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c h a P t e r n i n e Kabuki Is a Luxury |  British and American devils. —Slogan, 1944 Report of Heroic Deaths at Saipan Arouses Japan to Vengeance Pitch.—Slogan, 1944 [America’s] barbaric culture must be destroyed. —Dancer-choreographer Itō Michio, 1944 N ew Year 1944 presented a discordant double image of theater in Japan. When stores and offices reopened in early January, holiday celebrants flooded into entertainment districts in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. On the surface, theater had recovered from the Depression years. Citizens craved entertainment. It was wartime and many had extra money to spend. Some seventy-five urban theaters were jam-packed, up to 130 percent capacity regardless of fire laws. Most theaters ran programs daily. In Tokyo, seventeen large theaters in downtown Ginza, Shinbashi, and Nihonbashi offered matinee and evening programs of three or four plays each. In the Asakusa entertainment district, forty-two small theaters served up gaudy programs of women’s sword drama, vaudeville, musical shows, domestic comedy, samurai drama, and, occasionally, kabuki for Tokyo ’s unwashed. The Shōchiku Corporation alone owned fourteen theaters and movie houses in Asakusa.1 In the Kansai area, fifty-four kabuki programs were staged during 1944, a remarkable increase over the 1930s. Some months eleven out of Osaka’s twelve theaters were showing kabuki. Most theaters there were small and modest, like the Nishijin Gekijō in Kyoto and the Benten-za and Nanbō Gekijō in Osaka. Half were under Shōchiku control, and half were independent or managed by the Tōhō or nonaligned theatrical companies. Kabuki was less formal in Kansai, and actors (and actresses) from several genres often played together. Audiences especially patronized theaters where traveling troupes offered a Kabuki Is a Luxury | 263 constantly changing menu of light entertainment (kei goraku) or, as it was also called, entertainment for the masses (taishū goraku). However, these large New Year audiences disguised the fact that commercial theater was about to enter a profoundly troubling period caused by the crushing burdens of the war. The leaders of the war knew, and alert citizens sensed, that Japan’s military situation was becoming unglued. In early February , the Tōjō cabinet registered profound shock at “the total annihilation of Japanese forces” in the Marshall Islands in just four days of fighting. As the Foreign Ministry’s semi-official newspaper, the Nippon Times, said, the total garrison of 6,500 men perished, but only “after launching a final, valiant charge and inflicting staggering losses.”2 The Bureau of Information announced that theaters and movie houses in Tokyo would remain dark for three days to honor the Crushed Jewels.3 Under the pressure of these unacceptable losses, newspapers began to name Japan’s military “reverses”: Guadalcanal, Tulagi, the Gilbert Islands, the Mariana Islands, the Caroline Islands, New Guinea, New Britain, Rabaul, Attu, and, now in 1944, Eniwetok, and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. On February 22, the Asahi newspaper candidly announced, “The war situation has arrived at our gate,” and dared to ask the unaskable question “Will we win or will we lose?” The Americans had breached Japan’s so-called Outer Perimeter, the article noted, and then asked, “Will the Tōjō cabinet’s Inner Line Defense Tactic (naisen sakusen) stop the enemy?”4 An article the same day in the Mainichi newspaper rebuked the government for relying on spiritual strength to defeat American ships and tanks: “Bamboo spears won’t do it. Aircraft will. Carriers will.”5 Tōjō ordered the offending papers confiscated. Most Japanese understood their patriotic duty lay in supporting the imperial state. But was this new public questioning of military policy a sign of undercover resistance to the war? As strange as it may seem, the emperor and his courtiers in the Imperial Household Agency were constantly worried that dissatisfied citizens might revolt against the imperial realm.6 The Minister of Justice reported to a special Diet committee that the “ideological situation” of the nation was “quite sound and satisfactory. . . . Proper restrictions over thought and vigorous action against thought crimes are quite indispensable for the achievement of the goal of the hallowed war. Fortunately, more than two years since the outbreak of the current war we find the domestic ideological situation quite unruffled and quiet.”7 This statement was far from reassuring . It implied domestic tranquility was not a natural condition but required repressive measures by the Thought Police. [18.119.131.178] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 15:23 GMT...

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