Kabuki

Erbe senza radici, scritto nel 1763, segnò l’esordio letterario dell’intellettuale Hiraga Gennai, figura particolarissima del XVIII secolo giapponese: samurai senza padrone, esperto di materia medica, discente dilettante di olandese, cinese e latino, inventore e studioso di elettrostatica e chimica. Le vicende del romanzo si sviluppano a cavallo di più mondi, tra Inferno, Paradiso, il Palazzo del re drago in fondo al mare e tra i flutti del fiume Sumida, a Edo, l’attuale Tokyo. La storia si apre con la morte per acqua di un attore di ruoli femminili del teatro kabuki e ne svela solo alla fine il mistero, raccontando nel mezzo l’inaspettato coming out del re degli Inferi, le origini del teatro kabuki e la festante atmosfera di Edo. Il tono è umoristico e l’intento satirico: bersaglio dell’autore sono i costumi del tempo, la corruzione dei samurai e del clero buddhista. A spuntarla è sempre l’uomo più umile, poiché i grandi si riempiono la bocca di parole ma a conti fatti non sono in grado di agire.

A pesquisa analisou as possíveis influências visuais que levaram os membros da máfia japonesa Yakuza a selecionarem o repertório de suas tatuagens. Com a verificação da recorrência das principais iconografias encontradas como dragões, peônias e flores de cerejeira, a pesquisa se concentrou em mostrar a relevância dos designs das tatuagens dos yakuzas em diálogo com os padrões tradicionais da arte japonesa no ukiyo-e e no baralho hanafuda. A busca pelas fontes da iconografia revelou a circulação e a transferência de imagens entre a China e o Japão, aspecto que se tornou latente após a grande verificação de elementos chineses como o dragão e a peônia presentes nas tatuagens dos gângsteres. Desse modo, pôde-se concluir, a partir da iconografia das tatuagens da Yakuza, a conexão entre a estética japonesa que possui grande influência da China.

This set of books is essential reading for those who aim to take Japanese culture seriously. They have been published in a postmillennial zeitgeist when course enrollments in Japanese popular culture (JPC) are on the rise, with scholars gradually becoming preoccupied with how to effectively use popular culture in higher education. Further, this set of books represents a pinnacle of serious academic research on JPC, which started booming around two decades ago when Douglas McGray stated that Japanese culture and economy came to be shaped through the appeal and attraction of JPC. While expanding the vast pool of knowledge on JPC, the three books reviewed here provide the most complex picture to date. Reading them together is recommended since they focus on the same phenomenon while offering differing yet compatible approaches.

It is clear that the Japanese film up until the 1930s displayed a very characteristic “national style” which differed from the West.  Silent films were largely influenced by the traditional Japanese performing art known as kabuki.  Intrinsic to these early silent films was the presence of a physical narrator, the benshi, which has had a lasting influence to the present day.  Cinematic techniques were used in different ways and for different purposes.  Early reform of the Japanese film industry, in addition, to making film more realistic and accessible for the working classes also allowed women to participate in film and for an entirely new genre of film to be created.  The influence of the dramatic and visual arts has had a lasting influence on Japanese films up until the 1930s and has played a large part in the characteristic “national style” of Japanese film. 

1930年代までの日本映画までは西洋とは異なり非常に特徴的な「国家のスタイル」を表示していたことが明らかです。無声映画は、主に歌舞伎のような伝統的日本の影響を受けていました。これら初期の無声映画に固有しているのは、現在まで続いて影響を与えている物理的な語り手、弁士の存在でした。映画技術は、様々な方法、異なる目的のために使用されました。さらに、日本の映画産業の早期改革は、労働者階級には現実的かつ便利に、また許可された女性が映画に参加しており、映画の全く新しいジャンルが作成されました。劇的、視覚芸術の影響は、最大1930年代まで日本映画に持続的な影響を与え、日本映画の特徴的な「国家のスタイル」に大きな役割を果たしてきました。

