Tetsuo Kishi and Graham Bradshaw: Shakespeare in Japan

• Margaret Mehl

“Shakespeare in Japan” has been the subject of several publications in recent years, most of which cover selected aspects of this potentially vast theme, usually concentrating on stage productions. The slim volume by Kishi and Bradshaw likewise offers a selection rather than a comprehensive history or a survey of the contemporary scene. Nevertheless the authors have cast their net wider to include translations of Shakespeare’s texts, stage productions, literary works based on the plays and the films of Kurosawa Akira. The authors’ intention is to address the question: “what happened when Shakespeare’s works which belong to a long and sophisticated tradition met another tradition which was no less long and sophisticated but almost totally different, both culturally and linguistically?”

The three chapters in the first half of the book provide a reassessment of three major translators of Shakespeare’s plays, Tsubouchi Shoyo, Fukuda Tsuneari and Kinoshita Junji. Their translations are often dismissed as “unactable”, although Tsubouchi and Fukuda also produced plays and Kinoshita gave much thought to the stage production of his works. Using well-chosen examples, Kishi and Bradshaw demonstrate the linguistic challenges involved as well as wider issues of cultural translation, such as Japanese theatre traditions and audience expectations.

Seiten 440 - 441

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