• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.32
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• pp.489-524
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• 2016

This study examines the birth of a genre, the $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$ Misemono Opera, focusing on how it accepted and modernized Katarimono $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$. Unlike earlier studies, it argues that Terayama was clearly different from other first-generation Angura artists, in that he rebirthed the medieval story $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$ as a modern Misemono Opera. Shintokumaru (1978) was directed by Terayama $Sh{\bar{u}}ji$, a member of the first generation of Japan's 1960s Angura Theatre Movement. It takes as its subject the Katarimono $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$ Shintokumaru, a story set to music that can be considered an example of the modern heritage of East Asian storytelling. $Sekky{\bar{o}}$ Shintokumaru is set in Tennoji, Japan. The title character Shintoku develops leprosy as a result of his stepmother's curse and is saved through his fiancee Otohime's devoted love and the spiritual power of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. In this work, Terayama combined the narrative style of $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$ with J.A. Caesar's shamanistic rock music and gave it the subtitle 'Misemono Opera by $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$'. He transforms its underlying theme, the principle of goddesses and their offspring in a medieval religious world and the modori (return) instinct, into a world of mother-son-incest. Also, the pedestrian revenge scene from $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$ is altered to represent Shintokumaru as a drag queen, wearing his stepmother's clothes and mask, and he unites sexually with Sensaku, his stepbrother, and ends up killing him. The play follows the cause and effect structure of $Sekky{\bar{o}}bushi$. The appearance of katarite, a storyteller, propelling the narrative throughout and Dr. Yanagida Kunio is significant as an example of the modern use of self-introduction as a narrative device and chorus. Terayama $Sh{\bar{u}}ji^{\prime}s$ memories of desperate childhood, especially the absence of his father and the Aomori air raids, are depicted and deepened in structure. However, seventeen years after Terayama's death, the version of the play directed by Ninagawa Yukio-based on a revised edition by Kishida Rio, who had been Terayama's writing partner since the play's premier-is the today the better-known version. All the theatrical elements implied by Terayama's subtitle were removed, and as a result, the Rio production misses the essence of the diverse experimental theatre of Terayama's theatre company, $Tenj{\bar{o}}$ Sajiki. Shintokumaru has the narrative structure characteristic of aphorism. That is, each part of the story can stand alone, but it is possible to combine all the parts organically.