Events
January 2021 Workshop
“Women's Suffrage Movement or Japanese Propaganda? Performance of Japanese Drama in Early 20th Century Britain”
Time: Friday, January 29, 2021, from 5:00PM to 6:30PM (JST)
Place: Osaka University Toyonaka Campus
Arts Studies Building, 1st Floor, "Nihon B"
The event will be conducted using both English and Japanese.
The registration period for this event has ended.
Abstract:
The purpose of this presentation is to examine the work of Torahiko Kori, who at the beginning of the 20th century was the first Japanese playwright to have his works performed in the West. From the lenses of gender and politics, this presentation studies translation and distribution of Japanese literature. Kori’s Kanawa (1917) and The Toils of Yoshitomo (1922) are notable both for the way they adapted Japanese classical literature to contemporary drama and because Kori self-translated the works from Japanese to English. Furthermore, it must be made clear that while Kori’s plays came about through his interaction with the women’s suffrage movement, the productions received financial support from the Information Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as propaganda (through a recommendation from Inazo Nitobe). Kori’s theatrical plays in Britain were staged at the confluence of an attempt to create a new female image in literature and to promote the foreign propaganda policies of the Japanese government. This analysis of Kori’s activities investigates the factors involved in the temporal-spatial transfer and acceptance of Japanese literature.
