(from Shakespeare & Beyond, 7/ 6/ 2021.)
In a recent post on the Folger’s Collation blog, assistant curator Elizabeth DeBold shared a small set of photographs, newly added to the Folger collection, that document a 1933 Japanese production of Hamlet:
These five photos provide a glimpse of a production of Hamlet performed at the Tsukiji Shogekijo, the “Tsukiji Little Theater,” aptly named and located in the Tsukiji district of Tokyo. The theater was built in 1923 for the express purpose of staging Western (European, Russian, and American) drama, as a part of an intellectual movement away from traditional forms of Japanese theater. This movement, called shingeki, or “new theater,” in Japan sought to bring many of the new western dramatic methodologies inspired by the rise of socialism and expressionism into Japanese culture.
The photographs join other items in the Folger collection related to Shakespeare in Japan, such as this page from a 1905 issue of The Sketch, a British illustrated weekly journal. The photograph shows actor/director Otojiro Kawakami as the Ghost in Hamlet, dressed in a Japanese military uniform.
