Citizens Of Tokyo

Six Plays

Oriza Hirata

Edited by M. Cody Poulton

 

6 x 7.5 inches, 360pp, 12 halftones July 2019

ISBN : 9780857425515

Rs  999.00 (PB)
$40.00 (PB)
£25.00 (PB)

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Citizens of Tokyo is the first collection in English of plays by one of Japan's most important contemporary playwrights.

 

Part I, 'At Home and Abroad', comprises Tokyo Notes which pays homage to Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), and is a serene but devastating anatomy of a family falling apart; a Kings of the Road 1980 is a slice-of-life portrait of a group of Japanese travellers in Istanbul.

 

Part II presents two comedies that satirize the politics of decision-making in Japan and abroad: Loyal Ronin: The Working Girls' Version, set in a contemporary office lunchroom, is a parody of Japan's most famous drama, Chushinguru, based on a real-life event that shook Japanese society at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and The Yalta Conference, a sly look at how Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin divided up the world at the end of the Second World War. 

 

Part III, 'Robots and Androids are People Too', presents two plays illustrating Hirata's interest in how the latest advances in science and technology are changing not only contemporary society but also performance on stage. 

 

Editor and co-translator on a number of plays, M. Cody Poulton provides a comprehensive introduction to Hirata's work and his contribution to the shape contemporary Japanese theatre has taken over the past two decades.

Oriza Hirata is artistic director of the Seinendan Theatre Company and Research Professor, COI Research Promotion Office, Tokyo University of the Arts.

 

Theatre And Performance Studies
In Performance