Dogen's Adventure by Hisashi Inoue: Plot and Kishida Prize

Introduction

Hisashi Inoue (井上ひさし, 1934--2010) was a Japanese playwright and novelist, and Dogen's Adventure (道元の冒険, Dogen no Boken) is the play that won him the 17th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1972. Published by Shinchosha in 1971, it takes as its subject the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen (道元), and it treats him through songs and wordplay rather than as solemn biography.

Historical Context: Dogen and Zen Buddhism

To appreciate the ambition of Inoue's play, it helps to understand the historical figure at its center. Dogen Zenji (1200--1253) was the founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism in Japan. He sailed to China in 1223, trained under the Chan master Rujing (Nyojo), and returned to Japan around 1227. In 1243 he left the Kyoto area for Echizen Province at the invitation of a patron, and the monastery built there was later named Eiheiji. His principal written work, the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), runs to more than ninety chapters.

Dogen's teachings emphasized shikantaza -- "just sitting." He held that practice and realization are not separate, so enlightenment is not something to be sought apart from the practice itself.

The Play's Setting and Structure

Dogen's Adventure does not simply narrate Dogen's life in order. As summarized in coverage of the 2008 production, it opens in 1243 at Horin-ji (宝林寺), the temple Dogen founded, where his disciples are preparing a skit for the temple's seventh anniversary. Dogen has a strange illness that makes him fall suddenly asleep, and each time he has the same dream: he has become the founder of a dubious new religion and is arrested on a charge of sexual assault. The play then moves back and forth between the Kamakura period and the present day.

The play's many songs and its wordplay are central to how it works. Coverage of the same production describes a work that uses them, with cynical humor, to draw the anguish and the arrogance of a religious leader.

Inoue's Theatrical Career

Hisashi Inoue was born in 1934 in Yamagata Prefecture and graduated from the French course of the Foreign Language Department at Sophia University. While a student he became the cultural affairs and promotions chief at the France-za, a burlesque and strip theater in Asakusa, and began writing its scripts. From 1964 he wrote for the NHK puppet program Hyokkori Hyotanjima. His theater debut was Nihonjin no Heso (1969), written for Theatre Echo.

The year 1972 brought him both the Kishida award and the Naoki Prize, the latter for the novel Tegusari Shinju. Dogen's Adventure also won an Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists. Komatsu-za, the company formed to produce and perform his plays, followed in the 1980s.

Later Productions

One documented revival is Yukio Ninagawa's 2008 staging at Bunkamura Theatre Cocoon in Shibuya (July 7--28), which also played Osaka and was broadcast on WOWOW. Its cast included Hiroshi Abe, Chiaki Kuriyama, Yukiya Kitamura, Megumi Yokoyama, and Katsumi Kiba, and ten actors shared more than fifty roles.

For international readers, one caution: we could not find a published English translation of the play, although such a translation may exist. Inoue plays that can be confirmed in English include Yabuhara, the Blind Master Minstrel in Half a Century of Japanese Theater VI and Living with Father, translated by Zeljko Cipris, in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama.

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