Finding a Style for Presenting Shakespeare on the Japanese Stage

Authors

  • Ryuta Minami Tokyo University of Economics

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/mstap-2016-0014

Keywords:

translation, style, Japanese performance, all-female production, Ninagawa Yukio, Nakayashiki Norihito

Abstract

Japanese productions of Shakespeare’s plays are almost always discussed with exclusive focus upon their visual, musical and physical aspects without any due considerations to their verbal elements. Yet the translated texts in the vernacular, in which most of Japanese stage performances of Shakespeare are given, have played crucial part in understanding and analysing them as a whole. This paper aims to illuminate the importance of the verbal styles and phraseology of Shakespeare’s translated texts by analysing Nakayashiki Norihito’s all-female productions of Hamlet (2011) and Macbeth (2012) in the historical contexts of Japanese Shakespeare translation.

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Author Biography

Ryuta Minami, Tokyo University of Economics

Professor of English at Tokyo University of Economics. He has published articles and book chapters on early modern English drama, reception of Shakespeare in Japan and pop cultural recreation and consumption of Shakespeare. He, with Poonam Trivedi, co-edited Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia (Routldge, 2010).

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Published

2016-12-30

How to Cite

Minami, R. (2016). Finding a Style for Presenting Shakespeare on the Japanese Stage. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 14(29), 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1515/mstap-2016-0014

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Section

Articles