“Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 Japan

Ever since the first introduction of Shakespeare to a Japanese audience in the nineteenth century, his plays have functioned as “contact zones,” which are translingual interfaces between communities and their cultures; points of negotiation, misunderstanding and mutual transformation. In the context...

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Main Author: Mika Eglinton
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Lodz University Press 2016-12-01
Series:Multicultural Shakespeare
Subjects:
Online Access:https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/szekspir/article/view/1944
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author Mika Eglinton
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author_sort Mika Eglinton
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description Ever since the first introduction of Shakespeare to a Japanese audience in the nineteenth century, his plays have functioned as “contact zones,” which are translingual interfaces between communities and their cultures; points of negotiation, misunderstanding and mutual transformation. In the context of what is ostensibly a monolingual society, Japanese Shakespeare has produced a limited number of performances that have attempted to be multilingual. Most of them, however, turn out to be translingual, blurring the borders of linguistic specificity. As an example of this, I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream as adapted by Hideki Noda originally in 1992 and then directed by Miyagi Satoshi for the Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre in 2011. Drawing on my experience as the surtitle translator of Noda’s Japanese adaptation “back” into English, I discuss the linguistic and cultural metamorphosis of Noda’s reworking and the effects of its mediation in Miyagi’s rendition, and ask to what extent the production, adapted in post-March 2011 Japan, can be read as a “contact zone” for a translingual Japanese Shakespeare. In what way did Miyagi’s reading of the post-March 11 events inflect Noda’s adaption along socio-political lines? What is lost and gained in processes of adaptation in the wake of an environmental catastrophe?
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spelling doaj.art-94b2be627e9a442484b0088a4f2f1c9f2022-12-22T01:10:36ZengLodz University PressMulticultural Shakespeare2300-76052016-12-011429517210.1515/mstap-2016-00161944“Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 JapanMika Eglinton0Kobe City University of Foreign StudiesEver since the first introduction of Shakespeare to a Japanese audience in the nineteenth century, his plays have functioned as “contact zones,” which are translingual interfaces between communities and their cultures; points of negotiation, misunderstanding and mutual transformation. In the context of what is ostensibly a monolingual society, Japanese Shakespeare has produced a limited number of performances that have attempted to be multilingual. Most of them, however, turn out to be translingual, blurring the borders of linguistic specificity. As an example of this, I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream as adapted by Hideki Noda originally in 1992 and then directed by Miyagi Satoshi for the Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre in 2011. Drawing on my experience as the surtitle translator of Noda’s Japanese adaptation “back” into English, I discuss the linguistic and cultural metamorphosis of Noda’s reworking and the effects of its mediation in Miyagi’s rendition, and ask to what extent the production, adapted in post-March 2011 Japan, can be read as a “contact zone” for a translingual Japanese Shakespeare. In what way did Miyagi’s reading of the post-March 11 events inflect Noda’s adaption along socio-political lines? What is lost and gained in processes of adaptation in the wake of an environmental catastrophe?https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/szekspir/article/view/1944translationadaptationtranslingual theatrefukushimaearth-quakepost-march 11hideki nodasatoshi miyagishakespeare in japan
spellingShingle Mika Eglinton
“Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 Japan
Multicultural Shakespeare
translation
adaptation
translingual theatre
fukushima
earth-quake
post-march 11
hideki noda
satoshi miyagi
shakespeare in japan
title “Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 Japan
title_full “Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 Japan
title_fullStr “Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 Japan
title_full_unstemmed “Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 Japan
title_short “Thou art translated”: Remapping Hideki Noda and Satoshi Miyagi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Post-March 11 Japan
title_sort thou art translated remapping hideki noda and satoshi miyagi s a midsummer night s dream in post march 11 japan
topic translation
adaptation
translingual theatre
fukushima
earth-quake
post-march 11
hideki noda
satoshi miyagi
shakespeare in japan
url https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/szekspir/article/view/1944
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