Notes on Eugene O'Neill in Japan

NOTES ON EUGENE O'NEILL IN JAPAN ALTIlOUGH translations of Eugene O'Neill's plays existed in Japan before 1924, none of his plays was performed on the Japanese stage until that year. It was through the Tsukiji Little Theater that the American playwright found a first hearing before a Japanese audience, and, between 1924 and 1929, six of his plays became part of the Tsukiji repertoire. The first Japanese production of any O'Neill play, Beyond the Horizon, took place in October, 1924. The Emperor Jones followed in March, 1925; The Long Voyage Home and Before Breakfast in February, 1927; Ile in February and again in May, 1927; and The Hairy Ape in May, 1929. The Tsukiji, established in 1924, was supported by a group of theater enthusiasts who represented the progressive intelligentsia in Japan and were dissatisfied with the existing conventional and commercial theater. Their aim was to encourage the production of an advanced drama worthy of the new generation, to make possible experiments in the arts of the theater, and to create for the public a permanent stage where "edifying" plays would be offered in repertory system. The Tsukiji theater was actually founded by Osanai Kaoru, poet, novelist, playwright , and scholar of the theater arts, and Tsuchikata Yoshi, actor and Osanai's young disciple. Osanai, an ardent student of Craig, had fifteen years earlier created the Ziyu Gekijo, a "free" theater devoted primarily to the realistic and naturalistic European drama. Now, under the influence of Stanislavsky and Reinhardt, whose productions he attended in Europe, he created the Tsukiji to give expression to a new theater which would ultimately stimulate Japanese playwriting and pave the way for a modem Japanese theater, free from the deep-rooted conventions and practices of the Kabuki. It is not surprising that Osanai and Tsuchikata found strong opposition to their ideas and their kind of theater; many doubted the validity of producing western drama in translation on the Japanese stage. During the period from June, 1924, to April, 1929, the Tsukiji included in its list of plays Shakespeare, all the important European playwrights from Ibsen to Chekhov, some contemporary writers such as Capek and Kaiser, modem Japanese drama, and American drama (mainly O'Neill). Of the six plays by O'Neill produced at the Tsukiji, The Hairy Ape was probably the most important one. This may be gathered from a symposium by various members of the Tsukiji group written before the actual production of the play but published shortly afterwards in Vol306 1960 O'NEILL IN JAPAN 307 ume IV of Drama and Criticism (June, 1927, pp. 88-96). Shimada Keiichi hoped that the staging of The Hairy Ape would have some positive effect on the Tsukiji actors who, he feared, were gradually losing their imagination and creativeness. He also felt that this play would reflect poignantly the emotions and the mental attitude of the middleclass intelligentsia, direct its attention to the social crisis, and point up the disintegration of the social structure based on a bourgeois culture. Thus Mr. Shimada interpreted the play in terms of social problems; he regarded "the barbarism of Yank as the product of the imminent social problems." He viewed O'Neill's fascination with abstraction and mysticism, with '1oneliness and desolation," as a sign of weakness and expressed the belief that a "reactionary pessimism" should not be allowed to interfere with the social message of the play. Mr. Shimada, who played the part of Yank, "the member of the fifth class," on the Tsukiji stage, indicated that he would try to bring out the comic elements of the play through Yank's unawareness of the cultural and social crisis and to inject humor into the self-centered action of the stoker, while at the same time being "fully aware of the propaganda value of this play on the stage." Takahashi Ikutaro, in planning the performance of The Hairy Ape, wanted to treat Yank as a man who becomes helplessly lost because he finds it impossible to become an organic part of an organized group. He intended to show how miserably "unorganized violence" can fail. He, like Shimada, stressed heavily the social implications of the play, even found...