Memorializing Colonialism: Images of the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia in Japanese Popular Theatre

This article explores representations of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in two examples of Japanese popular theatre. The first example is from a Takarazuka production that pre-dates the occupation by less than a year and thus aims to quell public anxieties about Japan’s impending colonial aggression. The second occurs sixty years later in a play that tells the story of a doomed romance between a Japanese soldier and an Indonesian dancer. The following essay explores ways in which each production uses Indonesian cultural imagery within a larger framework that presents pan-Asian identity as an aspect of Japanese nationalist ideology.