It is well known that theatre on Christian themes was performed in the churches established across Kyūshū by Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, the only primary sources through which this performance tradition is known are the Jesuit Japan letters, and these have so far been read mostly not in the originals but rather in printed translations which were produced in Europe at the time for the purpose of soliciting donations to the mission effort, and which show significant alterations and deletions. Partly because of the vagueness created by this source problem, previous research has been distracted by issues of national and religious ideology which express themselves as the question of genre: was it noh, was it kabuki, etc., because if it was one of these genres with nationalist bona fides, then it proves that Christians can be authentic Japanese and vice versa. In each of the key passages traditionally cited on this topic, the original letters reveal new information. We see Japanese Christians’ accomplishments in translating a new body of religious legends into their own language, dividing it into parts for the theatre, and adding music, blocking, and stage effects, though not demonstrably those of any canonical genre of Japanese traditional theatre. On the part of the Jesuits we see ambivalence about theatre itself, eagerness to use it to please local magnates, anxiety over stage logistics, and other attitudes. Moreover, we catch glimpses of certain third parties who roamed from town to town in the Jesuits’ shadow, creating Christian performance traditions in Japanese perhaps for reasons of their own. Finally, I argue that Japanese Jesuit theatre as seen in the original letters already accomplishes the blending of traditional Japanese culture and Christianity, but so far as the sources reveal it does so by means of a nameless folk theatre and not any of the canonical national forms like noh, kyōgen, bunraku, or kabuki, which previous researchers have tried inconclusively to find there.

周知の通り、１６世紀のキリスト教会で、聖書などのキリスト教説話を題材とした演劇が上演された。先行研究では、これらが日本的なのか外国的なのかという点に滞り、「キリシタン能」など、日本伝統芸能に同定し、歌舞伎など後世のものへの影響を見出そうとする傾向もある。本稿ではこの宗教思想・国家思想という観点から一歩下がり、代表的なイエズス会報告の記録を原本から読み直す。すると、ヨーロッパのような舞台効果を使いながら、日本語によって台詞が交わされ、配役も歌い方も日本風である、とわかる。入場・門番など、劇場経営の問題にも言及している。なお、所作の伴わない問答や語り物があれば、派手な作り物を出す舞台劇もあるという風に、形式がそもそも一定しない。したがって、本稿ではこれらの「キリシタン劇」を国籍もジャンルも定めず、独自の芸能群と見なし、上演記録の内容を原報告に拠って読み解いていく。

Unlike the Western cultural frame, within which the clear opposition good – evil is held as sound and rational, stories and plays of the Japanese culture rarely offer such a clean division of the characters and their deeds. Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan, also known in the West as The Ghost Story of Yotsuya, is a perfect example of the situation. As the story unfolds, following betrayal, murder and supernatural retribution, the balance of power and powerlessness is reversed and the difference between the victim and the tormentor fades and becomes obscure. The Ghost Story of Yotsuya blurs the common Euroamerican view of good and evil, honour and disgrace, forcing the Euroamerican reader to reflect and rethink their own perspective concerning those values.

Elementi macabri e soprannaturali hanno permeato tutte le forme di espressione artistica giapponese e sono oggigiorno inglobati nella più moderna espressione di "genere horror". La presente tesi prende in analisi la loro rappresentazione nelle varie tipologie di arti visive in Giappone, in particolar modo quelle illustrate, con numerosi riferimenti alla letteratura, al teatro e soprattutto al cinema, e si sviluppa principalmente attorno all’analisi delle raffigurazioni ed illustrazioni nelle arti dei soggetti presi in esame, come gli yūrei o gli yōkai. L’opera riporta degli accenni ad epoche precedenti, essenziale per analizzarne l’evoluzione, per poi concentrarsi sui lavori prodotti in epoca pre-moderna e sui cambiamenti accaduti con l’avvento dei media in periodo moderno e contemporaneo. Un ulteriore intento, infatti, è di dimostrare come l'horror sia un genere molto più profondo e complesso di ciò che può sembrare e di come sia stato utilizzato in Giappone soprattutto per riprodurre la realtà circostante e particolari sentimenti legati ad essa.
A fini sia artistici che informativi, si tratterà altresì di shinie, stampe di epoca Edo assimilabili ai moderni necrologi occidentali e argomento per lo più sconosciuto, del quale persino in Giappone ne esiste una letteratura estremamente esigua a riguardo.

