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Performance, Mourning and the Long View of Nuclear Space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
In their responses to the Fukushima disaster, artists may struggle with the problem of representing these calamitous events in ways that connect meaningfully with audiences. Related to this is the durational experience of nuclear catastrophe; how can theatre deal with the long term effects of radiation? Some plays have tackled these issues realistically, whereas others explore the disaster in more existential ways. In this essay I discuss two such works, Hirata Oriza's Sayonara (2011 version) and Okada Toshiki's Jimen to Yuka (Ground and Floor, 2013) to show how these plays depict the “swarm of ghosts” in the irradiated landscape around Fukushima. Peggy Phelan's notion of mourning is used to reflect on theatre's capacity to embody the wider dimensions of human suffering after Fukushima.
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References
Notes
1 Richard Lloyd Parry, “Ghosts of the Tsunami”, London Review of Books, vol. 36, no. 3, 6 February 2014, pp. 1-11. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
2 See for example, “Abe Tries to Speed Up Fukushima Recovery”, The Japan Times, 21 December, 2013. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
3 Peggy Phelan, Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories, London and New York, Routledge, 1997, p. 4.
4 Peter Eckersall, Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan: City, Body, Memory, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2013, pp. 15-36 and 96-7.
5 A heterotopia is described by Foucault as a mirror of utopia; in some senses it is a space of possibility. “As a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live, this description could be called heterotopology.” Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces and Heterotopias”, Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité, October 1984, p. 4.
6 Benjamin Wihstutz, “Introduction”, in Erika Fischer-Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz (eds.), Performance and the Politics of Space: Theatre and Topology, London and New York, Routledge, 2013, pp. 3-4.
7 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
8 The exclusion zone was at 20 kilometres as of December 2013.
9 Hirata Oriza, Hirata Oriza no Shigoto: Gendai Kōgo Engeki no Tame ni, Tokyo, Banseisha, 1995.
10 Hirata Oriza, “About our Robot/Android Theatre”, Comparative Theatre Review, vol.11, no. 2, March 2012, p. 29.
11 The robot theatre project was founded, in 2009, by Seinendan theatre director and playwright Hirata Oriza and Ishiguro Hiroshi, from the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University. They produce plays using human and robots actors. See here.
12 See “Geminoid F”. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
13 Hirata Oriza, Sayonara (with coda), unpublished manuscript, 2011, unpaginated.
14 Hirata, Sayonara.
15 Tōson was a novelist and poet who in his later work was a key exponent of Japanese naturalism. Hirata is likely responding to this awareness in citing Tōson here. As I argue elsewhere, Hirata's plays are concerned with debates about naturalism and modern theatre in Japan. See Peter Eckersall, “Hirata Oriza's Tokyo Notes and the New Modern”, in Denise Varney, Peter Eckersall, Chris Hudson and Barbara Hatley, Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific, London and New York, Palgrave, 2013, pp. 64-78.
16 See also Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”, in David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (eds.), The Cybercultures Reader, London and New York, Routledge, 2000, pp. 291-324 [originally published 1987].
17 Hirata Oriza and Ishiguro Hiroshi, “Sayonara: Android-Human Theatre”, after-talk, Victorian Arts Centre, 25 August 2012.
18 See Peter Eckersall, “‘Youth is not the only thing that passes at sonic speed’: Speed and Private Lives in Okada Toshiki's The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise”, in Varney, Eckersall, Hudson and Hatley, Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific, pp. 112-25.
19 Okada Toshiki and Iwaki Kyoko, “Synopsis”. Retrieved 9 February 2014, from jimen.chelfitsch.net/en/information.
20 Okada and Iwaki, “Synopsis”.
21 Okada Toshiki and Iwaki Kyōko, “Toshiki Okada Ground and Floor Interview”, 2013, p. 3. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
22 Okada and Iwaki, “Interview”, p. 6.
23 Okada Toshiki, “Ground and Floor”, translated by Ogawa Aya, unpublished manuscript, 2013, unpaginated.
24 Okada, “Ground and Floor”.
25 Okada, “Ground and Floor”. The hiragana syllabary mentioned here is a basic component of the Japanese writing system and is learnt by young children.
26 Okada and Iwaki, 2013, n.p.