yukio-mishima-primary-colors-a-play-by-mishima-yukio-1, Mishima
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//-->"Primary Colors": A Play by Mishima YukioAuthor(s): Mishima Yukio and Christopher L. PearceSource:Asian Theatre Journal,Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall, 2006), pp. 223-247Published by:University of Hawai'i PressStable URL:.Accessed: 08/03/2011 11:35Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at.JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at..Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.University of Hawai'i Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toAsianTheatre Journal.PLAYAColors: Play byPrimaryMishima YukioIntroduction and Translation by ChristopherL. Pearcethat bringsup issuesisPrimary Colors (Sangenshoku) a 1955 play byMishima YukiothemescontrastsandItsof homosexuality bisexuality. positivetreatment homosexualofthe darkness Forbidden Colors, the author'snovel of thesameperiod.Whilewithoftheplay has receivedonly a few professionalproductions,its poetryand themehelpusunderstandMishima'sdevelopingaesthetic.Pearceis aJET Programmeworkingas a Coordi-Christopherparticipantcurrentlyinnatorfor InternationalRelations thegovernment Hyogoprefecture Japan. HeofforThisholdsa bachelor'sin JapaneselanguagefromPortlandStateUniversity.degree thetheEstateof Mishima Yukio.translationis printedwith thegenerouspermissionofIntroduction:Mishimathe DramatistMishimaYukio (1925-1970) will surelybe rememberedas themost infamousJapanese author of the twentiethcentury owing to hisfailed insurrectionand subsequent suicide. In spite of his prematuredeath at the age of forty-five,Mishimaleft behind a body of work thatmostcan scarcely matchedby anyauthorin anylanguage.Mishima'sberecent complete works, KetteibanMishima YukioZenshu(The CompleteWorks of Mishima Yukio Definitive Edition), published by Shinchoshafrom 2000 to 2005, runs forty-two volumes.' This new publication ofMishima's complete works is by no means solely devoted to his fiction.Mishima was also an accomplished playwright. He published morethan sixty plays in his short lifetime, and he was also active in theatreproduction and direction (Mishima 2002: vii). Mishima also distin-guished himself by creating a wide variety of dramatic works. Thevol. 23, no. 2 (Fall 2006). ? 2006 by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved.Asian TheatreJournal,224Pearcemajority of his plays were for the shingeki("new theatre," modern West-ern drama) stage, but he also wrote kabukiplays, dance plays, screen-plays, musical dramas, radio dramas, and opera librettos. Mishima sawnearly all his plays staged in his lifetime. In certain years Mishima'splays dominated Japanese theatre. For example, in 1955 nine differentplays by Mishima were produced by professional Tokyo companies.Ozasa Yoshio writes that Mishima's plays are so well regarded in Japanthat a survey of members of the Kokusai Engeki Hy6ronka Ky6kai(International Association of Theatre Critics) found his play MadamedeSadeto be the finestJapanese play of the postwar period (1945-1995),and Mishima was tied for first place as the greatest playwright of thesame time period (Ozasa 2001: 30-31).Mishima approached the art of writing novels and the art of writ-ing plays in fundamentally different ways. He said about the relation-ship between his plays and novels that "Plays occupy one of the twomagnetic poles of my work" (Scott-Stokes 1974: 207). For Mishima,writing plays was an outlet for a romantic side that went unsatisfiedfrom his novels. Kabuki onnagataBand6 Tamasaburo, who worked withMishima and starred in many of his plays, notes that "[Mishima] was aromantic at heart. But because he recognized that in the world of seri-ous literature romantic melodramas garnered no respect whatsoever,he rarely allowed himself to write the kind of work he felt most athome with" (Mishima forthcoming). John Nathan wrote that Mishimasaid his plays were like mistresses: "He needed at least one a year"(1974: 117). Nathan also noted that Mishima wrote some of his playsin a unique way. He would shut himself into the Imperial Hotel forthree days at a time and once he had the curtain line he would writehis play very quickly (118). It is not inconceivable that once Mishimahad the idea for PrimaryColors, was able to write this play in a veryheshort time.Outside ofJapan, Mishima is famous as an author of fiction andas a right-wing extremist, but little attention has been paid to hisdramatic works. This problem has been compounded by the lack ofavailabilityof his plays in English. Only Madamede Sade (1968) and FiveModernNo Plays (1973), both translated by Donald Keene, have longbeen in print. Recently, however, a new generation of scholars hasbegun to widen the availability of Mishima plays in English translationwith MyFriendHitler and OtherMishima (2002), translatedPlays of Yukioby Hiroaki Sato, and the forthcoming Mishimaon Stage:The Black Liz-ard and OtherPlays, edited by Laurence Kominz. With this translationI also hope to add to the growing body of translated Mishima plays, sothat we may better understand Mishima Yukio the dramatist and seemore of his works performed in English.PRIMARY COLORS225Too Shocking for 1955Sangenshoku(Primary Colors) was not one of Mishima's mostsuccessful