From kabuki plays to contemporary comics and movies the female vengeance ghost has been used again and again as a powerful and transgressive figure. In this thesis I explore the ways in which the female vengeance ghost has been used in popular culture to explore and start a dialogue on the various injustices and social problems of the times in which they were created.

This seminar examines Japanese popular culture from historical and theoretical perspectives. It offers a deeper understanding of various pop-cultural phenomena as they developed in historical and contemporary Japan. While introducing students to the basic social theories of popular culture, we conduct analyses of topics such as kabuki, ukiyo-e, kami-shibai, moga, anime, J-cinema, and J-pop. Throughout the course, we will also take a closer look at the affective-economic relationship between the Japanese idol industry and the devoted subcultural communities "otaku". The general implication of the course is that popular culture is not always a spontaneous representation of our ideas and beliefs. To examine this, we will observe the mutual influence of institutional environments and (pop)cultural scripts throughout the course of Japanese history. This will enable students to study how Japanese popular culture is both generative and constitutive, simultaneously creating and reflecting the zeitgeist in which it emerges.

This course introduces students to the history of world theatre and corresponding dramatic literature from the prehistoric rituals to the eighteenth century. The student will be introduced to the ways in which the theatre played a crucial social, political, and cultural role throughout its early history. The course will also examine the various lenses that effect the writing of history and problematize the idea of a singular and linear historical narrative.

Abstract: This article examines Kitano Takeshi’s film Kikujiro (Kikujiro no Natsu, 1999) from two directions: first, as an as an experiment in moving versus still photography, and second, as an exploration of time, memory and Japanese identity. I argue that it is in Kitano’s cinematic use of elements from the kabuki
drama that the two aspects come together. Kitano plays upon the conventions of both kabuki and film media to highlight the significance of the ‘still shot’ as it functions in human memory. By presenting moments of the story in the format of a child’s photograph album, Kitano is able to explore ideas of ‘adult’ and
‘child’ as equally arbitrary constructions. Throughout Kikujiro, Kitano draws on a rich tradition of film, drama and television convention in order to explore the idea of where identity comes from
does it come from the past, the present, or
do we make it up ourselves? Kitano places emphasis on the still mie pose to heighten emotion and draw attention to the present moment. By contrasting this method against that of photography, Kitano juxtaposes past and present modes
of expression, enabling him to interrogate notions of time and the supposed timelessness of art. Finally, Kitano’s critical use of the past locates identity not in some distant, unobtainable myth of the nation, but in the lived experience of each individual as a human being.

