Understanding Shanghai Bansuking: A Kishida Prize-Winning Masterpiece by Ren Saito

Introduction

Few plays in the history of modern Japanese theater have achieved the enduring popularity of Shanghai Bansuking (上海バンスキング, Shanghai Bansukingu) by Ren Saito (斎藤憐, 1940--2011). Awarded the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, this musical drama about Japanese jazz musicians in prewar Shanghai has become one of the most frequently revived plays in the Japanese repertoire, beloved by audiences for its exuberant musicality, its colorful characters, and its bittersweet evocation of a lost world.

The play's original production by the legendary On Theatre Group (オンシアター自由劇場) under the direction of its charismatic leader became a cultural phenomenon that transcended the boundaries of the theater world. Its combination of live jazz performance, romantic melodrama, and historical sweep captured something essential about the Japanese imagination's relationship with the cosmopolitan dream that Shanghai represented in the early twentieth century.

The Historical Setting: Jazz in Shanghai

Shanghai Bansuking is set in the international settlement of Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s, a period when the city was one of the most cosmopolitan places on earth. The international settlement, governed by foreign powers, was a meeting point for cultures from around the world, and its nightlife -- the cabarets, dance halls, and jazz clubs -- became legendary.

Japanese musicians were part of this vibrant scene. Despite (and sometimes because of) the complex political relationship between Japan and China, Japanese jazz musicians found in Shanghai a freedom and cosmopolitanism that was increasingly difficult to experience at home as Japan moved toward militarism. The city offered a space where art could flourish outside the constraints of national ideology, where musicians could play the music they loved without worrying about its origins in enemy cultures.

Saito's play captures this world with vivid detail and genuine affection. The musicians at the center of the story are not political figures or historical actors; they are artists pursuing their passion in a place that allows them to do so. The tragedy of the play lies in the fact that this freedom is temporary, that the forces of history will eventually destroy the cosmopolitan paradise that Shanghai represents.

Plot and Characters

The play follows a group of Japanese jazz musicians who have come to Shanghai to play in the city's vibrant nightclub scene. At the center of the story is a talented but dissolute trumpet player whose love of music is matched only by his talent for self-destruction. Around him orbit fellow musicians, nightclub owners, Chinese friends and lovers, and various expatriates who have washed up in Shanghai's anything-goes atmosphere.

The title itself offers a clue to the play's tone and world. "Bansuking" (バンスキング) is Japanese slang derived from the English word "advance" -- referring to the practice of taking an advance on one's salary, essentially living on borrowed money and borrowed time. The musicians of Shanghai Bansuking are all, in one way or another, living on advances -- not just financial but existential, enjoying a freedom and pleasure that has been borrowed against a future that will inevitably demand repayment.

As the political situation deteriorates -- Japan's invasion of China deepens, World War II approaches -- the musicians' paradise begins to crumble. The play traces the gradual destruction of their world with a mixture of comedy and pathos that is one of Saito's greatest achievements. The musicians respond to the approaching catastrophe not with grand gestures of resistance but with the only thing they know how to do: they keep playing.

Music as Dramatic Element

What sets Shanghai Bansuking apart from conventional historical drama is the central role of live music in the production. The actors are required to be genuine musicians, capable of performing the jazz standards and original compositions that punctuate the action. This is not a play with incidental music; it is a play in which music is the primary language of emotional expression.

The jazz performances serve multiple dramatic functions. They establish the historical and cultural milieu with an immediacy that no amount of exposition could achieve. They express the characters' inner lives -- their joy, their longing, their despair -- in ways that dialogue alone cannot. And they create a theatrical experience that is sensory and visceral as well as intellectual and emotional.

The choice of jazz as the play's musical language is also thematically significant. Jazz is, by its nature, a music of freedom, improvisation, and cross-cultural exchange. It is music that refuses to respect boundaries -- between high and low culture, between races and nations, between composition and spontaneity. In the context of the play, the musicians' commitment to jazz becomes a quiet but powerful form of resistance against the forces of nationalism, militarism, and cultural purity that are closing in around them.

