Theater in Osaka and Kansai: A Different Flavor of Japanese Drama

Introduction

When people outside Japan think of Japanese theater, Tokyo dominates the conversation. Yet to understand Japanese theater solely through a Tokyo lens is to miss an entire world of dramatic expression. The Kansai region -- centered on Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe -- has its own lineage in puppet theater, comedy, and contemporary performance.

Historical Roots: Comedy and the Merchant Class

The character of Osaka theater is often traced back to the Edo period, when the city was the commercial heart of Japan and its merchants were a major audience for the performing arts.

Bunraku (puppet theater) has its birthplace in Osaka, and the National Bunraku Theatre, with 731 seats, stands there today. The great playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon moved from Kyoto to Osaka in 1705 or 1706 to be closer to Takemoto Gidayu's Takemoto-za theater, where he remained a staff playwright until his death. His The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703), one of the earliest domestic plays in puppet theater, revived the fortunes of the Takemoto-za. He wrote far more history plays than domestic ones, but it is his domestic tragedies, such as The Love Suicides at Amijima, that are now considered the core of his achievement.

The tradition of manzai -- the comic dialogue between a straight man (tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke) -- is also closely tied to Osaka. Manzai began as a New Year festival performance with roots traced back to the Heian period, and the Osaka style surpassed earlier regional styles in popularity during the Meiji period. Its comedians often perform in the Kansai dialect.

The Kansai Shingeki and Postwar Developments

During the postwar period, when shingeki (new theater) dominated progressive Japanese drama, the Kansai region had companies of its own. Kansai Geijutsu-za, formed in Osaka in May 1957 through a merger of three local groups, is still based in the city.

The Kansai dialect (Kansai-ben) gives the region's stage work a distinctive sound. Tokyo theater tends toward standard Japanese (hyojungo), while the local language, with its own intonation and vocabulary, is a resource available to Kansai playwrights and performers.

Osaka's Comedy Theater Tradition

No discussion of Osaka theater is complete without acknowledging the city's extraordinary comedy tradition. The Yoshimoto Kogyo entertainment company dates its brand to 1912, when Kichibei Yoshimoto bought a building in Osaka. It began as a theater business and remains headquartered in both Osaka and Tokyo.

Yoshimoto introduced a new style of manzai that spread across Japan. The duo Yokoyama Entatsu and Hanabishi Achako established the talk-centered form, and in 1933 the company brought Osaka-style manzai to Tokyo and coined the current way of writing the word (漫才). In 1959 it established its own comedy troupe, Yoshimoto Shinkigeki.

Key Kansai Playwrights and Companies

Several playwrights and companies show the range of the region's dramatic culture.

Shigefumi Fukatsu and Toenkai

Shigefumi Fukatsu (深津篤史, 1967-2014) was born in Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and began in theater with Daisan Gekijo, a student company at Doshisha University. He founded the company Toenkai (桃園会) in 1992 and won the 42nd Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1998 for Uchiyamatsuri (うちやまつり). He led the company until his death from cancer at 46.

Masataka Matsuda and Kyoto

Masataka Matsuda (松田正隆, born 1962) shows how Kansai can be a base for work about somewhere else. He was born in Nagasaki Prefecture, and studied philosophy at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. He founded the company Jiku Gekijo (時空劇場) in 1990, and later formed Marebito no Kai (マレビトの会), a Kyoto-based company, in 2003.

Several of his best-known plays are set in his native Nagasaki rather than in Kansai. Umi to Higasa (海と日傘), set in Nagasaki on a hot summer day, follows the daily life of a teacher and novelist and his wife, who has been given three months to live. It won the 40th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1996. Natsu no Suna no Ue (夏の砂の上), first staged in 1998 and winner of the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, is also set there.

Other Notable Companies and Artists

Kyoto has been the base of Dumb Type, the multidisciplinary performance collective formed in 1984, whose works include pH, OR, and memorandum. The city also hosts Kyoto Experiment, a performing arts festival held since 2010 at venues including ROHM Theatre Kyoto and Kyoto Art Center. It presents experimental works from Japan and overseas, and its Kansai Studies program researches the region in which the festival is rooted.

The region's university theater culture also matters, as the careers of Fukatsu and Matsuda suggest.

The Kansai-Tokyo Dynamic

The relationship between Kansai and Tokyo theater is complex. Critical attention, funding, and media coverage tend to concentrate in Tokyo, and artists do move between the two. Matsuda himself took up a professorship at Rikkyo University in Tokyo in 2012.

Conclusion

Osaka and the Kansai region offer a theatrical tradition that is essential to understanding the full scope of Japanese drama. From bunraku and Chikamatsu to manzai, and from Toenkai to Dumb Type and Kyoto Experiment, Kansai is more than a regional footnote to Tokyo.