The cinema of Takeshi Kitano happens somewhere between formality and improvisation, elegy and absurdity, distance and familiarity. If continuities exist in his films, they rarely do so in stable, reliable forms: a shot can suddenly linger until it seems to belong elsewhere; matching and shot-reverse-shot conventions seldom matter; vivid, primary colours will refuse to disperse; dialogue is minimal and silence, profuse. Shooting tends to be sequential, done to a schedule that promises few certainties – time is short and re-shoots are rare. Screenplays are scribbled and sketched out on bits of paper, ‘constructed around a few central ideas that may or may not drive the plot along’. Editing is a game, a puzzle to be solved once the film has revealed itself and not before: ‘The shooting process is like moulding and colouring the plastic parts for a model … building the model is the fun part’. Genre conventions – particularly those associated with the Yakuza genre – are readily distorted; occasions of random and ritual violence are not simply interrupted, they often transcend their own seriousness. Actors (most notably, the ‘Beat’ Kitano himself) can act by not acting; characters – like the loosely woven fabulae they inhabit – remain enigmatic and psychologically insubstantial. A restless, impulsive imagination presides over the entire production process: responding to spontaneity rather than conforming to propriety seems to be the aesthetic keystone of Kitano’s method.
This article examines Dolls/Dooruzu (2002), focussing on how Kitano applied his seemingly anarchic sensibility to the task of rendering the ornate, literary theatre of Bunraku puppetry into the forms and structures of a contemporary cinema. The film itself is comprised of three loosely interwoven Chikamatsu variations: two tragic lovers embarking on a journey to their death (the bound beggars); a retired Yakuza boss trying to make amends for abandoning his sweetheart years before (the remorseful ‘warrior’); and a young man who blinds himself rather than see the scarred face of his idol, a reclusive former pop star who survived an accident (the infatuated servant). Each story presents characters and situations that correspond obliquely to archetypes and motifs from the Bunraku/Kabuki repertoire, and others that correspond more exactly to those from Kitano’s own film oeuvre: angels, shorelines, surfboards, flowers, bridges, fireworks, daft teenagers, and Yakuza gangsters. However, in maintaining his confidence in strategies of openness, informality, and play, Kitano’s film emerges as much more than a stylish cinematic allegory of contemporary Japanese society and its fraught cultural formations. Nothing if not contradictory, Kitano’s imagination carries Dolls in a different direction, towards the possibility of reconciling theatre and cinema, artifice and truth, love and death.

Ценова-Нушева, Миглена. "Японски разбирания за музиката и проявлението им в театър Кабуки (歌舞伎). Влияние на дзен (禅) върху японската традиционна музика и върху театър Кабуки". - В: Музикални хоризонти, 2017, № 6, с. 16 - 21.

Tzenova-Nusheva, Miglena. "Japanese Understandings of Music and Their Manifestation in Kabuki Theatre (歌舞伎). The Influence of Zen (禅) on Japanese Traditional Music and on Kabuki Theatre" In Musical Horizons, 2017, No 6, pp. 16 - 21.

Key words: Japanese understandings of music, Japanese traditional music, music in Kabuki theatre

Abstract
Kabuki theatre was found in 1603 by Izumo no Okuni (出雲阿国), a supplementary priestess – miko in the Shinto Grand Shrine of Izumo (Izumo Taisha, 出雲大社). Izumo no Okuni was a talented dancer with creative and progressive thinking who started performing short theatrical plays in 1596 in order to provide for the upkeep of the shrine. Preserved images of her performances show the constant presence of musicians on the stage. Okuni herself is often depicted with a little gong in her hands.
While I was studying the music of the genre of Kabuki, I was left with the impression that Kabuki theatre reflects the Japanese understandings of music and sound. Although, I hadn’t come across such an approach, I decided to carry on studying the connection between the music of the genre and the Japanese understandings and rituals, because in order to be fully aware of the place that music took in Kabuki we have to comprehend the Japanese understandings of music, sound and the creative process.
The research work is based on interdisciplinary approach, which combines historical, analytical, comparative, music-theoretical, social anthropological, etc. knowledge.

Assoc. Prof. Miglena Tzenova-Nusheva, Ph. D.
Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

The present text is focused on the significance of music of Peking Opera and Japanese Kabuki theatre. The research work refers to the Chinese and Japanese mythology and culture. The paper also examines some trends related to the traditional musical instruments typical of Peking Opera and the traditional musical instruments typical of Kabuki theatre. The research work is based on interdisciplinary approach, which combines historical, analytical, comparative, music-theoretical, social anthropological, etc. knowledge.

Keywords: music in Peking Opera, music in Japanese Kabuki theatre, significance of music in Chinese culture, significance of music in Japanese culture.

Reseña de un libro constituido, en su mayoría, por trabajos presentados en el VII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios de Asia y África, que se llevó a cabo en Acapulco, México, durante la conmemoración del Quinto Centenario del Encuentro de Dos Mundos. Las comunicaciones de los especialistas en artes escénicas respondiereon al propósito de confrontar, desde ese punto de vista, diferentes experiencias de encuentros interculturales.

