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Reviewed by:
  • The War of the Rosesdir. by Kimura Ryunosuke
  • Kitamura Sae
The War of the RosesPresented at Theater Fushikaden, Tokyo, Japan. 07 25– 08 12, 2019. Directed by Kimura Ryunosuke. Stage management by Watanabe Yuta. Music by Yuji Rerure Kawaguchi, Tsuruzawa Kanya, and Tsuruzawa Tsugahana. Sound by Ozono Koji. Set design by Norimine Masahiro. Lighting by Ito Takashi. Translation by Matsuoka Kazuko. With Kochi Yamato (Exeter/Charles/Talbot/Suffolk/Richard III), Maimi (Margaret/Richmond/Anne/Young Duke of York/others), Iwasaki Mark Yudai (Rose/Edward IV/Shakespeare/others), Suzuki Akinori (Henry VI/Alençon/Clarence/2 ndDuke of Buckingham/others), Miyamoto Yuko (Eleanor/Queen Elizabeth), Osanai Erika (Joan/Duchess of York/others), Otsuka Kojiro (Duke of York/Rivers/others), and others.

Kakushinhan, a company based in Tokyo, performed its first production in 2012 and has specialized in Shakespearean theater ever since. Kimura Ryunosuke, the company's director, directed the War of the Rosescycle, its four-part six-hour version of the Henry VIand Richard IIIplays, with Kakushinhan at Theater Fushikaden from May 6–31, 2016. This production was a fringe hit; Fushikaden can house approximately 100 spectators, and approximately 2700 people saw this production, although perhaps many saw only the last part ( Richard III).

Three years after the first attempt, Kimura Ryunosuke and Kakushinhan restaged The War of the Rosesat the same theater with the same leading actors. With a running time of over seven hours (approximately 4.5 hours for Henry VIand 2.5 hours for Richard III), this was not a revival but a new production. As with Simon Godwin, who directed two different but equally satisfying versions of Hamletfor the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2016 and for the Bunkamura Theater Cocoon in 2019 (reviewed in SB37.4), Kimura is accomplished at exploring the same plays in different directions over relatively short intervals of time, and audience members are sometimes surprised by the amount of experimentation evident in both directors' latter productions.

Since its launch, Kakushinhan's primary aim has always been to make Shakespeare more relatable to a modern Japanese audience. The 2019 production of The War of the Rosestried to create post-Ninagawa Japanese-style Shakespeare without ostentatious self-Orientalism. Kakushinhan's "Japan" is raw, energetic, and seamlessly connected to the culturally hybrid, constantly changing twenty-first-century Japanese society in which the audience lives, and it is stylistically different from the carefully crafted, distinctively imaginative "Japan" created by the late Yukio Ninagawa. The set for the 2019 production of The War of the Roseswas a bare, monochrome stage with folding chairs. In Richard III, a white paper curtain was used as a backdrop and torn down during the play. As in previous productions, there was a drum pit below the left side of the stage where Yuji Rerure Kawaguchi provided percussion. In addition to Kawaguchi, Tsuruzawa Kanya and Tsuruzawa Tsugahana, two gidayumusicians, recorded shamisenmusic for the production; gidayuis a genre of traditional Japanese theatrical music, and shamisenis a sitar-like Japanese string instrument. While the drum performance accompanied energetic scenes, shamisenwas used to symbolize Henry VI's quiet inner conflict.

Most actors wore modern clothes with hints of historical flavor. Female characters were clad in showy European dresses, while some characters appeared on the stage with modern props, such as a Nike jacket. The [End Page 149]characters belonging to the York faction wore white, those belonging to the Lancaster faction wore red, and the French wore blue, enabling the audience to distinguish between characters by the colors of their clothes.

On occasion, actors who played multiple roles had to change their costumes quickly in front of the audience, leading to intentional laughter, which was part of the production's ongoing deployment of the Brechtian estrangement effect during the Henry VIsegments to comment on the absurdity of the war. In the famous rose-picking scene, Iwasaki Mark Yudai, one of the leading actors of the company, played the silent "Rose." In this role, he simply appeared as a rose bush and toyed with a smart-phone, completely disinterested in the intense conversation happening around him. This...

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