Yukio Ninagawa: The Director Who Brought Japanese Shakespeare to the World

Introduction

Yukio Ninagawa (蜷川幸雄, 1935--2016) was one of the most internationally celebrated Japanese theater directors of his time. His productions of Shakespeare and Greek tragedy toured to major festivals and venues abroad, and he was known in Japan as "Sekai no Ninagawa" (Ninagawa of the World). Ninagawa was a director rather than a playwright, and so not a Kishida Prize recipient himself, but his career intersected with the world of Japanese playwriting. He staged plays by Kishida Prize winners, including Kunio Shimizu and Hisashi Inoue.

The British critic Michael Billington has written that Ninagawa's Macbeth, seen at the 1985 Edinburgh International Festival, "changed our whole perception of Japanese theatre," and that it showed it was possible to harmonize Eastern and Western traditions.

Early Career and the Angura Connection

Ninagawa began as an actor, joining the theater company Seihai in 1955. In 1967 he left to found Gendaijin Gekijo (現代人劇場), a group Billington describes as "agitational," and in 1969 he made his directing debut with Kunio Shimizu's Shinjo afururu keihakusa (真情あふるる軽薄さ). In 1972 he founded Sakura-sha (櫻社) with Shimizu and others. The company disbanded in 1974.

That year marked the key turning point of his career. Ninagawa moved into commercial theater with Romeo and Juliet at the Nissay Theatre, his first Shakespeare production, at the invitation of the Toho producer Tadao Nakane.

The Shakespeare Productions

Shakespeare became Ninagawa's signature achievement and the primary vehicle for his international reputation. In 1998 he vowed to direct all of Shakespeare's plays, and he directed Hamlet eight times.

His Macbeth, first staged in 1980, moved the action to samurai Japan of the Azuchi-Momoyama period (late sixteenth century). The stage was framed by a giant Buddhist altar (butsudan). Two bent old women shuffled to its doors to begin the performance and closed them at the end, and a cherry tree shedding its blossoms ran through the production as an image of transience and mortality.

His later Shakespeare took many forms. In 1999 he directed King Lear in English for the Royal Shakespeare Company, with Nigel Hawthorne. His 2003 Pericles at the National Theatre opened with refugees crossing the stage to the sound of gunfire. His 2006 Titus Andronicus used rivers of red silk in place of stage blood. In 2005 he directed a kabuki version of Twelfth Night at the Kabukiza in Tokyo, which later played at the Barbican in London.

Collaborations with Japanese Playwrights

Ninagawa's work with Japanese playwrights ran alongside his Shakespeare.

Kunio Shimizu wrote many of the plays he staged, beginning with their 1969 debut together. Shimizu won the 18th Kishida Prize in 1974 for Bokura ga hijo no taiga o kudaru toki (ぼくらが非情の大河をくだるとき). Their later Tango at the End of Winter played in Edinburgh and at the Piccadilly Theatre in London in 1991, in an English production with Alan Rickman. Billington recalls seeing the Japanese production in Tokyo without a translator and working out the play's meaning from its images.

Ninagawa also directed plays by Hisashi Inoue, who won the 17th Kishida Prize in 1972 for Dogen no boken (道元の冒険). Their work together included Musashi (2009).

Visual Language and Theatrical Innovation

Billington, noting that Ninagawa trained as a painter, describes his ability to treat the stage as a "living canvas."

Mirrors appeared in his kabuki Twelfth Night, whose stage made use of them as part of the design.

His production of Medea, first staged in 1978 and brought to Athens in the 1980s, is a clear example of his imagery. It was performed by an all-male cast, with Mikijiro Hira in the title role. At the 1986 Edinburgh Festival it played in the open-air courtyard of the Old College at the University of Edinburgh. As Billington recalls, the Chorus plucked shamisen and wheeled around Medea, their black-lined cloaks reversed to reveal a blood-red lining as she advanced on her children, and Medea was last seen flying through the night sky in a dragon-winged chariot.

International Impact and Recognition

Ninagawa's international career brought Japanese theater to audiences abroad. Macbeth played the Edinburgh International Festival in 1985, the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 1990, the Barbican in London, and, after his death, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival in New York (2018). His productions of Mishima's Modern Noh Plays went to Lincoln Center in 2005. He received a CBE in 2002 and Japan's Order of Culture in 2010.

Legacy

Yukio Ninagawa died in 2016. Billington credits him with an eclecticism that could combine a love of noh and kabuki with an understanding of Brecht and Stanislavski. His final Hamlet came to the Barbican in 2015, with Mikijiro Hira, who had played his Macbeth thirty years before, in the cast.

For those interested in the playwrights whose work Ninagawa brought to life, our script library offers a gateway to Japanese dramatic writing.