Descrição: título: MAIS OUTRA isbn: 9788581086316 idioma: Português encadernação: Brochura formato: 14 x 21 páginas: 128 ano de edição: 2014 edição: 1ª autor: Lica Cecato

A energia do oriente faz bem à Lica, sendo que é multi-lateral  e navega no mundo todo como  compositora, cantora, música, escritora e artista plástica. Na verdade, a ideia de escrever o livro Mais Outra nasceu da produtora artística Amalia Tarallo, manager da artista de 2014 a 2018. Depois de um ano trabalhando juntas, ao ver a quantidade de escritos e estudos que Lica fizera, desde 1982, com a lingua e a cultura japonesa, se animou e decidiu estimulá-la a abrir seu baú, sua bagagem, ao mundo.

Mais Outra se divide em Pessoas, Capítulos, Fotos, Bob Wilson interpretando Beckett e Ono no Komachi. A seleção de fotos, que tenta um paralelo entre o Brasil e o Japão, foi escolhida pela artista plástica Cecília de Medeiros, e a intenção é mostrar o que não se consegue dizer com palavras, através de imagens. Já a tradução, ou melhor, como dizia o nosso saudoso poeta Haroldo de Campos, transcriação, dos 7 poemas de Ono no Komachi, poetisa japonesa do século IX, foram feitas em conjunto com o artista multimídia e poeta visual André Vallias.

Um paralelo entre o teatro Kabuki e o monologo de Beckett, Krapp’s last tape, interpretado e encenado por Bob Wilson, mostra uma ponte relativamente inédita, ousada, entre ocidente e oriente. Lica não define a si mesma nem como escritora nem como fotógrafa, mas usa todos os meios possíveis, sem limites nem fronteiras, para transmitir sua arte.

A capa de Mais Outra  foi desenhada por Flávio Morais, artista plástico e ilustrador, professor de artes visuais,  que mora em Barcelona e que recebeu o Premio Graffica 2014, por sua brilhante trajetória artística. Os livros e a gravação de um CD com músicas japonesas, que está sendo elaborado, dão o início aos projetos de comemoração dos 120 anos de relacionamento diplomático entre Brasil e Japão em 2015. O projeto musical de  Lica  foi selecionado, entre outros,  pelo Embaixador do Brasil no Japão,  André Corrêa do Lago, para apresentações no Japão e Brasil em 2015.

A brief personal & creative review of In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1933). My 2020 review was of the English translation by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker in 1977.
References made to turns of phrase and allegory utilized by Tanizaki (translation notwithstanding), personal observations and vague criticism are mine.

Tzenova-Nusheva, Miglena. "Chinese and Japanese Understandings of the Relation between Nature and Music (in English)", in Current Isseues in Contmporary Chinese and Oriental Studies, 2018, Vol.1, pp. 99 - 106.

Abstract:
The relation between nature and music, understood as consistency, indivisibility, interdependence, etc., is decisive for both Chinese and Japanese understandings of music. The study focuses on how the relation between nature and music affects Chinese and Japanese music. Analogies and specifics are outlined. Examples of Jingju and Kabuki are discussed.
The text is based on recent musical theoretical studies, publications dedicated to Chinese and Japanese mythology, research works on Chinese and Japanese symbols, and other sources. It offers author’s comments, interpretations, etc. An interdisciplinary approach, which encompasses perspectives of historical, comparative, socio-anthropological, ethnological, etc. knowledge, is applied.
Keywords: relation between nature and music, Chinese understandings of music, Japanese understandings of music, Chinese musical instruments, Japanese musical instruments, Chinese musical modes, Japanese musical modes, Peking opera Jingju, traditional Japanese Kabuki theatre.

