ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the concept of asobigokoro, or the idea of the playful heart or spirit in Japanese culture, to examine recent Shakespearean adaptations in Japan. This chapter uses this concept in exploring many examples from current stage productions, novels, manga, and anime in Japan. This chapter holds that asobigokoro affords Japanese adaptors and audiences the space and the strategies to challenge and critique the supposed global authority of Shakespeare as an author and as a brand. This chapter shows that adapting Shakespeare or “Japanizing” Shakespeare occurs across a range of popular, mass, and subcultural regimes. A playful lack of concern about an iconic figure, a desire through playful pseudo-mimicry to challenge as well as to entertain, marks the current way of adapting Shakespeare in Japan.
