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  • Introducing Yōji Sakate
  • Toshiyuki Ohwada

Dubbed by the New York Times as “one of Japan’s most daring directors,” Yōji Sakate is an award-winning playwright, director, and founder of the Tokyo-based theater company Rinko-gun. Born in 1962 in Okayama prefecture, Sakate studied Japanese literature at Keio University before starting Rinko-gun in 1983. His awareness of social and political issues is evident in his earliest works; Kamu Auto (Come Out, 1989) delves into homosexuality, which was still a taboo topic in Japan, and the “garbage problem” of the metropolis is scrutinized in Buresuresu (Breathless, 1991), for which he was given the prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award.

Sakate is a recipient of numerous major theater and literature awards. In 1999, he received the Yomiuri Theater Award for dramatizing Tenno to Seppun (Emperor and the Kiss), a non-fiction account written by Kyoko Hirano about film censorship during the US Occupation of Japan after World War II. Sakate toured extensively in the US and Europe with Yaneura (Attic, given the Kinokuniya Theatre Award and the Yomiuri Prize for Literature), which grapples with the recently growing issue in Japan called “hikikomori,” or the socially “withdrawn” people who stay in their rooms and refuse any contact with the outside world—a contemporary Japanese version of Bartleby, so to speak. Darumasan ga Koronda, a drama about landmines, won the Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award and the Asahi Performing Arts Award.

It is noteworthy that Sakate has written and directed a couple of whale-related plays throughout his career. Kujira no Bohyo (Epitaph for the Whales, 1993) takes an incisive look at the whaling culture in Japan, and the reading of the script took place at La MaMa Theatre in New York City in 1999. He also collaborated with the actors of Indonesia to create Nanyo Kujira Butai (Whalers in the South Seas) in 2000. So it was quite natural for Sakate to produce Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick on stage as an artistic director, inviting SITI Company founder and long-time friend Leon Ingulsrud to direct the play in 2001. One of the most sought-after playwrights overseas, Sakate’s works have been translated and performed in over ten languages. He is well respected by his colleagues around the world, currently serving as the president of the Japan [End Page 106] Playwrights Association and also serving on the boards of the Japan Directors Association and the Japanese Center of International Theatre Institute.

“The Account of the Director of T Hospital,” read by Sakate at the Tenth International Melville Conference, was expanded and included in his play Bartlebies, which integrated the personal and social history of Japan since World War II. Bartlebies was first staged at Suzunari Theater in Tokyo, Aug. 24-Sept. 9, 2015. [End Page 107]

Toshiyuki Ohwada
Keio University
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