Macbeth has a long and varied history of Asian-style enactments in the United States. Among the best known performances are Akira Kurosawa’s film Throne of Blood (1957), Yukio Ninagawa’s kabuki-style Macbeth (1985), Wu Hsing-kuo’s Peking opera The Kingdom of Desire (1987), Tadashi Suzuki’s all-male The Chronicle of Macbeth (1988; English and Japanese versions), Shozo Sato’s Kabuki Macbeth (1997), Sato and Karen Sunde’s Kabuki Lady Macbeth (2005), and Charles Fee’s kabuki-inflected Macbeth (2008) (these last three in English), all screened or staged multiple times in North America. These works either map the English imaginary of Scottish incivility onto what is perceived to be equivalent Asian contexts (as Kurosawa’s film does), or create a new performance idiom from amalgamated elements from various traditional Asian theatre styles (as Sato’s production does).

Este trabalho apresenta a fase japonesa (1957-1969) de Tennessee Williams. Para tanto, concentra sua investigação na influência do dramaturgo Yukio Mishima, dos teatros Nô e Kabuki e das estéticas contraculturais do off e off-off-Broadway nas chamadas late plays. Dessa forma, o artigo contextualiza o conjunto de obras desse período, além de revelar as circunstâncias social, histórica, cultural e biográfica do dramaturgo. Também identifica expedientes que as tornaram distintas daquelas obras mais celebradas: autodestruição, canibalismo, violência extrema e morte. Assim, conclui-se que Williams desenvolve uma narrativa que explora o vazio, a quietude, o silêncio, a incompletude, a ambiguidade da vida e da morte, a cultura e as doutrinas orientais, além da metateatralidade.

The Anime Paradox: Patterns and Practices through the Lens of Traditional Japanese Theater is an examination of the form of Anime—the repeated visual, aural, and narrative conventions performed in Anime texts—exposed through a comparison with the viewing modes and formal conventions of Asian theaters, primarily Noh, Bunraku, and Kabuki. This is not to push for a “cultural” reading of Anime, to construct a “Japanese” lineage between Anime and Japanese traditional theater. Rather, it is an attempt to consider different means of approaching Anime, providing ways yet unexplored of how Anime create meaning in their texts, and how they (consciously and unconsciously) distance themselves from other types of animation, even in Japan (e.g. Sazae-san versus Evangelion), through the repeated performance of Anime’s established conventions. Instead of looking to Manga or film or other mass-produced texts, this project looks to the theater, often overlooked multi-media productions that possess viewing modes and reading styles that can provide alternative methods for readings of Anime. Anime has become a site of various significant discourses (locally and globally), but before we determine what this performance is saying, we need to consider, on a very basic level, how it is saying it and explore various means of examining it; we need to reflect on the means of expression in the performance of the Anime form, often a crucial point of aesthetic attraction itself: Anime sells locally and globally because it exhibits itself as distinctly “Anime.” The Anime Paradox is thus an effort to provide an accessible discussion on Anime form and the mechanics of the type beauty represented through it from the standpoint of a critic and long-time viewer of Anime. This examination through comparison also works in the other direction, further endeavoring to enrich our understanding of theater through Anime.

Este trabalho objetiva estudar o gênero kabuki, partindo de um panorama histórico para então comentar algumas performances recentes, como a do ator Kirk Nishikawa Dixon no filme curto “The Lion” e o denominado chôkabuki (que significa, literalmente, “super kabuki”), apresentando Konjaku Hana Kurabe Senbonzakura (“A festa das mil cerejeiras de ontem e de hoje”), com Shidô Nakamura e a vocaloid Hatsune Miku, um dos maiores ícones pop da atualidade no Japão. Discorre-se sobre a adaptabilidade do gênero kabuki e as características que permaneceram em meio a tantas mudanças: o papel do ator e sua relação com o público, o toque velado de transgressão e a inovação constante, corroborando o kabuki como um teatro popular do seu início até a contemporaneidade.

