The Man Who Saved Kabuki: Faubion Bowers and Theatre Censorship in Occupied Japan

Author’s Introduction

xv Author’s Introduction When looking at photographs of Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the time that he was known as SCAP, one sees next to him a tall, aristocratic-looking young man. He is dressed in military uniform and hat, his mouth drawn tight, and his face rather serious. His name is Faubion Bowers, a twentyeight -year-old army major when he arrived in Japan. He served as MacArthur ’s aide-de-camp and as his interpreter during the early Occupation. Bowers lived in one of the apartments at the foot of the American embassy in Tokyo’s Akasaka section, which is where MacArthur was domiciled , and he was assigned a small office next to MacArthur’s at General Headquarters (GHQ) in the Dai-Ichi Insurance Building (Dai-Ichi Seimei Biru). They rode together to and from the embassy and office. Without Bowers’s permission, even high members of the Japanese government or top-ranking GHQ officers could not meet with the general. Bowers worked both as translator and as MacArthur’s secretary, so he took part in many of postwar Japan’s historical incidents, including the first meeting between Emperor Hirohito and MacArthur. But the reason that Bowers’s name is remembered is for more than his job as MacArthur’s aide. He was the man who saved kabuki. He was a kabuki connoisseur and scholar who knew more about this theatre than most Japanese. Few kabuki actors do not know his name. As MacArthur’s GHQ Occupation policies got under way, kabuki was quickly banished because it was deemed an obstacle to the democratization of Japan. Its appreciation of feudal virtues, such as loyalty to one’s lord, seppuku (or harakiri), and revenge were beyond the pale. In fact, two-thirds of the available kabuki scripts, including classical dramas, dances, and modern kabuki (shin kabuki), were forbidden. It was Faubion Bowers who was responsible for their revival. This highly placed young man opposed MacArthur’s cultural policies and overturned those that had controlled kabuki for two years. It is a historical irony that working for GHQ was an ambivalent young American who served two flags, that of America and that of kabuki. The irony was that he saved the 350-year-old kabuki from imminent death while simultaneously protecting America from the stigma xvi Author’s Introduction of being the destroyer of one of Japan’s traditional and precious cultural treasures. Remove Bowers from the early days of the Occupation and you would not be able to speak of the kabuki we know today. Who knows what would have happened if there had not been someone of his sympathy and knowledge? Kabuki’s existence might have been prolonged for a time, but it would have taken many years before it was restored to its prior state, and it would not have been able to avoid a change in its character. In this sense, we can only be grateful that this young kabuki lover served in America’s Occupation forces and, moreover, held a high position as MacArthur’s aide. In May and December 1997, I visited Faubion Bowers in New York. He rewound the film of his Occupation memories from fifty years earlier, zooming in and out on plays he had released from censorship. What kind of scenes came into focus? The film of his memory had dulled over the years, but the vague images that arise dance clearly in my eyes. h ,H I first became interested in this project in the early spring of 1996, when my friend, actor-director Hori Teruhiko, asked me if I knew Faubion Bowers. Bowers had done the simultaneous translation for a play in which Hori acted in New York. Hori told me about some of the circumstances in which, when GHQ banned kabuki, Bowers had lifted the censorship. At the time, I had no knowledge about any of these events. To me, born in 1946, the history of the Occupationwhich ran from 1945 to April 28, 1952, when it ended with the signing of the peace treaty in San Franciscowas fairly close to my own history. Whatever I may have learned of it in grade school seems to have made little impression. When I heard Hori’s story, though, I thought that researching kabuki censorship would be a good chance to learn about the Occupation years, a good way to fill in the blanks in my own history. I already had been thinking that I wanted to learn...