Mishima on Stage: The Black Lizard and Other Plays by Yukio MishimaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Few people realize that Mishima Yukio was one of the greatest 20th c. Japanese playwrights. He wrote a total of 62 plays in such diverse genres as "shingeki" (Western-style psychological drama), kabuki and no. He wrote tragedies, comedies and dance drama, his language ranging from classical Japanese to the modern vernacular. In a 1995 poll, scholars and theater critics selected Mishima's Madame de Sade as the greatest postwar Japanese play.
Between 1953 and 1968, nine Mishima plays were translated into English (mostly by Donald Keene), but after that, for more than 30 years, no new translations were made. Why? Sometimes Mishima’s suicide in 1970 is mentioned, which fascinated people so much that attention was diverted from his serious work to his public image. Another reason was that the writers of biographies about Mishima ignored or misrepresented his theatrical activities. And finally, perhaps, the fact that Mishima wrote traditional theater and didn't dabble in the among critics in the 1960s and 1970s so popular avant garde theater.
Finally, in 2002 Hiroaki Sato translated five new plays for Columbia U.P. and in 2007 the present book was published with another nine translations. So now we have 23 translations of Mishima plays in English, allowing non-Japanese readers to judge the merits of his dramatic work.
The present volume includes the following plays:
1. “To the Lighthouse”
A shingeki play that brings the incest theme of Phaedra to the modern stage. The second play written by Mishima (1949) - despite its darker undertones, with its sibling rivalry it is actually a very lively and interesting play.
2. “Hell Screen”
A kabuki play (1953) based on a famous short story of Akutagawa Ryunosuke. A battle of wills between a cruel minister and a headstrong painter result in the fiery death of the painter’s daughter, while the father is forced to paint her agony. A wonderful first effort in kabuki for Mishima, employing traditional music, lyrical narration and the classical language.
3. “The Sardine Seller’s Net of Love”
Mishima’s second kabuki play (1954) and his most popular with audiences. Mishima wrote an original story (using some elements from medieval tales) that is both charming and improbable. A comedy written in an upbeat mode, the play is stylish and elegant, and – contrary to the famous plays by Chikamatsu and most other Mishima-plays – ends in laughter and good cheer.
4. “The Blush on the White Hibiscus Blossom: Lady Fuyo and the True Account of the Ouchi Clan”
A kabuki play (1955) based on Racine’s Phaedra and Euripides’ Hippolytes. The forbidden love of Lady Fuyo for her stepson (who refuses her advances) leads through her lies to disaster for both of them.
5. “Steeplechase”
A modern play (1956) written for the famous actress Sugimura Haruko (of the prestigious Bungaku-za company, which worked with Mishima in the 1950s and early 1960s, until a falling out over politics in 1963). A woman is obsessed by the memory of her son who died in a steeplechase accident. At the base of this modern psychological drama lies hidden a shamanic ritual of invocation, visitation, exorcism and banishment – as in the No theater.
6. “Busu”
An adaptation of a classical kyogen play (1957). Mishima’s only kyogen was written with the assistance of Donald Keene for performance in English – when Mishima was in New York hoping to get his modern No plays performed at Broadway and he wanted to offer a full program of two modern No plays with a kyogen in-between. The play is in fact an adaptation of a very popular kyogen about two servants who out-trick their trickster of a master.
7. “Sash Stealing Pond”
A kabuki spectacle (1958) in the style of Mokuami, without sung narration (only classical prose). Kabuki conventions are turned on their head as a mother keeps her liaison with a bandit secret so that her daughter and daughter’s lover can travel around the country as husband and wife pretending to be on a revenge quest (the bandit supposedly has killed the mother; the daughter can't marry her lover as he is too low in status, this is the solution the mother finds so that they can live together).
8. “Yuya”
A modern No play (1959), based on the classical play Yuya (which Mishima earlier on had turned into a kabuki dance drama as well). As in his other modern No plays, Mishima writes a new, modern play: he turns Yuya into the kept mistress of a business tycoon, who wants to take her cherry blossom viewing in a park he owns; she refuses, as she has to travel immediately to Hokkaido to see her dying mother. In reality, she wants to go away to meet a younger lover.
9. “The Black Lizard”
A modern play (1961) based on the eponymous novel by Edogawa Ranpo (1934), a nonsensical ("ero-guro nansensu") detective story. A famous female thief and Queen of the Underworld, the Black Lizard (in several theater versions as well as the film mentioned below played by drag queen Maruyama Akihiro) kidnaps the daughter of a jeweler in order to obtain a famous diamond. Detective Akechi Kogoro follows the trail to the lair of the thief on a remote island, where she keeps an eerie collection of naked life-size dolls. Screen adaption made in 1968 by Fukasaku Kinji with Mishima playing an interesting cameo as the statue of a Greek wrestler.
P.S. The cover is this paperback is too thin (it easily creases), but the paper is of good quality.
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