Ready for a sadomasochistic Japanese satire inspired by Gulliver’s Travels author Jonathan Swift?
- Troupe BAN’YU-INRYOKU to perform play, set in universe of surrealism and dreamwork where deviant servants become masters, in Hong Kong in December
- Reworking of dramatist Shuji Terayama’s experimental production features rock and opera soundtrack, striking visual imagery and fantastic machines
Japanese art and culture has long been a source of inspiration for Western artists. Since the 1850s, when Japan’s era of isolation came to an end, the craze for all things Japanese has had a huge impact on Western visual arts.
For example, Edo period (1603-1867) woodblock prints, called ukiyo-es, inspired painters including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, and Gustav Klimt – whose work led to the development of art nouveau.
We would like to make some kind of internal revolution, change or transformation, take place by using Nuhikun, Shuji Terayama’s theatrical performance as a detonator
Yet the cultural exchange also flowed in the opposite direction and has led to many of the West’s great works of art, stage and literature being reinterpreted through a Japanese lens.
Here are five thought-provoking Japanese takes on Western works, including Nuhikun, a play based on an unfinished satirical essay, Directions to Servants (1731), by Irish-born writer Jonathan Swift – best known for Gulliver’s Travels – which will be performed in Hong Kong in December.
Nagano’s Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights (1847), the Gothic novel by English novelist and poet Emily Brontë, has spawned more than 20 Japanese interpretations since it was first translated by Yasuo Yamamoto in 1932.
