Hirata Oriza’s Quiet Theatre Poetics: Citizens of Seoul and Citizens of Sao Paulo

Yoshiko Fukushima

Hirata Oriza’s Quiet Theatre Poetics: Citizens of Seoul and Citizens of Sao Paulo

Journal of Modern English Drama
Abbr : JMBARD
2014, 27(1), pp.249-287
Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Yoshiko Fukushima ¹

¹University of Hawaii at Hilo

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In late November 2013, soon after he resigned the position of Special Advisor appointed by Kan Naoto, the second Prime Minister of the Democratic Party of Japan, Japanese playwright and theatre director Hirata Oriza shifted his focus from the language of politics to the language of theatre and staged five anti-war plays of the Citizens of Seoul series—Citizens of Seoul, Citizens of Seoul 1919, Citizens of Seoul 1929, Citizens of Seoul 1929: Graffiti, Citizen of Seoul 1939: The Contrapuntal Music of Love, and Citizen of Sao Paulo—in Tokyo. It was a reckless project to stage five plays alternatively for five weeks, including the ten-hour-long production of four plays of the Seoul series. Focusing on the first and fifth plays of the series, this paper examines Hirata’s unique theatrical poetics, Contemporary Colloquial Theatre/Quiet Theatre, which has germinated with his Korean trilogy written in the late 1980s and established in the first play of the series, Citizens of Seoul (1989). The series narrates the history of a Japanese family running a stationary store in wartime Seoul and Sao Paulo, spanning 1909 to 1939. In each play, daily conversation among the Japanese settlers just continues without climactic moments, and the play ends without a conclusion. Nevertheless, the series draws out their covert war collaboration and racism hovering deeply in the mind of the Japanese people. The series is obviously a challenge for Hirata to deliver a trans-historical and political message in plain language for young Japanese neo-nationalist conservatives emerging since the late 1990s.

KEYWORDS

Hirata Oriza, Citizens of Seoul, contemporary Japanese drama, Japanese colonialism, Orientalism

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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