Kabuki star Nakamura Shido joins Vocaloid 'Hatsune Miku' in high-tech Osaka Expo show
OSAKA -- A Kabuki performance co-starring actor Nakamura Shido and virtual diva Hatsune Miku was staged during the Osaka Expo on May 24, with a performing arts group in Taiwan also making a virtual appearance on stage.
The "Cho Kabuki" (literally, "super Kabuki") performance utilized Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT)'s next-generation communication technology IOWN. Short for Innovative Optical and Wireless Network, IOWN can provide high-speed and low-latency transmission of large volumes of data. NTT launched its first international IOWN network in August 2024 between Japan and Taiwan.
Cho Kabuki has been popular since it was premiered in 2016 by Shochiku Co. and others utilizing the NTT technology. During the latest show, a special edition of the first production "Hanakurabe Senbonzakura" was staged at Expo Hall Shining Hat in Osaka's Konohana Ward. The show portrays a struggle between good and evil by fusing the world views of Kabuki's classic "Yoshitsune Senbonzakura" and Hatsune Miku's signature piece "Senbonzakura."
Members of Taiwan's Chio-Tian Folk Drums & Art Troupe appeared virtually as "gods beyond the seas," engaging in a folk performing arts program that is seen during festivals in Taiwan.
Footage of performers at the Expo venue on Yumeshima Island and their counterparts at a hall in Taiwan was sent in both directions, enabling joint appearances from their respective stages, transcending the border between reality and virtual space through the traditional performing arts and cutting-edge cultures of Japan and Taiwan.
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Japan Times
2 days ago
- Japan Times
'Kokuho' illuminates the high price of becoming a national treasure
Japan's ningen kokuhō (living national treasures) are a select group of artisans and performers who are recognized for mastery of their craft. Shuichi Yoshida's 2018 novel "Kokuho" traces the life of one such individual, an orphan from a yakuza clan adopted into a family of kabuki stars, whose tumultuous journey through the world of classical Japanese theater leads to the top — but at a price. "Kokuho" has now been adapted into a film by Korean Japanese director Lee Sang-il which, following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this May, hits Japanese cinemas Friday. The sumptuously shot film spans three hours and half a century of story, and stars Ryo Yoshizawa ("Kingdom") as orphan-turned-kabuki legend Kikuo alongside industry veterans like Ken Watanabe ("The Last Samurai"), who plays Kikuo's adopted father and a kabuki master in his own right. Lee tells The Japan Times that while the provenance of the film is ostensibly Yoshida's 2018 novel, his desire to make a film about kabuki goes back much further, to shortly after he adapted Yoshida's novel "Villain" for the screen in 2010. "I told Yoshida I wanted to do a movie about kabuki and ... what kind of characters I wanted to feature," says Lee, 51. "We both had our own projects for years after that, but at one point, Yoshida told me that he had started to do some research into kabuki. I thought, 'Oh! That idea I mentioned sparked something within him.'" Lee, who debuted as a feature film director with 2002's "Border Line," explains his interest in kabuki came from a desire to explore forms of storytelling outside cinema. "Up until 'Villain,' I was primarily interested in movies, but I started to get interested in forms of traditional Japanese expression. Among those, kabuki is both popular but incredibly deep with elements you can't see on the surface," Lee says. "Even the same play can be very different depending on when it's performed and who stars in it." Yoshida's take on Lee's original concept took its own twists and turns, but the resulting novel retained two key elements: Its lead, Kikuo, is an onnagata, a male actor who plays female roles, and the film traces the course of his life, from his childhood as the son of a slain yakuza boss in 1960s Nagasaki to his official designation as a ningen kokuhō. To mark the passing of time visually, Lee gave each of the film's three main sections (youth, adolescence and middle age) a distinctive look by applying different color grades — the digital equivalent of changing film stocks. "We also thought about our characters' relationships, and how their positions flip from period to period,' says Lee. 'Are they at the height of their career or at a low point, and how does that change how they interact? By showing that, we could clearly show how time had passed.' One partner in bringing the film's look to life was Tunisian cinematographer Sofian El Fani, whom Lee first worked with on the television drama "Pachinko." "Sofian really watches the actors to see what they're trying to express," says Lee. "'Pachinko' was filmed in English, Japanese and Korean, the latter two of which he didn't understand, but he picked up perfectly on what the actors were feeling." Ryo Yoshizawa (left) and Ryusei Yokohama star in 'Kokuho' as siblings-by-adoption turned rivals. | © Yoshida Shuichi / Asahi Shimbun © "Kokuho" Film Partners Key to bringing "Kokuho" to the screen was finding the right actor to play Kikuo. Lee needed an actor who could both embody the complicated, sometimes ruthless character and dedicate over a year to training for the performance. "Yoshizawa saying yes to the film was the determining factor