{"id":22522,"date":"2011-11-15T22:25:30","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T02:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=22522"},"modified":"2011-11-16T11:17:11","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T15:17:11","slug":"justin%e2%80%99s-japan-theatre-review-%e2%80%94-%e2%80%98kutsukake-tokijiro%e2%80%99-an-inspired-yakuza-yarn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/11\/15\/justin%e2%80%99s-japan-theatre-review-%e2%80%94-%e2%80%98kutsukake-tokijiro%e2%80%99-an-inspired-yakuza-yarn\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin\u2019s Japan: Theatre Review \u2014 \u2018Kutsukake Tokijiro\u2019 an Inspired Yakuza Yarn"},"content":{"rendered":"
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'Kutsukake Tokijiro' runs through Nov. 27 at New York's Flea Theatre. (Courtesy of Kurotama Kikaku Company)<\/p><\/div>\n

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By<\/em> <\/strong>JQ<\/strong> magazine<\/strong><\/em><\/a> editor <\/em>Justin Tedaldi<\/em><\/a> (CIR Kobe-shi<\/a>, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0page <\/em>here<\/a> <\/em>for related stories.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mounting a 1920s Japanese gangster play with J-pop flavored fillips may seem like a tough sell, but the new Off-Off-Broadway production of Kutsukake Tokijiro<\/a><\/em> is a successful hybrid that should appeal to fans of \u201cworld\u201d stage productions.<\/p>\n

Opening last week at Tribeca\u2019s Flea Theater<\/a> and running through Nov. 27, Kutsukake Tokijiro<\/em> (if you can pronounce it, you\u2019ve probably already seen it) caps a nearly three-year journey to the stage by New York\u2019s Kurotama Kikaku Company<\/a> and its artistic director, Jun Kim. A native of Japan with Korean heritage, Kim is an actor, dancer, and director of the show, doing double duty in the opening scenes as Mutsuda-no-Sanzo, the target of the titular Tokijiro (played with noble gravitas by Yasu Suzuki).<\/p>\n

If these names sound hoary, consider the source material: written by Shin Hasegawa in 1928, KT<\/em> is a hallmark of Japanese popular theatre, based in turn upon on a 19th century Japanese Yakuza\/lone gambler story cut almost from the same cloth as the Spaghetti Western. In its first-ever English translation by the venerable Keiko Tsuneda, KT<\/em> is reborn for an American audience.<\/p>\n

Kim\u2019s vision for a 21st century KT<\/em> is to inject Japanese pop culture animation and folk songs as well as the dance movements of Noh, Kabuki and contemporary dance to form a \u201cJ-pop Theatre.\u201d This is achieved via Japanese-language scenes between Tokijiro and his rivals (English supertitles are helpfully flashed above center stage) and through his more tender moments with Sanzo\u2019s widow, Okinu (Hiroko Yonekura), whom Tokijiro elopes with along with her young son Tarokichi (Asuka Morinaga).<\/p>\n

For the rest of the article, click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By JQ magazine editor Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)\u00a0for Examiner.com.\u00a0Visit his\u00a0page here for related stories. Mounting a 1920s Japanese gangster play with J-pop flavored fillips may seem like a tough sell, but the new Off-Off-Broadway production of Kutsukake Tokijiro is a successful hybrid that should appeal to fans of \u201cworld\u201d stage productions. Opening last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,340,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-justins-japan","category-reviews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-5Rg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22522"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22532,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22522\/revisions\/22532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}