The live performance element also means that no two productions of Shanghai Bansuking are quite the same. The improvised passages, the variations in musical interpretation, and the energy that live music brings to a theatrical space all contribute to making each performance a unique event. This ephemerality is itself thematically appropriate for a play about the transience of beauty and freedom.

Nostalgia and Historical Memory

Shanghai Bansuking is, among other things, a work of theatrical nostalgia -- but it is nostalgia of a particularly complex and self-aware kind. The play does not simply romanticize the past; it examines the act of romanticization itself, asking why we feel drawn to certain historical moments and what our nostalgia reveals about our present dissatisfactions.

The Shanghai of the play is presented as a paradise, but it is a paradise built on colonialism, exploitation, and inequality. The freedom that the Japanese musicians enjoy is made possible by the very power structures that will eventually destroy it. Saito does not shy away from this contradiction; indeed, it is central to the play's emotional and intellectual power. The audience is invited to love this world while understanding that it was never as innocent as it appears.

This complexity elevates Shanghai Bansuking above simple nostalgia. The play asks us to consider what we lose when cosmopolitan spaces are destroyed by nationalist forces, while also acknowledging that those cosmopolitan spaces were themselves products of imperialism. This refusal to simplify -- to make Shanghai either purely wonderful or purely problematic -- gives the play a moral sophistication that accounts for much of its enduring appeal.

The Kishida Prize and Cultural Impact

The Kishida Prize committee's recognition of Shanghai Bansuking acknowledged a play that had already demonstrated its power to move audiences. The award validated Saito's achievement in creating a work that was both artistically ambitious and genuinely popular -- a combination that is always rare and always valuable.

The play's cultural impact extended far beyond the theater. It sparked a renewed interest in the history of Japanese jazz and in the cosmopolitan culture of prewar Shanghai. It inspired films, novels, and musical recordings, and it contributed to a broader cultural conversation about Japan's relationship with its Asian neighbors and with its own past.

The original On Theatre Group production, which ran for an extraordinary number of performances, became a touchstone for Japanese theater audiences. For many, it represented the ideal of what Japanese theater could be -- emotionally generous, musically alive, intellectually engaging, and deeply entertaining. Subsequent revivals have continued to attract large and enthusiastic audiences, confirming the play's status as a modern classic.

Why the Play Endures

The enduring popularity of Shanghai Bansuking can be attributed to several factors. First, its central subject -- musicians playing the music they love in the face of historical catastrophe -- has a universal emotional resonance that transcends cultural boundaries. The idea that art persists even when the world that produced it is being destroyed speaks to something deep in the human spirit.

Second, the play's theatrical form -- the combination of live music, dramatic narrative, and historical setting -- creates an experience that is uniquely satisfying. Audiences do not merely watch a play; they attend a concert, a history lesson, and a love story all at once. This richness of experience keeps audiences returning to the play even when they know the story by heart.

Third, the play's thematic complexity -- its refusal to simplify either the pleasures or the problems of the world it depicts -- gives it a depth that rewards repeated viewing. Each encounter with Shanghai Bansuking reveals new layers of meaning, new resonances with the audience's own historical moment.

The play has also had a significant practical impact on Japanese theater production. Its demonstration that live music could be integrated into dramatic performance -- not as accompaniment but as an essential dramatic element -- influenced many subsequent productions. Theater companies across Japan have experimented with incorporating live musical performance into their work, and the success of Shanghai Bansuking showed that audiences would embrace this approach enthusiastically.

Saito's achievement with Shanghai Bansuking also demonstrates the power of theater to create historical empathy -- to transport audiences into a past world and make them feel, rather than merely know, what that world was like. In an era dominated by digital media and virtual experiences, the irreplaceable quality of live theater -- the shared physical presence of performers and audience, the ephemeral nature of each performance, the visceral impact of live music -- gives Shanghai Bansuking a power that no recording or adaptation can fully capture. It remains a testament to what theater, at its best, can uniquely accomplish.

For those interested in exploring more Japanese theatrical works, including plays with musical elements and historical settings, visit our script library where you can search for scripts by various criteria.