in whether I would make it," says Lee. "In fact, I offered the part to him five or six years ago, before there was any guarantee we could get the funding to make the film. "I saw in him the same idiosyncrasies that Kikuo had in the book," says Lee. "On the outside, they're like dolls, but their insides are like black holes. I couldn't think of any other actors who had that aura." To play Kikuo's adopted father, Lee turned to Watanabe, the Academy Award-nominated actor whom he has directed twice before: in "Unforgiven" (2013), a spin on the Clint Eastwood western, and in another Yoshida adaptation, "Rage" (2016). "Ken has appeared in many films and TV, often as a kind of a tough guy with a lot of pride and strength," says Lee. "But I usually go against that public image and ask him to display weakness, characters with some kind of internal struggle. "In real life, he's overcome terrible illness," continues Lee, referring to Watanabe's bouts with acute myeloid leukemia and stomach cancer. "He's seen the worst and come out of it. So I think that 'shadow' is within him, and I think it's interesting to ask him to do roles that come into dialogue with that." Ryo Yoshizawa trained for over a year to play the Kikuo, a kabuki actor on the path to becoming a nationally recognized master of his craft. | © Yoshida Shuichi / Asahi Shimbun © "Kokuho" Film Partners In "Kokuho," Watanabe plays a famous kabuki actor raising his biological son Shunsuke (Ryusei Yokohama) as his successor. But after bringing Kikuo into his family, Watanabe's character must choose between his bloodline and talent when he realizes his adopted son may have more potential than his biological one. For Yoshizawa and Yokohama's many kabuki performances — first as partners and later as rivals — Lee depicts the view from the audience, who are swept up by the exquisite dancing, makeup and costumes, but also takes us right up alongside the actors, who fight to maintain the illusion through intense physical and emotional pain. "When an audience watches a kabuki play, they focus on who's in the spotlight. But I have a feeling that's not all that's touching them," Lee says. "There's so much effort that goes into the final performance, and the audience feels that, maybe unconsciously. When an actor finishes their performance and leaves the stage, some kind of atmosphere, some kind of afterimage, lingers. I wanted to capture that experience on film." Director Lee Sang-il says his interest in kabuki came from a desire to explore storytelling in different forms of traditional Japanese expression. | Matt Schley The director also worked hard to make sure the kabuki scenes were integral to the overall story rather than serve as their own distinct sections. "The story and character relationships needed to carry on into the kabuki scenes, to synchronize," says Lee. "The kabuki has its own story, but at the same time, it's reflecting the relationships between Kikuo, Shunsuke and the other characters." Another theme is the loneliness endured by a performer striving for kokuhō-level greatness like Kikuo. "What is a living national treasure, anyway? In the film, we depict it as someone who's able to see something that others can't, a kind of 'landscape' that no one has ever seen," Lee says. "That's quite a lonely situation to be in. And when you reach for something of that level, you can't hold on to anything, or anyone, else. It all slips through your fingers." In that sense, Lee says there may be a connection between the worlds of kabuki and filmmaking. "The art forms are different, but the pursuit is similar. There are people in both who want to keep going further and higher." "Kokuho" is screening in cinemas nationwide. For more information, visit, (Japanese only).
The Mainichi
5 days ago
- The Mainichi
News in Easy English: Osaka Expo mascot 'Myaku-Myaku' now popular with visitors
OSAKA -- The official mascot of Expo 2025 in Osaka has become very popular. At first, many people did not like its strange look. Now, visitors often take pictures with the mascot. The mascot's name is "Myaku-Myaku." It is a mysterious character made of cells and water. Myaku-Myaku is everywhere at the event. There is even a special "Myaku-Myaku House" where people can meet a moving Myaku-Myaku. At the Expo, there are also Myaku-Myaku designs on manhole covers, playgrounds, and statues, using its red and blue colors. No one knows exactly what Myaku-Myaku really is. Its form changes often, and right now it looks like a human. People like it because it is strange and interesting. Inside Myaku-Myaku House, one visitor wrote, "I am sorry I first said you looked scary. I really like you now." A 25-year-old Osaka woman said, "I didn't like the mascot at first. But when I saw it moving, I became a fan." Another visitor, 55, from Kobe said, "At first, I wasn't sure about it. But now I think it's cute. I'm not sure why!" Many visitors now enjoy seeing Myaku-Myaku in person. The Osaka Expo will continue for six months. Organizers think about 28 million people will visit. Myaku-Myaku likes meeting people. Maybe the mascot can bring even more visitors to the event. (Japanese original by Takehiko Onishi, Osaka Photo and Video Department) Vocabulary mascot: a character or animal used to represent an event or group mysterious: strange, hard to understand cells: very small parts that all living things are made of manhole cover: a round metal cover on roads that leads under the ground organizer: a person or group that plans an event
