ABSTRACT
A performance history of European and American plays in Japan refl ects the country’s shifting relationships to the imagined West.2 This is especially true with Shakespeare. When the fi rst kabuki adaptation of Shakespeare was staged in 1885, the play symbolically presented Japan’s desire to modernize/ Westernize the nation by introducing the sociocultural ideas of the West.3 About a hundred years later, at the peak of Japan’s bubble economy, two of the historical Shakespearean events took place in Japan. With the fi nancial support of Daiei, one of the top retailers of the time, Ninagawa brought his Macbeth and Medea to the Royal National Theatre in London in 1987. The strong yen in the late 1980s made it possible to export Ninagawa’s Macbeth to the United Kingdom in 1985 and 1987. The Tokyo Globe, which was built with a development of condominiums in 1988, brought (or ‘bought’) various Shakespearean productions mostly from Europe and North America, thus boastfully showing the country’s economic prosperity. These examples will suffi ce to show that Shakespeares on the Japanese stage, whether performed by Japanese or foreign actors, illuminate the nation’s attitudes and relationships to the ‘Western’ sociocultural values that the Bard represents.
