[UPDATE]

Japanese Theatre Transcultural is now available in the USA via amazon.com, as well as in Japan via amazon.co.jp, and in Europe via the various Amazon marketplaces.

The book to which I have contributed with an essay on the ethics of transmission of Noh theatre in the international context is now available for purchase on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.co.jp. Japanese Theatre Transcultural: German and Italian Intertwinings, edited by Stanca Scholz-Cionca and Andreas Regelsberger, contains the contributions of eminent scholars, among which Erika Fischer-Lichte, James Brandon, and others who participated to the symposium held at Trier University in November 2009 (see my previous blog posts here and here).

Scholz-Cionca, Stanca / Regelsberger, Andreas (Eds.)

Japanese Theatre Transcultural : German and Italian Intertwinings

2011 · ISBN 978-3-86205-026-0 · 230 S., kt., ·  EUR 27,—

Japan and Italian Opera, Kawakami and Sada Yacco in Europe, Mussolini on the Kabuki stage, Brecht adapting a Japanese melodrama, a genuine Japanese Threepenny Opera by Inoue Hisashi, Heiner Müller´s Hamletmachine haunting Japanese playwrights, commedia dell´arte encountering Kyogen in hybrid masks: these and other instances of mutual perception and exchange in the theatre cultures of Italy, Japan, and Germany are highlighted in the essays of this book. It sprang from a symposium held in Trier in 2009, which brought together scholars and practitioners from the three countries to explore asymmetrical and shifting intercultural relations and their impact on theatre practices, institutions, ideologies and collective imaginaries.

Contents:

Introduction

Chapter I: Reconsidering Cultural Difference

Erika Fischer-Lichte (Berlin): Interweaving European and Japanese Cultures at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Japanese Guest-Tours in Europe

Diego Pellecchia (London): The International Noh Institute of Milan: Transmission of Ethics and Ethics of Transmission in a Transnational Context

Marumoto Takashi (Waseda University, Tokyo): Comedy and Laughter on the Japanese and German Stage: A Comparative Attempt

Chapter II: Intertwined Threads of Reception

James R. Brandon (Hawaii): Mussolini in Kabuki: Notes and Translation

Pia Schmitt (Trier / Tokyo): Early German Encounters with Japanese Performing Arts – On Hermann Bohner’s Examination of Nō

Andreas Regelsberger (Trier): The Rediscovery of Brecht’s The Judith of Shimoda

Stanca Scholz-Cionca (Trier): Brecht Revisited: Yabuhara, the Blind Master Minstrel, by Inoue Hisashi

Bonaventura Ruperti (Venice): Greek Tragedies in/and the Productions of Ninagawa Yukio

Luciana Galliano (Venice): Japan and Contemporary Opera (in Italy)

Donato Sartori (Padua): Masks: East and West Confronted

Chapter III: Present Trends

Niino Morihiro (Tokyo): Social Criticism in Japanese Theatre: The Dramatist Sakate Yōji and the Little Theatre Movement since the 1980s

Peter Eckersall (Melbourne): Dreaming of the War in Shinjuku – Kawamura Takeshi and Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine in Japan

Thomas Oliver Niehaus (Bochum): Directing in Japan

Katja Centonze (Venice/Tokyo): Topoi of Performativity: Italian Bodies in Japanese Spaces/Japanese Bodies in Italian Spaces