5 days ago
Okamoto Tarō: Creating New Human Values for a Troubled Age
The artist Okamoto Tarō (1911–96) is best known for Tower of the Sun , a 70-meter structure at the heart of the 1970 Osaka Expo site. Both sculpture and building, complete with interior space, the tower was an almost mystical presence, looming over the exposition like a great masked figure or sacred idol. Tower of the Sun , symbol of the 1970 Osaka Expo. (© Jiji) The tower's interior depicted the evolution of life from ancient times in ways that resist narrow categorization. Following multiple rounds of restoration, it is open today to the public. Widely recognized to this day as a symbol of the age in which the 1970 Expo was held, the tower remains significant for a variety of reasons. The Osaka Prefectural Government, which manages the tower, released a comprehensive assessment of the structure in November 2024, hoping to secure its recognition as an Important Cultural Property. The gigantic Face of the Sun , which was attached to the front of Tower of the Sun . Okamoto Tarō is seen working in the center. (© Jiji) Myth of Tomorrow , another legendary work by Okamoto, was painted in 1969 for a hotel lobby in Mexico but went missing after the hotel's bankruptcy. Rediscovered in 2003, it was installed in Tokyo's Shibuya Station in 2008. Some 5.5 meters high and 30 meters long, the work transcends classification as a painting with its sheer, overpowering scale. Myth of Tomorrow is displayed in the walkway connecting the JR and Keiō Inokashira lines at Shibuya Station. (© Jiji) Myth of Tomorrow is a mysterious work. It addresses grave themes, showing the Japanese tuna fishing boat that was contaminated by nuclear fallout from a thermonuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll in 1954 beset by skeletal shapes symbolizing invisible, powerful energies of human creation. But its style has a manga-like lightness, and the work's overall perspective seems to airily rise above reality. Okamoto Tarō was never tied to one space or time. He transcends the now—and challenges us to join him. Following the 1970 Osaka Expo, he appeared in television commercials and on variety programs and was featured in news magazines and other media, constantly remolding existing values and reiterating his popular catchphrase: 'Art is an explosion.' These words were often understood as referring to uncomplicated art that ruptures the world with visceral directness, but in fact they were a broader call to arms reflecting Okamoto's belief that only art can change reality. Despite passing away in 1996 at the age of 84, Okamoto still attracts legions of fans. Why is this? Capturing the Antithetical in Artistic 1930s Paris Okamoto Tarō was born in 1911 to the successful cartoonist Okamoto Ippei and poet and author Okamoto Kanoko. Novelist and Nobel laureate Kawabata Yasunari once referred to this unusually artistic household as the 'Holy Family.' At school, Tarō argued with teachers as an adult might, causing friction that forced him to change schools multiple times. After graduating from Keiō Futsūbu School in 1929, he entered the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts). He left the school later that year, however, after the Asahi Shimbun newspaper assigned his father to cover the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The Okamoto family set out from Kobe together, but while his parents went on to London, Tarō disembarked at Paris, resolving to live like a local to realize his artistic goals. Instead of joining the Japanese expat artistic community in Paris, Okamoto studied at a suburban lycée, learning the French language, culture, and way of life. He frequented local art galleries and eventually studied philosophy and art at the Sorbonne. During his time in France, Okamoto would mingle with avant-garde artists like Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Ernst, Giacometti, and Man Ray, as well as thinkers like André Breton, prophet of surrealism, and Georges Bataille, who contemplated human existence through the lenses of death, violence, and eroticism. He experienced the cutting edge of abstract art and surrealism, concepts at the core of twentieth century art, in a milieu where debate raged over how to truly live, deeply influencing the subsequent course of modern French philosophy. As an artist, Okamoto endeavored to produce paintings where real and abstract elements coexisted in contradiction. After World War II, he became a proponent of 'Polarism,' a movement that sought to express rationality and irrationality in antithesis on a single canvas. Many of his works from this period place extremes in opposition, defying rational dissection much as human beings do. Ethnology as a Handle on Human Existence Visiting the Musée de l'Homme, opened at the former site of the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, 26-year-old Okamoto was deeply moved by the masks and idols on display, which had a vivid sense of presence rooted in the fundamentals of human life and belief. He began studying under the anthropologist Marcel Mauss at the Sorbonne to deepen his understanding of ethnography. Decades later, at the 1970 Osaka Expo, Okamoto created and used a subterranean exhibition space beneath Tower of the Sun to display his work Underground Sun , surrounded by countless statues and masks collected by scholars from around the world under Okamoto's