Between Theory and Practice: Contradictions and Substantial Effects of Shoyo Tsubouchi's Child Drama

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Notes

¹In those days, there was deep-seated prejudice against drama and actors. Not only the government but ordinary people were skeptical about drama activity and those who associated with it. People often considered such dramatic activities as acting, putting on rouge, and making an affected voice as insincerity, pretentiousness, and immorality. Actors were often referred to as “Kawaramono” or “dried-up riverbed people,” a discriminatory term referring to social outcasts. This prejudice can be attributed to several sources; however, the Confucian ideology was what lay there as the main foundation for the denial of drama. Thus, people's joy of theatre was regarded as flippant dissipation.

²For detailed information, see Fujikura 2006, 24–28.

³For the details of development and configuration of this concept, see Fujikura 2006, Chapter 3.

⁴For detailed information, see Ogino 1988, 47.

⁵See Fujikura 2006, 144–45.

⁶The Teikoku (Imperial) Theatre, which housed his later child drama demonstrations, seated 1,700 people.

⁷For the discussion of Kabuki elements, see Fujikura 2004, 116.

⁸Meiji refers to the name of the era. In Japan, after the Restoration, each era is named after the reigning Emperor. The Meiji Era starts with the Restoration in 1868 and extends until the death of the Meiji Emperor on July 29, 1912. The Taisho Era follows on July 30, and ends on December 25, 1926 with the death of the Taisho Emperor. The Meiji elite or the Meiji Era intellectuals shared a strong sense of Japan's behind-ness against the Western culture and a passionate urge to embark on a national mission to better the country. For the discussion of perspective of early Meiji Era intellectuals, see Fujikura 2006, 18.

⁹Tsubouchi even criticized these performances simply judging from the pictures taken during the production (1926a, 843).

¹⁰See Fujikura 2006, 137–38, for the metaphor of a conductor.

¹¹Refer to Fujikura, 2006, 108–9.

¹²The reporter of the pantomimed scene stated that he had revisited Tsubouchi's performance to make sense out of such questionable factors in it. He confessed that he could finally understand the effect of mimed scenes, which after a while provoked his imagination ( Oita Shimbun 1924).

¹³Mere is Mary phonetically translated into the Japanese language, while Pochi is a typical name for Japanese dogs.

¹⁴In Japanese “Waraukoto wa Dekitemo Kuchi wa Kikemasen” (Kodera 1924, 76).

¹⁵See Fujikura 2006, 76, under “The New Content: Age-Appropriate Content.”

¹⁶Sawayanagi, the principal of the Seijo Elementary School, was the former minister of education and a close friend of the Minister Okada. These facts were reflected in the freedom the Seijo and its teachers had in executing the school drama even after the school ban (Ochiai 1968, 29-30).

¹⁷See Fujikura 2006, Chapter 5.

¹⁸See Fujikura 2006, 83–84.

¹⁹For the development and nature of Gakugeikai, see Fujikura 2006,156–97.

²⁰According to Hiroyoshi Omura, the matinees at the Chuo Kokaido Hall which had a seating capacity of 5,000 and more, were packed two days in a row (Date and Omura 1926, 20).

²¹For detailed discussion of the source of Tsubouchi's age-appropriate dramatic content, see Fujikura 2006, 76.

²²Kabuki performances Tsubouchi had witnessed as a child were saturated with violent and sexual descriptions that had been principally prohibited in the capital city, Edo. See Tsubouchi, 1920a, 256–85.

²³Tsubouchi's enthusiasm for child drama was gradually undermined beginning in early 1924. See Fujikura 2006, 194–95.

²⁴For further discussion, see Fujikura, 2006, Chapter 5.

²⁵For detailed discussion on the topic of both school teachers' eclectic/arbitrary definition of Tsubouchi's theory and their use of Tsubouchi's vocabulary and rhetoric, see Fujikura 2006, Chapter 5.

²⁶Shimoda was one of the founding members of Geijutsu Kyoikukai (Art Education Committee).

²⁷Kigensetsu (February 11) used to be celebrated on the anniversary of the ascension of Japan's first legendary Emperor, Jimmu, to the Japanese throne in 660 BC.

²⁸In 1894, Tsubouchi produced pageantry with his students of the Tokyo Senmon Gakko (later to be Waseda University) during the school's spring athletic festival. As a consequence, Tsubouchi and his students became the target of harsh social criticism. For the details, see Fujikura 2006, 38–40.

²⁹For this discussion, see Fujikura 2006, 137–40.

³⁰See Fujikura 2006, Chapter 5.

³¹See footnote 8.

³²See footnote 16.

³³For example, Tousaku Miura maintained that Tsubouchi's child drama was deadlocked “because of that School Drama Ban Order from the Ministry of Education by which Tsubouchi's child drama was mistakenly identified with other school drama” (1932, 136).

³⁴As the school drama trend accelerated, there were many schools which produced large-scale extravagant public performances with admission charges. Among the many schools that stood out for their open performances, the Kuzuryu Shuga Jogakko, a vocational-technical school in Tokyo, became the case for the major government intervention. See Fujikura 2006, 191–94.

³⁵For the content of School Drama Ban, see Fujikura 2006, 200.