On Jan. 16, Furman University hosted Kinoshita Kabuki’s Kanjincho in honor of the University’s Bicentennial, sponsored by the Departments of Asian Studies, Theatre Arts, and Anthropology. Furman was one of three stops on Kinoshita Kabuki’s Kanjincho North American tour, produced by the Japan Society.
Kanjincho is a play that reinterprets traditional Kabuki drama for contemporary theater. Founder of the Japanese theatre company Kinoshita Kabuki, and dramaturge of Kanjincho, Yuichi Kinoshita, had a modern take on the Kabuki classic of the same name. Kabuki is a traditional Japanese performing art that was developed during the Edo Period. It is an exaggerated and highly stylized form of dancing, acting, and singing that is glamorous in costume, elaborate in makeup, and extravagant in execution.
In contrast, Kinoshita’s Kanjincho’s adaptation has modern vernacular, streamlined black costuming, and sleek choreography. Featuring an amalgamation of the genres of Kabuki reshaped as an innovative act of contemporary theatre, Kanjincho reaches across borders of genre and suspends the audience in a moment of theatre magic.
The story follows a group of refugees attempting to cross the Ataka border. General Yoshitsune (Noemi Takayama), his servant Benkei (Lee V), and his men disguise as mountain priests, in order to fool the head border inspector, Togashi (Ryotaro Sakaguchi), into letting them through.
Kanjincho features a small cast of seven actors, four of whom double up and play fake mountain priests and border agents (Yasuhiro Okano, Kazunori Kameshima, Hiroshi Shigeoka, Yuya Ogaki). Playing both sides, performing traditional Kabuki, and playing a boy band, the group is brimming with talent and spirit. Though the character General Yoshitsune has less dialogue than the rest of the cast, actor Takayama’s presence looms over the play, a shadow of tension across the stage. Sakaguchi brings a sophisticated level of charisma to the role of Togashi with a tinge of humor around the edges.
Performed on a runway stage with minimal yet compelling staging, the play is kept grounded thanks to director and stage designer Kunio Sugihara. The streamlined design provides space for the enveloping dynamic lighting that, on paper, should disrupt the performance but ends up elevating it.
In the playbill, there is a note about Kanjincho from the director and founder of Kinoshita Kabuki stating, “I sincerely hope this performance will provide a small yet invaluable opportunity to reflect on the meaning of ‘coexistence.”
Coexistence and humanity across and in spite of borders is the beat that pulses through this play. Near the end, Yoshitsune’s party breaks into a pop-rap song, “Borderline,” during the emotional climax between Benkei and Yoshitsune; the lyrics speak to crossing each other’s borders. As the director acknowledges, in times where “divided” is too faint a word to describe the times we are in, and short-sighted bigotry is bleeding across borders, it is more imperative now more than ever to consider the space we share.