guidance. These were later transferred to the National Museum of Ethnology, established seven years after the Expo. Okamoto Tarō on September 4, 1969, surrounded by masks and other folk art gathered for display at the 1970 Osaka Expo. (© Kyōdō) The interior of Tower of the Sun , symbol of Expo '70, has been open to the public again since 2018. Also on display is a re-creation of Underground Sun , which has been missing since the Expo. (© Jiji) After leaving for Paris at the age of 19, Okamoto made the occasional brief visit home and was conscripted into military service during the war, but did not permanently resettle in Japan until 1946, when he was 35. An un-Japanese life—a childhood in a home environment that celebrated artistic excellence and years lived amid the flourishing art scene of Paris in the 1930s—set him on a unique postwar path to transcend reality in Japan. The Meaning of the Avant-Garde in Japan Okamoto's philosophical and ethnographic pursuit of the meaning of human existence eventually led him to conclude that he would always be a foreigner in Europe, and would never produce art of substance unless he accepted Japan, where his roots lay, as his battleground. In 1940, as the war approached Paris, he boarded a ship for Japan for the last time. After arriving in Japan, Okamoto won awards for works produced in Europe, some shown at the 1941 Nika Exhibition and others exhibited independently. But the following year, at 31, he was drafted into the army and sent to China, where he spent over four years on the battlefield. When Okamoto finally returned to Japan in June 1946, he learned that his entire oeuvre to date had been destroyed, along with his family home, in the firebombing of Tokyo. He was thus free to reinvent himself as a fiercely independent Japanese artist, and he began charting a postwar course that sought to connect art with society and life amid the complex contradictions faced by modern Japan. Okamoto challenged Japan's conservative art establishment. He formed an avant-garde artistic movement called the Yoru no Kai (Night Society) with literary scholar Hanada Kiyoteru and others in 1948. Eventually, however, Okamoto shifted his focus from searching for a new art to developing a new art within society. In 1954, he established the Gendai Geijutsu Kenkyūjo (Institute of Esthetic Research) at his home and studio (now the Tarō Okamoto Memorial Museum), inviting artists, designers, architects, and others there to collaborate. The same year, he published the book Konnichi no geijutsu (Art Today), in which he asserted the need for artists to create new values relevant to people facing the many issues of modern society, including pollution, the Cold War, and the contempt for humanity accompanying economic growth. He expanded his activities to include public art, design, architecture, film, performance, and criticism, eventually coming to describe his occupation simply as 'Human.' New Traditions Linking Ethnology and Art The pursuit of Japanese tradition was Okamoto's driving force in the postwar period. In his 'Essay on Jōmon Earthenware: A Dialogue with a Fourth Dimension,' published in 1952, he reconsidered earthenware from the Jōmon period (ca. 10,000 BC–300 BC) discovered across the Japanese archipelago, claiming it had a beauty with no counterpart elsewhere in the world. Conventional accounts of Japanese art saw value in elements introduced alongside Buddhism, such as wabi-sabi and an emphasis on harmony, or modern Western aesthetics. But Okamoto believed that Japanese art was founded on dynamic Jōmon beauty, which destroyed balance with its fourth-dimensional irrationality. It was a startling discovery in the deep past of innovation that overturned old values, just as the art of prewar Paris did. Okamoto believed that Jōmon tendencies could still be seen in Japanese areas such as Tōhoku, Hokkaidō, and Okinawa. Armed with his knowledge of ethnology, he traveled the country studying, photographing, and writing about folk customs from his artist's perspective. For many years, he continued to publish his findings to share these 'new traditions' with wider society. He believed that the power of creativity is omnipresent in our lives: anyone can lead a more fulfilling life by adopting an artist's perspective or behavior into their everyday routines and resolving to express themselves and champion their personal values. 'Art is an Explosion' and 'Eyes Flying Through Space' This is the line of thought that led Okamoto to create Tower of the Sun and Myth of Tomorrow . In describing the essence of art, he used the phrase 'eyes flying through space'—in short, a perspective outside the reality-defining frameworks of human beings and our world that escapes into space. Artists work with an 'other,' be it paint and canvas, stone, or clay. But as they become absorbed in creation, they irrationally become one with that other. This is the true sense in which 'Art is an explosion!' When a work is completed, however, it rationally becomes an other again. Through art, comprising self and other, we have the potential to move beyond humanity and the world, shatter those frameworks, and change values at their foundations. Here is revealed the enduring, universal postmortem appeal, in our cramped and claustrophobic modern age, of Okamoto Tarō's art. Tower of the Sun . (© Jiji) (Originally written in Japanese and published on April 8, 2025. Banner image: Portrait of Okamoto Tarō. © Jiji.)
