Emperor and Kisses

[Abe' Mark Nornes]

A few days ago, Marian Moya, Jonathan Hall and I went to see _Tenno to
Seppun_, the theatrical version of Kyoko Hirano's _Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo_.
Afterwards, we had a wonderful talk about it...so interesting that Marian
and I caught our last train with less than a minute to spare. I thought
Jonathan put it nicely when he said that throughout the play he swayed
between frustration and pleasure. In the end, I think we were all glad we
went.

The play is mostly set in a single room dressed ambiguously enough to serve
as both the headquarters of Nihon Eigasha in 1945-6 and the present-day
setting for high school kids making a film based on Hirano's book. They use
the present-day frame to compare American censorship to the more indirect
ways that information is manipulated today: the nuclear incident plays on
the radio, the school announces that everyone will have to sing kimi-ga-yo
at the bunkasai event and pressures the group to stop their film. This sets
the stage for a revolt by students, barricades and all. They win, of course,
and end up projecting their film over the audience (stand-ins for the
nation) in a moment that was more Burch than Hirano!

In terms of their treatment of reality, they understandably dramatize with
abandon. Concentrating on the most spectacular events in that
period---kissing as official policy, the suppression of _Nihon no higeki_,
the "confiscation" of _The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki_---everything is played for both laughs and indignation. Thus, many
of the subtleties that are in Hirano are shaved off, certainly for pleasure,
but probably because the anger these events still inspire tends to blind
people to the complexity of the stories.

This is most clear in the treatment of the atomic bomb film, which sticks to
the usual story that has the evil Americans intent on suppressing the film
at all costs. I've written about how gossip and first person accounts have
been historically used as soap-boxes for cathartic venting about the bomb in
the book _Hibakusha Cinema_, and this is a good example of the phenomenon.
In fact, the book has just appeared here in translation, and is listed in
the program's bibliography so it shows how deep the anger runs.

In other words, it's poor history, but a good ride. Conde is presented as
the American buffoon. It's grating at first, considering what a fascinating
figure he is, but by the end you give into the
Big-Nosed-Ear-Splitting-'Merikan stereotyping. The obsequious Nichiei types
are equally stylized to dramatize the encounter between former enemies. It's
also interesting to see the hagiography at work with Iwasaki and Kamei and
Miki...all of whom deserve it.

In the end, it was basically putting New Left rhetoric into the mouths of
babes. The real Japanese youth was represented by a young woman in uniform
that strode speechlessly on and off stage (and disrobes in a rather
unnecessary scene...but then spectacle doesn't have to rely on narrative
motivation). As you might have guessed, at the end of the play she _speaks_.


Markus