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Memorializing Colonialism: Images of the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia in Japanese Popular Theatre
- Asian Theatre Journal
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 29, Number 2, Fall 2012
- pp. 528-549
- 10.1353/atj.2012.0042
- Article
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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.