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454 MODERN DRAMA February and flattered him for the improvements. He had, indeed, taken the Burmese song and successfully instilled it in the hearts of every citizen. He also took an Indian word kali kuma (telling lies) and made it part of Burmese vocabulary. When Po Sein was 15 and his mother made him undergo his compulsory service as a Buddhist priest, his voice choked on the Seventh Precept: "I shall not sing, dance, or play on any musical instrument." This hurt him far more than having his beautiful, long black hair shaven. Doubtless too, this became a driving motivation for the rest of his life in art. His goal was to incorporate the epic dramas of Buddhism and present them on stage. He wanted to move the hearts of people and exemplify the virtues of the Buddhist religion. He did. By the time he had circumvented that vile prejudice between theater and religion, Burmese audiences were ready, and so were the pongyis themselves. One of them said that Po Sein had surpassed all his own sermons. By the end of this graceful book, Po Sein is an old man, of course, and much of the world knows him. The Denishawns study with him. He is invited to England to dance at the Coronation of George VI. Subtly, he sends his son, Kenneth, instead; and that is how he became a dancer. Finally, the name of the troupe, The Great Po Sein Troupe, changes to The Great Sein Troupe. Sons and wives are performers, and others are zat-ok or business managers. One leaves the book in the conviction that as long as there is the name Sein, Burma's dance will be safe. Most of all, one finds that one has spent a lifetime in the company of a Burmese family, sharing their sorrows and successes, and feeling their thoughts as one's own. FAUBION BOWERS New York University NIPPON ENGEKI BUNKASHIWA (EPISODES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE JAPANESE THEATER), by Shigetoshi Kawatake, Shinjusha, Tokyo, 1964, A5, illustrated, 419 pages. 1;500 Yen. The book is a collection of the prolific Professor Kawatake's miscellaneous articles on Japanese theater published over the past twenty years. The topics range widely from a sketchy twelve page history of the Japanese theater, which hardly falls in the category of episodes indicated in the title, to an informative, if gossipy account of the author's involvement in the postwar American censorship of the Japanese theater. No matter what issue Mr. Kawatake chooses to discuss, it becomes immediately apparent that his chief preoccupation has been the preservation of the traditional Japanese theater, particularly of Kabuki. If postwar socioeconomic changes are phenomenal, changes in the Kabuki theater are no less dramatic; not only did it survive near-extinction a little over twenty years ago, but it plunged into a new era of sudden popularity and prosperity, referred to by Japanese as the "Kabuki boomu." In true Kabuki style, Prof. Kawatake reveals an intriguing flexibility in his policies to preserve his beloved theater. In 1946 he advocated in his "Kabuki as a Classic and Its Disintegration through Development" that since Kabuki in its acting, texts and stage-sets etc. was still in a state of flux, they should freeze it into a classic and preserve it under a state subsidized system such as a national theater. In 1955 nine years later, however , in his article provocatively entitled, "The Crisis of Kabuki," Professor Kawatake first chided the theater for "having been slumbering on the comfortable pillow of its tradition," then tried to kindle it with a "new spirit, since the essence of Kabuki is to absorb and accumulate all kinds of theatrical arts." Perhaps the most fascinating of all the essays in this collection are two about 1967 BOOK REVIEWS 455 censorship of the theater, one at the end of the Edo period and the other in the postwar period by the U. S. Occupation Forces. The Confucian-oriented Tokugawa government had always looked askance at theater and tried without much success to impose numerous restrictions. However in 1841 Grand Councilor Mizuno Tadakuni began to implement an unprecedentedly severe supressive theater -policy. Three chief reasons are given...

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