Opinion

A culture of instant ruins

By Roger Pulvers

Two major theater venues in Japan are closing down, the Kintetsu Gekijo in Kansai and the Globe-za in Tokyo. Quite a few people in and out of the theater industry seem to have expressed a sense of regret on the passing of these venues. But I must confess, as someone deeply involved in the industry, I do not feel the least twinge of regret.

After all, these are just empty spaces where plays are put on, not active theater groups that perform them regularly. The loss of something that is empty, that is no longer in demand, is a double negative that cancels itself out.

I will go one step further.

The excessive concentration in this country on major performance spaces belies a flawed notion of what culture is about in the first place. A couple of years ago I had the occasion to speak with a planner, a government consultant, of one of the many new theater buildings that are going up around Japan.

"Every city in Europe has its own theater building," he told me. "So we need them in Japanese cities too, if we are going to have culture."

"But those European cities have local theater groups to perform in the theaters," I said to him. "Without the culture from the bottom up, you are merely creating symbols of a vacuous prestige."

What about the past?

The theater culture of this country has come, since the Taisho period, from small theater troupes forming — usually with a single director or playwright at the center — and creating vibrant, compelling voices that theatergoers want to listen to. The Tsukiji Little Theater did this three-quarters of a century ago.

In the 1960s and 70s, the so-called Little Theater Movement put Japanese theater on the world map, with plays by such brilliant playwrights as Terayama Shuji and Kara Juro who built their own venues: Tenjo Sajiki in Terayama's case and the Red Tent in Kara's. The striking feature of Japanese theater at that time was its wonderful variety, seen not only in works by Terayama and Kara, but also by Inoue Hisashi, Betsuyaku Minoru, Tsuka Kohei, Noda Hideki and others. These playwrights are all active today, except for Terayama, deceased now for nearly 20 years.

In Japan, as elsewhere, theater buildings do not make theater. To think so is to assume a collection of fancy pots and pans to be the main ingredients in the preparation of delicious food.

Theater culture is created by people who are passionately motivated by ideas, coming together to perform. This culture is certainly present in Japan — primarily in Tokyo — but it is miserably underfunded. This is because the bureaucrats who control the cultural budgets are the same types of individuals who fund the dams and the bridges. Add theaters to those overbuilt structures and what you end up with is a culture of instant ruins.

Japan doesn't need more venues. It needs to foster a theater culture from the bottom up. It desperately needs a national university of the performing arts, and well-funded training grounds where actors can perform new and risky works. When will the government start investing in people, not ruins?

Shukan ST: Aug. 2, 2002

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