideal is that live theatre performance can be one of the “imagined cultural spheres […] able to become sites in which we [translate thinking] into real and efficacious action” (Uchino, p. 157).
In the Epilogue Uchino discusses some recent collaborations of non-Japanese theatre artists from other parts of Asia that were sponsored at least in part by funds from the Japanese Ministry of Culture. He writes that the enclosed nature of Japanese theatre makes these productions “completely about ‘the other’ and ‘the otherness’” (Uchino, p. 190). Uchino's analysis throughout the book clearly explains the dichotomy of Japanese performance that may not be apparent on the surface. Many Japanese theatre practitioners actively reach out to foreign groups, and explore ways of incorporating non-Japanese forms in their work. Groups such as Seinen-dan led by Hirata Oriza frequently perform overseas and invite foreign artists to Japan. The company's website is in Japanese, English, French and Korean. This appears quite liberal-minded, and open to cross-cultural influences. However, as I have noted in my own writings,Footnote 2 and as Uchino explains in detail, the absorption of foreign influences is aimed at reinforcing the Japanese particularity of their work, rather than forging new globally connected theatre.
In contrast to this particularistic Japanese work, Uchino optimistically theorizes about how intercultural collaborations by non-Japanese for Japanese consumption can “attempt to create a site of ‘internationalist vigilance’ against ‘the violence of terrorism’ and ‘the continued brutality of the civilized world’” (Uchino, p. 190). Thus, Uchino proposes an active function for live performance in a world within which such productions are often marginalized by economic forces and the general concept that the purpose of art is only to produce beauty rather than challenge its very existence.
As a manifesto, there are few faults to find with the book. There are a few quibbles some may have with its scholarly discourse. Uchino uses such terms as “neo-liberal”, “neo-conservative”, and “neo-nationalist” without definitions. As a Japanese theatre specialist, I believe I understand Uchino's usage, but these terms are problematic for some scholars in any context. They may be even more confusing for those without a deep knowledge of Japanese politics and theatre. In addition, Uchino's writing style is dense at times, requiring careful readings of certain passages. However, there are a few obvious places where words or punctuation is missing, causing the reader to wonder whether or not there might be something missing from other difficult passages. Finally, some of the indexing is misleading. Uchino follows the Japanese order of family name/given name throughout the book, however Hitsujiya Shirotama, the leader of Yubiwa Hotel, is listed in the index by her given name (Shirotama) under “S”, instead of the “H” of her family name (Hitsujiya).
These minor problems aside, Uchino's book is a welcome addition to the library of anyone interested in Japanese theatre and the arts today. While one might not agree with his assessments of individual artists, or his overall view of the future of global performance genres, Uchino's arguments are well formulated. As a stimulus for further scholarship and debate, the book is a must read for anyone teaching or researching contemporary Japanese theatre.
