Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei - Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan

I also wish to thank my long-term translation assistant Makiko FujiwaraSkrobak, whose dedication, hard work, and intelligence are especially evident in the translations of The Hunchback of Aomori and Heretics. Makiko aided me in identifying the differences between the two versions of La Marie-Vison and assisted me in translating the original version, which is published in Half a Century of Japanese Theatre, volume 6 (Japan Playwrights Association 2004). Natsuko Mizuno assisted with the translation of the excerpts from The Labyrinth and the Dead Sea: My Theatre as well as Bluebeard's Castle (the basis for supertitles used during the European tour, directed by the late Kisaragi Koharu). Endo Yukihide provided research and translation assistance on Nagao Saburo's biography of Terayama, the Terayama-Mishima dialogue, and Terayama and Kishida Rio's Shintokumaru. He has also faithfully sent me valuable Terayama materials from Japan that relate both to his research and to my own. Steve Clark generously supplied me with his own translation of Blood Is Standing Asleep, which encouraged me to revisit and correct my earlier work. Steve also kept me up to date on Terayama activities in Japan during the twentieth anniversary of his death. Additional thanks to John Swain for general translation and research assistance.

Jasmin Harvey did the translations from Dutch, and Rudolf Bohne translated German materials. Others who have been most helpful include Ritsaert ten Gate of the Mickery Theatre (Amsterdam) and Erica Bilder. I am also grateful to Michael Bourdaghs, Yuriko Doi, Mariko Tamanoi, Tom Rimer, Morisaki Henriku, Cody Poulton, Marc Sebastian-Jones, Anan Nobuko, and Samuel L. Leiter for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript and/or on earlier papers that were subsequently incorporated into it.

Generous research grants were provided by the UCLA Academic Senate Committee on Research, the Sasakawa Foundation, the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies, and the UCLA ISOP (International Studies and Overseas Programs). I am grateful to my department for providing me with sabbatical leave to complete the book.

Some portions of the discussions of The Hunchback of Aomori, La Marie- Vison, and We're All Riding on a Circus Elephant appeared in slightly different form in my 1992 article "Showdown at Culture Gap: Images of the West in the Plays of Shuji Terayama." I am grateful to Modern Drama for permission to use these passages.

Finally, I want to thank Richard Hornby, who somehow managed not to run screaming into the night despite my bizarre mumblings and scribblings in the air as I struggled to figure out the meaning of Terayama's surreal poetry or his unpronounceable katakana references.

Although my fascination with Terayama had its genesis in my doctoral dissertation (Sorgenfrei 1978), the current book bears only a slight resemblance to that work. It stems from over twenty years of additional research, corrects previous errors, incorporates more recent work by and about Terayama, and draws upon new theoretical discourses. Of course, any errors are my own responsibility.

All art and photographs courtesy of Kujo Kyoko and the Terayama Shuji Memorial Museum.

Once we've uttered a single word of dialogue, play-hell begins,
and we cannot escape. There is no end. No play ever ends. Plays
just change.... [P]lay upon play is transformed into hell!...
After the play ..., after the lie, there's no truth, only another
lie. And everything I've just said is nothing but a pile of lies,
too. That's theatre. And that's life. Heretics