ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Yamanote-Jijosha’s Tempest (2015, Tokyo) to question the orientalist expectations of indigenous theatrical forms from Asian Shakespeare productions. Underlining how Asian Shakespeare adaptations are considered ‘innovative’ only when they use ‘Oriental traditions’ in theatrical form and ideological content, the chapter asks how Yamanote-Jijoshe’s adaptation resists this tendency and locates itself not in any obviously Japanese context but in the politico-historical site of European colonialism symbolised by its presentation of the shipwreck and Atlantic slave-trade. By doing so, it revisits the question of what constitutes being an ‘Asian’ or ‘Japanese’ production in the context of Global Shakespeares.
