Shakespeare in Contemporary Japan

Hot Shakespeare, Cool Japan: Editorial introduction

“…37 This circumspection does not, however, preclude somewhat contrary references to Shakespeare being 'absorbed', 'assimilated', or 'received' into Japanese culture and traditions, including a sense of belatedly 'incorporat[ing Japan's] traditional arts in international touring theatre' such as Ninagawa's Shakespeare. 38 The popular notion of an affinity between Shakespeare's early modern theatre and Japan's traditional theatre, found in and beyond these volumes, perhaps helps commentators to negotiate the foreign versus local divide. Affinities identified in these works include stage structure, poetic drama, dramaturgy, audience effect, and the shared existence of 'long and sophisticated tradition[s] … almost totally different, both culturally and linguistically'.…”

“…Like other volumes, this one eschews (the desirability of) identifying unifying characteristic features of Shakespeare in Japan. 13 Before reaching these latest contributions, it might be helpful to preface them with a brief chronology of other collections and books on the topic, their wider Japanese and Shakespearean contexts. It is plausible to say that publishing collections and books internationally, in English, on Shakespeare in Japan got hot in 1990s Shakespeare studies, fed by the prosperous 1980s, economic and cultural diplomacy, increased international travel and electronic media, the internationalisation of Japanese culture generally, and Shakespeare specifically.…”

‘Something rich and strange’: Translating Shakespeare's poetry into Japanese

“…Nevertheless, with a more postmodern sense of the inherent value of translation and transmission as the foundation of much valuable human culture, it is worth stressing the other dimension to this difficulty: that '"Shakespeare in Japanese" is always an achievement, because of the great cultural and linguistic differences that have in some way to be surmounted'. 24 The challenges that face the Japanese translator are not unique, but any consideration of Shakespeare in Japanese must bear in mind the fact that 'Japanese is an isolated language, classified apart from major language families', giving it less common ground with other languages and their poetic traditions. 25 A Japanese translator has several options for dealing with English poetry.…”

“…36 The incorporation of poetic features from Western poetry was a refreshing aspect of these experiments, especially since 'new modes of expression gave rise to a new awareness of the sounds of language' such as aural patterning and rhyme. 37 Yet even in the most radical experiments of this kind, it is evident that metre could not be imposed on Japanese poetry. As Katsuya Sugiwara observes, 'given that Japanese has no system of stressing certain syllables within a word, aside from the intonation practice using sound pitch, reproducing in Japanese accentuated syllabic patterns of European languages such as English and German was a practical impossibility'.…”