Shakespeare And East Asia

Structured around modes in which one might encounter Asian-themed performances and adaptations, Shakespeare and East Asia identifies four themes that distinguish post-1950s East Asian cinemas and theatres from works in other parts of the world: Japanese formalistic innovations in sound and spectacle; reparative adaptations from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; the politics of gender and reception of films and touring productions in South Korea and the UK; and multilingual, diaspora works in Singapore and the UK. These adaptations break new ground in sound and spectacle; they serve as a vehicle for artistic and political remediation or, in some cases, the critique of the myth of reparative interpretations of literature; they provide a forum where diasporic artists and audiences can grapple with contemporary issues; and, through international circulation, they are reshaping debates about the relationship between East Asia and Europe. Bringing film and theatre studies together, this book sheds new light on the two major genres in a comparative context and reveals deep structural and narratological connections among Asian and Anglophone performances. These adaptations are products of metacinematic and metatheatrical operations, contestations among genres for primacy, or experimentations with features of both film and theatre.

This book offers fresh, critical insights into Shakespeare in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. It recognises that Shakespeare in East Asian education is not confined to the classroom or lecture hall but occurs on diverse stages. It covers multiple aspects of education: policy, pedagogy, practice, and performance. Beyond researchers in these areas, this book is for those teaching and learning Shakespeare in the region, those teaching and learning English as an Additional Language anywhere in the world, and those making educational policies, resources, or theatre productions with young people in East Asia.

Structured around modes in which one might encounter Asian-themed performances and adaptations, Shakespeare and East Asia identifies four themes that distinguish post-1950s East Asian cinemas and theatres from works in other parts of the world: Japanese formalistic innovations in sound and spectacle; reparative adaptations from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; the politics of gender and reception of films and touring productions in South Korea and the UK; and multilingual, diaspora works in Singapore and the UK. These adaptations break new ground in sound and spectacle; they serve as a vehicle for artistic and political remediation or, in some cases, the critique of the myth of reparative interpretations of literature; they provide a forum where diasporic artists and audiences can grapple with contemporary issues; and, through international circulation, they are reshaping debates about the relationship between East Asia and Europe. Bringing film and theatre studies together, this book sheds new light on the two major genres in a comparative context and reveals deep structural and narratological connections among Asian and Anglophone performances. These adaptations are products of metacinematic and metatheatrical operations, contestations among genres for primacy, or experimentations with features of both film and theatre.

Shakespeare and Asia brings together innovative scholars from Asia or with Asian connections to explore these matters of East-West and global contexts then and now. The collection ranges from interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays and his relations with other authors like Marlowe and Dickens through Shakespeare and history and ecology to studies of film, opera or scholarship in Japan, Russia, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China. The adaptations of Kozintsev and Kurosawa; Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays; different Shakespearean dramas and how they are interpreted, adapted and represented for the local Pakistani audience; the Peking-opera adaptation of Hamlet ; Féng Xiǎogāng’s The Banquet as an adaptation of Hamlet; the ideology of the film, Shakespeare Wallah. Asian adaptations of Hamlet will be at the heart of this volume. Hamlet is also analyzed in light of Oedipus and the Sphinx. Shakespeare is also considered as a historicist and in terms of what influence he has on Chinese writers and historical television. Lear is Here and Cleopatra and Her Fools, two adapted Shakespearean plays on the contemporary Taiwanese stage, are also discussed. This collection also examines in Shakespeare the patriarchal prerogative and notion of violence; carnival and space in the comedies; the exotic and strange; and ecology. The book is rich, ranging and innovative and will contribute to Shakespeare studies, Shakespeare and media and film, Shakespeare and Asia and global Shakespeare.

Contributors from a wide variety of backgrounds debate how and why Shakespeare has been used and reinvented in contemporary Asia.

