Crucible Bodies: Postwar Japanese Performance from Brecht to the New Millennium is a collection of essays covering a wide range of historical and theoretical topics, from Brecht in Japan to ’children’s’ bodies in postmodern Japanese performances, from the notion of beauty in contemporary cultural theory to practical and theoretical readings of more recent intercultural performances, involving not only Japanese but also other Asian theatre practitioners. It is one of the first full-length studies of Japanese performance culture written in English by a Japanese native. This work is an important contribution to the developing academic arena of Performance Studies.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1
Political Displacements: Towards Historicizing Brecht in Japan, 1932-98
Chapter 2
Images of Armageddon: Japan’s 1980s’ Theatre Culture
Interlude 1
From ’Beautiful’ to ’Cute’: A Note on Beauty in Modern and Postmodern Japan
Chapter 3
Deconstructing ’Japaneseness’: Towards Articulating Locality and Hybridity in Contemporary Japanese Performance
Chapter 4
Playing Betwixt and Between: Intercultural Performance in the Age of Globalization
Interlude 2
Fictional Body versus Junk Body: Thinking Through the Performing Body in Contemporary Japan, or Why is ancient Greek Drama Still Produced?
Chapter 5
Pop, Postmodernism and Junk: Murakami Takashi and ’J’ Theatre
Chapter 6
Globality’s Children: The ’Child’s’ Body as a Strategy of Flatness in Performance
Interlude 3
Nationalism, Intra-nationalism: Re-imagining the Boundary
Chapter 7
Mapping/Zapping ’J’ Theatre at the Moment
Chapter 8
Miyazawa Akio After 9/11: Physical Dementia and Undoing History in the ’J’ Locality
Epilogue: Interculturalism Revisited After 9/11
Bibliography
Index