Opinion Solely in my own dreams By Roger Pulvers	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
世界の果ては自分自身の夢の中に 演劇実験室「天井桟敷」を率いて センセーショナルな時代を駆け抜けた寺山修司が この世を去ってからすでに20年になる ___。

The month of May marks 20 years since the death of one of Japan's greatest playwrights and poets: Shuji Terayama.

I first went to Shuji's legendary theater in Shibuya, Tenjo Sajiki, in 1969. The play was his "The Crimes of Dr. Garigari," the title of which is a play on words on the title of the famous German expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." I was so taken with the theatrical images and poetic language of the play that I sat down and wrote my own first play. "The Perfect Crime of Mrs. Garigari" was published in Shingeki magazine in August, 1970.

After seeing his play, I met Shuji in the coffee shop beside the theater run by him and his mother. Subsequently I met him on a number of occasions - at his plays, film openings, etc. - but I cannot say that I knew him well. He was an exceedingly gentle fellow, soft-spoken and sensitive. I suppose, coming as he did from Tohoku (he spent his childhood in Misawa), and being prone to flights of the imagination's most bizarre fancy, I saw him as a successor to Kenji Miyazawa. In fact, Shuji not only borrowed heavily from Miyazawa but also wrote his own version of Miyazawa's short stories. He was also deeply influenced by another Tohoku poet, Takuboku Ishikawa; and his book, "Reading Takuboku," is, to my mind, the best introduction to Ishikawa's work.

Shuji was born in December 1935. His father was a military policeman who died of alcohol poisoning in Indonesia in 1945. His mother went to work at the American base in Misawa after the war. At age 18, Shuji was struck down with nephritis. He spent the next four years in and out of hospital in Tokyo and it was finally kidney disease that killed him on May 4, 1983.

He has also succeeded in achieving international acclaim for his plays, particularly in Europe, traveling with his troupe to the Festival of Fool in Amsterdam, where his following was wide and genuine. He directed films and wrote film scripts for other directors.

But perhaps he will be remembered most for his poetry, which is often about personal identity and love. In one poem, "The Problem Is," he writes:

The problem is

a pencil has no eyes.

Shuji brought a Tohoku sensibility to his writing, one which is close to nature, one that creates a sense of longing and distance in a confined space. "I came to realize," he once wrote, "that the ends of the earth exist solely in my own dreams." This could just have easily been said by Miyazawa as well.

Shuji died at the age of 47, leaving us with this: "Don't put up a gravestone for me. My words will mark my grave. That's enough for me."

Shukan ST: May 30, 2003

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