Co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse. The last decade has witnessed a rapid increase in serious research on 'Shakespeare in Asia', yet most readers of the many new monographs and journal articles on the subject have hitherto not enjoyed access to the plays discussed because they have not been readily available in English. Indeed, an authoritative collection of Asian Shakespeares has been long and eagerly awaited by many scholars and critics. This five-volume collection answers that need. It brings together newly prepared English translations of twenty-five Shakespearean adaptations and reworkings. Supplementing these new—previously unpublished—translations, each volume includes a separate critical introduction prepared for this collection by an expert volume editor, together with annotations. One or two photographs accompany each introduction to support and illustrate the discussion. The collection showcases the variety and multiplicity of Shakespeares reinvented in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. It provides the first substantial and essential resource of Shakespearean adaptations in East Asia for scholars and critics, as well as graduate students interested in investigating Shakespearean re-creations in the region. Along with the volume introductions, each adaptation is also prefaced by a succinct introduction with full consideration given to overview, performance history, and analysis. Hence, the collection will be a definitive entry point for all students and researchers interested in Asian theatres as well as Shakespeares in Asia.

This volume critically analyses and theorises Asian interventions in the expanding phenomenon of Global Shakespeare. It interrogates Shakespeare’s ‘universality’ from Asian perspectives: how this has been modified or even replaced by the ‘global bard’ as a recognisable brand, and how Asian Shakespeares have contributed to or subverted this process by both facilitating the worldwide dissemination of the bard’s plays and challenging and resisting the very templates through which they become globally legible. Critically acclaimed Asian productions have prominently figured at premier Western festivals, and popular Asian appropriations like Bollywood, manga and anime have created new kinds of globally accessible Shakespeare. Essays in this collection engage with the emergent critical issues: the efficacy of definitions of the ‘local’, ‘global’, ‘transnational’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ and of the liminalities and mobilities in between. They further examine the politics of ‘West’ and ‘East’, the evolving markers of the ‘Asian’ and the equation of the ‘glocal’ with the ‘Asian’; they attend to performance and archiving protocols and bring the current debates on translation, appropriation, and world literature to speak to the concerns of global and transnational Shakespeare. These investigations analyse recent innovative Asian theatre productions, popular cinematic and manga appropriations and the increasing presence of Shakespeare in the Asian digital sphere. They provide an Asian standpoint and lens in rereading the processes of cultural globalisation and the mobilisation of Shakespeare.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Preface: On Memorials -- Shakespeare's Asian Journeys: An Introduction -- PART I: Re-Defining the Field of Asian Shakespeare -- 1 The Augmentation of the Indies: An Archipelagic Approach to Asian and Global Shakespeare -- 2 Shakespeare's Long Journey to Japan: His Contribution to Her Modernization and Cultural Exchange -- 3 Unraveling Hamlet's Spiritual and Sexual Journeys: An Inter-critical Detour via the Gita and Gandhi -- 4 Shakespeare's Asian Journey or "White Mask, Black Handkerchief": A Case Study for Translation Theory in Miyagi Satoshi's "Mugen-Noh" Othello and Omar Porras's "Bilingual" Romeo and Juliet -- PART II: Shakespeare and Asian Politics -- 5 "I May Be Straight, Though They Themselves Be Bevel": Taiwan's Early Shakespeare -- 6 The Great General and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme -- 7 Political Shakespeare in Korea: Hamlet as a Subversive Cultural Text in the 1980s -- 8 Hijacking Shakespeare: The Three Faces of Indonesian Julius Caesars -- PART III: Shakespeare and Asian Identity -- 9 Shakespeare as Cultural Capital: Its Rise, Fall, and Renaissance in Philippine Elite Education -- 10 Makyung Titis Sakti: Reflections on Malay Traditional Performance, Culture and the Malay Worldview through an Adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- 11 A Journeying Shakespeare, or Adjourning Shakespeare: Making (Foreign) Shakespeare in Seoul -- PART IV: Asian Shakespeare and Pop Culture -- 12 Pleasurable Errors and Erroneous Pleasures: Renegotiating Shakespearean Romance in Three Indian Films -- 13 "The Very Basics for All of Us": Fragments of Shakespeare in Japanese Anime and Manga -- List of Contributors -- Index of Shakespeare's Plays -- Subject Index