Abstract:
The Tale of Genji, written around 1000 CE by a woman in the Emperor’s entourage conventionally called Lady Murasaki, has inspired countless Japanese writers. Zeami saw the novel’s passionate, possessed female characters as ideal material for the nō. In the Sandō, he called these characters “jewels within jewels” whose stories contain “a seed that is full of grace yet is capable as well of providing a proper theatrical …atmosphere that is rarely met with.” (Rimer and Yamazaki, 153) The most frequently dramatized tale is that of Lady Rokujō, whose “living spirit” leaves her body to wreak vengeance on her pregnant rival Aoi.
The story of Lady Rokujō has continually been re-invented in various historical, cultural and theatrical contexts. Four centuries after the original novel, the nō plays Aoi no Ue and The Shrine in the Fields (Nonomiya) made crucial plot changes to conform to the ideology of the times.
In her 1958 novel Masks (Onna-men), Enchi Fumiko, describes her revenge-seeking, spirit-possessed female protagonists who are specifically related to Lady Rokujō: “A woman’s love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge — an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation.” (127)
The paper will focus on three modern plays that reinvent the story, examining both shifting theatrical styles and the zeitgeist of their specific cultural/historical moments. Mishima Yukio’s The Lady Aoi (Aoi no Ue, 1954), Kara Jurō’s Two Women (Futari no onna, 1979) and Kawamura Takeshi’s Aoi (2003), written at approximately 25-year intervals, offer intriguing opportunities to interrogate how a cultural icon of the past is continually reinterpreted. What might “an endless river of blood” imply in the ever-transforming history of postwar Japan?
About the Speaker:
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, PhD (UCLA Professor Emerita) is a specialist in Japanese theatre and intercultural performance, as well as a playwright, translator and director. Her book Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan (University of Hawaii, 2005) analyzes the complex work of playwright/director/filmmaker Terayama in cultural/historical context, and includes translations of his plays and theory. She is co-author of Theatre Histories: An Introduction (Routledge, 2006; second ed. 2010; third ed. 2016), a widely used and highly praised university level textbook that offers new perspectives in Global Theatre History by presenting various theoretical perspectives and in-depth case studies as illustrations of the many ways current theatre scholars approach the subject.
In 2008, she was invited to be one of the ten original Research Fellows at the International Research Institute in Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Free University in Berlin, Germany. In 2014, the Association for Asian Performance named her a Founding Mother of Asian Theatre Scholarship; the related article appraising her career appeared in Asian Theatre Journal in 2017.She is Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal and Editor of the Newsletter of the Association for Asian Performance. She has presented over one hundred papers and keynotes at conferences throughout the world.
Sorgenfrei is the author of over thirty articles and book chapters on Japanese performance, intercultural theater, and fusion theater. These articles, numerous book and play reviews, and translations of contemporary Japanese plays appear in Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review, TDR (The Drama Review), Modern Drama, etc. and in various edited books. She also frequently contributes articles to encyclopedia.
Her sixteen original plays include the award-winning Medea: A Noh Cycle Based on the Greek Myth; the kabuki-flamenco Blood Wine, Blood Wedding; the kyōgen-commedia dell’arte The Impostor; the musical Japanese folk tale Bamboo Moon; and A Wilderness of Monkeys (a revenge-comedy “sequel” to The Merchant of Venice). She is co-adapter with Israeli director Zvika Serper of the acclaimed Japanese-Israeli fusion play The Dybbuk/Between Two Worlds. Her most recent play, Ghost Light: The Haunting, had an Equity Showcase off-Broadway in 2015. Her original plays and translations have been performed in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Denmark, India, Israel and Japan and broadcast on PBS, NHK and the BBC. In addition, she has directed nearly forty stage productions in professional and university theatres in the USA, Japan and India.
