This anthology is the first to survey the full range of modern Japanese drama and make available Japan's best and most representative twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century works in one volume. It ...opens with a comprehensive introduction to Meiji-period drama and follows with six chronological sections: "The Age of Taisho Drama"; The Tsukiji Little Theater and Its Aftermath"; "Wartime and Postwar Drama"; "The 1960s and Underground Theater"; "The 1980s and Beyond"; and "Popular Theater," providing a complete history of modern Japanese theater for students, scholars, instructors, and dramatists. The collection features a mix of original and previously published translations of works, among them plays by such writers as Masamune Hakucho (The Couple Next Door), Enchi Fumiko (Restless Night in Late Spring), Morimoto Kaoru (A Woman's Life), Abe Kobo (The Man Who Turned into a Stick), Kara Juro (Two Women), Terayama Shuji (Poison Boy), Noda Hideki (Poems for Sale), and Mishima Yukio (The Sardine Seller's Net of Love). Leading translators include Donald Keene, J. Thomas Rimer, M. Cody Poulton, John K. Gillespie, Mari Boyd, and Brian Powell. Each section features an introduction to the developments and character of the period, notes on the plays' productions, and photographs of their stage performances. The volume complements any study of modern Japanese literature and modern drama in China, Korea, or other Asian or contemporary Western nations.
I have so far directed two plays of Ibsen as the intercultural performance, that is, the collaboration of the modern theatre with noh, a traditional Japanese theatre, which was established as an ...artistic theatre form in the 14th century. The first production was Double Nora, based on A Doll’s House, which premiered at a noh theatre in Tokyo in 2005, and the second was Resurrection Day, based on When We Dead Awaken, performed at the Ibsen Festival in Tokyo in 2010. In both productions, professional noh and modern theatre actors appeared together in their own acting styles. At the Ibsen Conference in Tromsø in June 2012, brief scenes of the two productions were shown. But here in the present article the performances are partly described, and the interactive relationship between different acting styles of noh and modern theatre is examined. A new and difficult experiment of Resurrection Day was to try a conversation between the main noh actor and the modern actress. The experiment was possible because the performance took place not on a noh stage in a unique form but on an ordinary stage in a modern theatre. Thus, some problems involved in the intercultural performance of Ibsen are investigated.
Various conjugative plasmids were obtained by exogenous plasmid capture, biparental mating, and/or triparental mating methods from different environmental samples in Japan. Based on phylogenetic ...analyses of their whole-nucleotide sequences, new IncP/P-1 plasmids that could be classified into novel subgroups were obtained. Mini-replicons of the plasmids were constructed, and each of them was incompatible with at least one of the IncP/P-1 plasmids, although they showed diverse iteron sequences in their oriV regions. There were two large clades of IncP/P-1 plasmids, clade I and II. Plasmids in clade I and II included antibiotic resistance genes. Notably, nucleotide compositions of newly found plasmids exhibited different tendencies compared with those of the previously well-studied IncP/P-1 plasmids. Indeed, the host range of plasmids of clade II was different from that of clade I. Although few PromA plasmids have been reported, the number of plasmids belonging to PromAβ, and -γ subgroups detected in this study was close to that of IncP/P-1 plasmids. The host ranges of PromAγ and PromAδ plasmids were broad and transferred to different and distinct classes of Proteobacteria. Interestingly, PromA plasmids and many IncP/P-1 plasmids do not carry any accessory genes. These findings indicate the presence of “hitherto-unnoticed” conjugative plasmids, including IncP/P-1 or PromA derivative ones in nature. These plasmids would have important roles in the exchange of various genes, including antibiotic resistance genes, among different bacteria in nature. IMPORTANCE Plasmids are known to spread among different bacteria. However, which plasmids spread among environmental samples and in which environments they are present is still poorly understood. This study showed that unidentified conjugative plasmids were present in various environments. Different novel IncP/P-1 plasmids were found, whose host ranges were different from those of known plasmids, showing wide diversity of IncP/P-1 plasmids. PromA plasmids, exhibiting a broad host range, were diversified into several subgroups and widely distributed in varied environments. These findings are important for understanding how bacteria naturally exchange their genes, including antibiotic resistance genes, a growing threat to human health worldwide.
SUPPLEMENTARY ARGUMENT MORI, Mitsuya
THEATRE STUDIES Journal of Japanese society for Theatre Research,
2019/06/01, Letnik:
68
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
After my lecture at the conference, the discussant, Professor Yasushi Nagata, argued that the validity of the concept of “field” might be in doubt today, based on the open space performance typically ...seen at Japanese folk festivals. Instead, he emphasized the socio-historical characteristic of the site-specificity of the performance venue. I thought he misunderstood my concept of “field,” which is not a real but abstract aspect of the stage. However, it occurred to me later on that I might have misunderstood his argument as well. Therefore, I have re-examined both his and my arguments and come to realize that the site-specific aspect of the theatrical venue should also be taken into theoretical consideration with regard to the place of theater.Thus, I add the concept of “site” to the pair of “field” and “space,” but still hesitate to consider these three aspects to be on the same conceptual level. This is because, while “site” is on the level of reality, “field” and “space” are on the abstract level. Likewise, besides the pair of “hour” and “time,” I bring in the concept of “period,” which indicates the seasonal time at the performance. It definitely affects the audience's perception of the performance, although it is, again, not on the same level as “hour” and “time.”
There are three different aspects of theater to be taken into consideration: (i) the place for theatrical performance; (ii) the theatre architecture, where the theatrical play is performed; and (iii) ...the venue for the theatrical performance, regardless of whether it is originally meant for theatre. Aspect (i) requires a theoretical analysis of the place of theater, which naturally exists whenever the actor and the audience face each other. Aspect (ii) leads to the historical perspective to observe the development of the relationship between the dramaturgical structure of the play and the formal structure of the playhouse. Aspect (iii) manifests the present-day situation of the theatrical event at various venues.At the core of my theory of theater stands the triangular relationship between audience, actor, and the dramatic character. The place of theater stands at the relational line between the audience and the actor and consists of two aspects of “field” and “space.” “Field” is the conceptual characteristic, which means that we see the things on the stage as they are, and “space” means that we see the things on the stage as something else.As for the time aspect of the performance on the stage, I propose a similar conceptual pair of “hour” and “time.” “Hour” represents what is happening on the stage, which can be measured by the watch, and “time” represents the whole duration of the plot of the play. The changing relationship between these two conceptual pairs makes up the history of the theater architecture and the play to be performed there.The public evaluation of the theatrical venue depends on the valuableness of the performance there. The heavily subsidized public theater is not necessarily highly evaluated. In this regard, we need to examine the particular state of the audience as a group, “za.”
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