plays. It has enjoyed few productions owing, no doubt, to itshomosexual kissing scene and its advocacy of bisexuality. One has toimagine that in 1955, the year he wrote it, PrimaryColorswould havebeen impossible to stage. D6moto Masaki, who directed the play in1963 and 1967, wrote that because of the characters dressed only inswimsuits and the kissing scene, "Everywhere[in Japan] there was hes-itation to perform the play" (D6moto 1977: 140). PrimaryColorsfirstappeared in print in August of 1955 in Chisei(Intellect), Vol. 2, No. 8,with included notes to directors. On January 25,1956, it was publishedin Shiroarino Su (The Termite's Nest). This book is a collection of playsthat Mishima wrote in 1955 and included The Termite'sNest,PrimaryCol-ors,and a third play, Fune no Aisatsu (The Ship's Greeting). TheTermite'sNest was by far the most successful of the three. It is a play about theheterosexual passions that destroy severalJapanese immigrant familiesin Brazil. It was honored with the second Kishida Engekisho(KishidaDrama Award). The Termite's and TheShip'sGreetingwere both per-Nestformed in 1955, two of the nine plays that were performed that year.PrimaryColors,though, languished for eight more years until it couldbe seen on stage.Mishima and Japan first saw PrimaryColorsperformed in April1963. D moto Masaki directed the play as a Dimoto Masaki EnshutsuRisaitaru (D6moto Masaki Director's Recital) at Sdgetsu Hall in Tokyo.PrimaryColorswas the first play written by Mishima that D6moto haddirected.2 Suma Kei played the role of the protagonist, Keiichi; YfOkiMieko played the role of Keiichi's wife, Ryoko; and Inoue Shigeru, a19-year-old college student and the younger brother of Inoue Yoshioof the Tho6Gendaigekitheatrical group, played the role of Shunji, whoattracts both spouses. Maeda Rokuro performed the music. D6motohad Maeda play a long piano solo between each scene so that "WhenRy6ko discovers Keiichi and Shunji embracing and kissing.., .andwhen Ryoko's eyes are opened to the principle of primary colors...the piano solo sounds like the roar of the ocean and her epiphany thatcomes with the realization of the significance of beauty" (Domoto1977: 141).A second Domoto production was performed in September1967 at the Shinjuku Cultural Center's Underground Art Theatre Scor-pion. For this production Katsube Nobuyuki played the role of Keiichi,Takaku Reiko of the Haisho theatre group played Ryoko, and Matsu-kawa Tsutomu played Shunji. D6moto found that he could not directthis production in the stylized manner of the 1963 production because226Pearceof the smaller performing space. For the kissing scene in the 1963 pro-duction, Keiichi and Shunji had merely pressed their lips together andstood in a stylized ballet pose, but for this production they had to "Com-pletely embrace and kiss" (D6moto 1977: 142). Mishima also approvedof this more realistic version of the homosexual kissing scene. Threeyears after this production, Mishima committed seppuku(ritual suicideby disembowelment) in an office at the headquarters of the JapaneseSelf-Defense Force. Primary Colorswas never again produced in thetwentieth century by a professional company in Japan. It was not thekind of popular or financial success that would induce producers topresent the play again and again.Thirty-five years after its last performance, Primary Colorswasagain staged under the title CMYK-Mishima YukioSangenshoku yori(CMYK-Based on Mishima Yukio's PrimaryColors).CMYK stands forcyan, magenta, yellow, and black; these colors are used in printing tocreate a spectrum of colors. According to director Terauchi Ayako,the title was changed for copyright reasons; however, there were nochanges to the script itself (Terauchi e-mail, 12 June 2005). Terauchi'sproduction of CMYKwas staged as a Ku Na'uka Theatre CompanyWakate Shinjin Keikoba Happy6kai (Young Member and New StarTraining Recital) on 31 August and 1 September 2002 at Sai StudioKomone in Tokyo. Mishima's notes to directors suggest simple staging,but according to stage photos provided by Terauchi, she went farbeyond Mishima's demand. Terauchi's stage is minimalist; it is coveredwith odd geometric shapes colored white and grey. A thick line of whitesand is used to demarcate the front of the stage. Primary Colorshasenjoyed no other professional productions inJapan. In the twenty-firstcentury, it is in no danger of losing its status as one of Mishima's leastperformed works.A Unique WorkisPrimaryColors a product of both of a distinct time in Japanesehistory and a special moment in Mishima's literary life. On 15 August1945, Japan surrendered to the United States and the allied powers.For the first time in Japanese history, it suffered the humiliation ofbeing occupied by a foreign military. The occupation lasted for nearlysix years, until April 1952. In those six years a beaten and batterednation went through a revolution.Japan was rebuilt and democratizedunder the direction of the occupation forces. The end of the war alsobrought about a revolution for homosexuality. The pre-defeat militarygovernment ofJapan never created legal means to regulate homosex-uality, as happened in Nazi Germany, but Gregory Pflugfelder wrotethat homosexuality went underground during the war as "The cele-
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