Techno-Tradition: A Foray into Technology-Integrated Traditional Japanese Theatre

Abstract

Traditional Japanese theatre is a broad category that usually refers to noh, kyōgen, kabuki and bunraku. These genres formed from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, and are still regularly performed. Despite the many significant roles of technologies in these genres today, their increasing presence in the genres and myriad manifestations are seldom discussed. This article is an initial examination of the presence and significance of new technologies and new media in the traditional Japanese theatre ecology, focusing on developments in the past two decades including the staging of a ‘fusion noh’ with holograms as performers, to the later kabuki and bunraku plays performed with vocaloid, as well as Virtual Reality noh. By examining select case studies and focusing on the technological aspects of traditional theatre, we hope to bring focus to a critical development in traditional Japanese theatre and open further discussions about this phenomenon. We also wish to widen discussions regarding the parameters delineating what constitutes ‘traditional’ when speaking of Japanese theatre genres.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on the article; the Shigeyama family and Oku Shutarō for permission to use illustrations of their work.

The very first draft of this article (quite different from this current version) was presented at the ‘Japan/Japanese Studies Through a Southeast Asian Lens’ Workshop at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in May 2019. We thank workshop participants for their questions and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ See, for example, Brazell (1998), Salz (2016) and Ernst (1956) for general introductions of plays; Leiter (1997) and Toyama (1963) for a specific focus on stage technologies.

² While One Piece brought in new young audiences, a Nikkei Asian Review report suggests that Shochiku Corporation also needed the show to expand its audience base to improve its bottom line, a view echoed by the Shochiku vice president Abiko Tadashi in the same report and elsewhere (Saeki, 2015).

³ Due to restrictions caused by the COVID pandemic, the show was streamed live (rather than a face-to-face live performance) on the NicoNico platform in August. It was finally opened live in September 2021 at the Minami-za, with online streaming for overseas audiences for six days. (https://chokabuki.jp/minamiza/english/)

⁴ There are two translations to the production title. The English publicity materials use ‘Three Light Sabers’ instead of ‘Three Shining Swords’ as in the Japanese version, reflecting a bias towards the original Star Wars use of a saber rather than a kabuki use of sword.

⁵ In spring 2021, the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University curated an exhibition called ‘Lost in Pandemic’ to showcase the impact of the COVID pandemic on theatre performances. The exhibition catalogue compiles extensive discussions on the impact of the pandemic on performances, including traditional theatre, in Japan (Gotō Ryūki, 2021). There are also works on the significance of ‘online’ performance, essentially the use of technologies in theatre production. This timely publication is a resource that sheds light on the importance of technology in theatre.

⁶ See Miguel Varela’s work examining ways that traditional Indonesian wayang performers have incorporated Hip Hop elements into their performances (Varela, 2014).