After  the  Meiji  restoration  明治維新 (1868),  Western  culture  flooded  into  Japan. This effect not only changed the political, economical and social life but also caused an enormous shock in people’s everyday life. The absolutely dominant  and  traditional  Japanese  theatre,  the  kabuki  was  no  exception  to  this tendency either. At the beginning kabuki was planned to be reformed in order to cope with the new challenges, but eventually it could not be renewed. In addition, a new theatrical genre was born in the 1880’s, which defined it-self in opposition to kabuki. The new school, called shinpa, applied several modern techniques, therefore it became extremely popular with the audience. This study focuses on the vivid competition, or even ‘battle’, of the kabuki and shinpa at the beginning of the 20th century.

В статье исследуются вопросы перспектив организационных изменений жилой среды. Исторические формы японского театра рассматриваются как модели этапов развития средообразования. Результаты статьи обосновывают концепцию органичной целостности жилой среды будущего. Системные изменения жилой среды предполагают достижение нового качества отношений «человек – среда».

Książka „Ankoku buto Hijikaty Tatsumiego – teatr ciała-w-kryzysie” prezentuje się jako wyjątkowe pod każdym względem, wnikliwe studium ankoku buto (dosł. taniec ciemności) Hijikaty Tatsumiego, wielkiego japońskiego artysty i protoplasty nowatorskiego gatunku sztuki, jakim jest buto. Stanowi ona jednocześnie niezwykle cenne kompendium wiedzy na temat genezy, rozwoju i obecnej kondycji tego wielonurtowego, złożonego zjawiska, którym fascynuje się cały współczesny świat tańca.
dr hab. Beata Kubiak Ho-Chi

Cała książka do nabycia tutaj: https://universitas.com.pl/produkt/3379/Ankoku-but%C5%8D-Hijikaty-Tatsumiego-teatr-ciala-w-kryzysie

Note: This article was published in the refereed journal Shakespearean International Yearbook *BEFORE* Alexa was recruited to become a co-general editor.

On 10 December, 1981, in the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, France, a medieval English court scene was being created by a group of French performers in eclectic costumes bursting – like Kabuki actors – through a paper screen. The scene took place on a square carpeted area connected by Kabuki-style hanamichi-bridge ramps to curtained cubicles in the four corners. Some performers sported commedia dell'arte or Noh masks, while others (including the king) were clad in royal kimonos with ruffled collars.

Asian-themed Shakespearean performance in Europe raises critical issues about cultural tourism and the identities of Shakespeare's text, Europe, and Asia. While various national Shakespeare traditions around the world also raise similar issues, the additional layer of defamiliarisation of performing Asian-themed Shakespeares for an European audience – rather than a home (Asian) audience or an English-speaking audience who often assume native familiarity with either Asia or Shakespeare – makes both Shakespeare and Asian audio-visual idioms seem at once familiar and alienated, which complicates the idea of the "original" and the "derivative."

How do new sites of performance (Europe) and a non-Asian canon (Shakespeare) affect the traffic between European and Asian identities?

Asian Shakespeares in Europe have evolved from something that is unfamiliar to something that is familiarly known at major festivals but that needs to be defamiliarised again, with Ninagawa being a prominent example.

Whether watching these performances at their places of origin or in Europe, with or without the cultural and linguistic competence to understand them fully, the audience will become keenly aware of the gap between unexamined assumptions.

Abstrak Dalam penelitian ini penulis akan membahas perkembangan kabuki menjadi choukabuki sebagai kolaborasi budaya dengan pengaruh modernisasi. Kabuki merupukan salah satu seni teater tradisional Jepang yang menggabungkan beberapa seni tari, seni peran, dan seni musik. Sedangkan, Choukabuki merupakan pertunjukan teater yang tercipta dari hasil kolaborasi antara budaya tradisional Jepang yaitu kabuki yang menyuguhkan kolaborasi antara aktor kabuki dengan salah satu diva vocaloid yaitu Hatsune Miku dan dipertunjukan secara hologram 4D. Objek penelitian ini adalah mengenai perkembangan kabuki dari zaman edo sampai munculnya choukabuki di zaman modern saat ini. Pembahasannya lebih terfokus terhadap choukabuki yang muncul dan dipertunjukan di festival Nico-Nico Choukaigi. K ata kunci: choukabuki, kabuki, vocaloid.