Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 3 Number 3, December 2002
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Okamoto, Shiro; The man who Saved Kabuki: Faubion Bowers and Theatre Censorship in Occupied Japan translated and adapted by Samuel L. Leiter; Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001; 210 pages; ISBN 0-8248-2441-5; $40 Hardback; $17.95 Paperback.
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Japan had lost the war and the dream of ruling a “Greater East Asia”
had been vaporised in the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. General
MacArthur, The Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, was due to arrive and his
advance party were being entertained by officers of the defeated Imperial Army
in a tent beside the airfield. The atmosphere was heavy with mistrust, as the
victors, the vanquished and some local journalists milled about uncomfortably
sipping orange juice. Breaking the silence, a young American officer asked, in
perfect Japanese: “Is Uzaemon still alive?” The Japanese were stunned! How
could this gai-jin, this foreigner,
know about one about one of the greatest Kabuki
actors of modern times?
Faubion Bowers was a college dropout when he first turned up in Tokyo in the spring of 1940. He’d given up his studies as a concert pianist at Julliard (he had already studied with Alfred Cortot in Paris) and was bound for the Dutch East Indies on a cargo ship that just happened to have a short stopover in Japan. Wandering into what he thought was an elaborate Buddhist temple, Bowers had his first encounter with Kabuki and his life was changed forever. So fascinated was he with what he saw that he stayed in Japan for a year, teaching English to fund his regular theatrical excursions. By the spring of 1941 he was fluent in Japanese and thoroughly grounded in the complex theatrical world of Kabuki. However, the young American’s presence in Japan was causing problems, both for himself and for his friends, so he decided to continue his journey to Java to study gamelan music. When he arrived, his knowledge of Japanese language and culture aroused the suspicions of the Dutch colonial authorities, and he soon was forced to return to the United States. Fortunately, when war broke out his Japanese language skills made him extremely useful to Army Intelligence and at the end of August 1945 he was able to return to Japan as Major Faubion Bowers, interpreter and assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). MacArthur’s task, as leader of the Occupation forces, was to re-educate and democratise the Japanese according to the American model, establishing a free press, social equality, the separation of church and state and eradicating entrenched ideas of feudal loyalty, racial superiority and militarism. Understanding little of Japanese history or culture, the Occupation authorities hardly realised that what they sought amounted to the determined destruction of fundamental elements of the national psyche, which were firmly embedded in many of the cherished treasures of Japanese civilisation. Kabuki theatre was an obvious target. This popular performance tradition had emerged in the sixteenth century during Japan’s long period of self-imposed isolation under the Tokugawa shoguns (1600-1858). Throughout that time it survived and thrived by tailoring its material and methods to answer the tastes and demands of the ruling samurai class. When Commander Parry opened Japan to the West, Kabuki somehow managed to retain its popularity in spite of the fashionable new passion for all things European. It even coped with the censorship and propaganda requirements of the militarist leaders who held sway from about 1900 until their ultimate defeat in 1945--Kabuki, like any theatre form, was shaped the social and political forces of its times. Its history plays are full of loyal retainers who sacrifice their own lives or those of their wives, lovers or children as their duty to their samurai lords, while domestic plays are awash with suicides of lovers thwarted by class differences or ghastly murders prompted by jealousy or revenge. The plays are often very long, the plots are extraordinarily complicated and the manner of performance is highly stylised but it is, as the translator points out, “primarily an aesthetic genre”—an actor’s theatre in which the performer’s skill is paramount. Kabuki was never a “theatre of ideas” or in any obvious way political and, given this, it seems odd that Kabuki should be subject to censorship at all. However, it reflects a world and a set of values so deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of the Japanese and so alien to the Occupation forces that it was seized upon as a dangerous relic of a consciousness that must be destroyed.
The book suggests that had it not been for the presence of a Kabuki connoisseur in a position of power, this spectacular theatre form could never have survived. As MacArthur’s assistant, Bowers had no direct authority in matters of censorship—that was the responsibility of the Civil Information and Education Section (CI&E). However, when Bowers learned that virtually half of the Kabuki repertoire, including some of its greatest classics, had been banned he wrote a passionate appeal, published in the Tokyo Shinbun newspaper, decrying this “lethal blow to a unique theatrical art form.” His article appeared at a crucial moment and brought Kabuki back from the brink of destruction. Prominent figures from the kabuki world, actors and managements, gratefully came to Bowers for help and advice and Bowers was indefatigable in his advocacy of Kabuki. He arranged for Kabuki performances to be given for the Occupation forces and gave introductory talks to help the American soldiers understand what they were about to see. He hosted dinner parties to bring together censorship authorities with Kabuki performers in order to foster greater understanding and forge links between them. Most important of all, he persuaded authorities to allow performances of some of the contested plays and found ways to characterise their apparently feudal and militaristic qualities as fundamentally democratic. Eventually, Bowers became censor himself and used his position to insist upon full-length, all-star productions of the greatest Kabuki plays, arguing that the offensively feudal aspects of the productions would seem less so within the context of a whole work and that using the greatest performers would ensure a worthy interpretation. By the time Bowers left Japan in 1948, Kabuki’s future was assured.
This is a fascinating but sometimes frustrating book. It offers insights into a little-known chapter in the history of Japanese-American cultural relations during the Occupation period (1945-1952) and provides a wealth of detail about the effects of war and occupation upon the Kabuki world, but the thread of the story can sometimes be difficult to follow. Okamoto, a journalist, amassed a great deal of excellent material including interviews with Kabuki performers and Bowers himself as well as commentary from theatrical journals and newspapers of the time. However, the plethora of fascinating detail often proves distracting. The translator and adapter, Professor Samuel L. Leiter (himself a Kabuki scholar and editor of the Asian Theatre Journal) indicates in his preface that he has edited and re-ordered much of the original material and, judging from what remains, one can see what a challenging task that must have been. The translation tries to keep the focus on Bowers and the censorship difficulties of Kabuki leaving out, for example, discussion about the war in the Pacific and MacArthur’s meeting with Hirohito. Leiter has also added two very useful appendices—a chronology of Kabuki events from 1940-1948 and a collection of excellent plot summaries of the many plays mentioned in the text. These additions, along with the translator’s comprehensive endnotes, are hugely helpful to the general reader.
The Man Who Saved Kabuki is the story of a remarkable man who found himself in the right place at the right time. Interestingly, some of the issues raised in the book resonate with political events today as the United States, passionate as always about the virtues of “freedom” and “democracy,” once again finds itself confronted by cultures with a radically different world-view—have any lessons been learned? To the outside observer post-war Japan may seem to have been remade in the American image, but one has only to spend a little time among the practitioners and connoisseurs of the traditional arts to see that ancient Japan lives on. It is an interesting sidelight that several members of the Occupation forces (including Earl Ernst, the chief censor) went on to become important Kabuki scholars and many more became Kabuki enthusiasts, at least partly because of Bowers’ efforts.
Faubion Bowers died, aged 82, shortly after this English translation was completed. He was an extraordinary figure who travelled the world and wrote a number of books on Asian dance and theatre, but he was also biographer and foremost expert on the Russian composer Alexandre Scriabin. He was fluent in 7 languages (Japanese, Chinese, Russian, French, Spanish and Malay as well as English), and taught in universities all over the world, he also made a number of television programmes on art, music and travel but he never held a “steady job.” It is to be hoped that a fuller biography of this exceptional character will appear before too long. In the meantime, The Man Who Saved Kabuki provides a fascinating glimpse into a little-known episode in an almost-forgotten period of recent history with lessons for the culture wars of today.