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Letters from the President
The Shakespeare Society of
Japan No doubt an apology is not necessary. I
imagine only a handful of people would read this page to get the
up-to-date information about the activities of the Shakespeare Society of
Japan, and so I do not think I should worry about my rather long silence.
But just in case there is a question about what the president of the
Society has been up to all this while, or more precisely, about where he
has been, the answer is, "I've always been here". Then I must hasten to
add, "But I'll be gone within a few days", as I will step down at the end
of March as I knew I would two years ago. I really wish I had been more communicative,
but editing the official newsletter of the Society, which I volunteered to
do when I became the president, turned out to be an almost full-time job,
even with a superhuman help from my resourceful colleague Yukio Kato. I am
jubilant about the release from this time-consuming work as Professor Kato
no doubt is. My successor as president will be Yuji
Kaneko whom I have been working closely with for the past two years, and
in every possible aspect I cannot think of a more suitable person for the
job. The Society will be in a sure hand for some years to come. It may be more appropriate for Professor
Kaneko to announce some of the important plans the Society has now, but I
hope I am allowed to say how excited I am at the series of academic events
which will take place this coming October. The visit of Professor Jean E.
Howard, which I mentioned in my previous letter, has been confirmed and
she will spend a week or so in this country, giving three lectures in
Tokyo, Kyoto, and Fukuoka, as well as conducting a seminar in Tokyo. The
lecture in Fukuoka, "Shakespeare and Geographies of the Early Modern
World", will be a highlight of the Society's annual meeting which is
scheduled to be held at Kyushu University on 13th and 14th
October. Those readers of this page who attended the
opening ceremonies of the Fifth World Shakespeare Congress held in Tokyo
in August 1991 will no doubt remember the performance of The Braggart
Samurai. The Kyogen adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor
was prepared by Yasunari Takahashi who was then the president of the
Society. This year Professor Takahashi is expected to repeat his success
with another Shakespearean adaptation, The Kyogen of Errors, which
is based (obviously) on The Comedy of Errors. This year's
Shakespeare Festival, another important annual event of the Society, will
be held in Tokyo on 28th April to celebrate the world premiere of the
play, and Professor Takahashi will discuss his own work with Kyogen actor
Mansai Nomura, who directs and plays one of the leading roles in the
production. Naturally I am greatly looking forward to
the meeting, but before this I must fly to Valencia to attend the Seventh
World Shakespeare Congress. I am certain many visitors to this website are
impressed with the Herculean work Professor Vicente Fores and his team
have undertaken to mount the Congress, and I hope it will be an occasion
for a reunion with old friends and an opportunity to make new friends. I
am not going to be responsible for the administrative aspect of the
Society any more, but it seems that I will still be around. So, au revoir,
friends! @ Tetsuo
Kishi
President: Tetsuo Kishi
28 March 2001
The Shakespeare Society of
Japan By now you may be a little tired of hearing
about the Millennium. So far as the Shakespeare Society of Japan is
concerned, the year 2000 is not likely to be particularly different or
unique, because it will be just as full of events as the past years have
been. First there will be the annual Shakespeare
Festival. This year's festival will be held at Meiji University in Kanda,
Tokyo, on 22nd April. Hiroshi Takayama, Professor of English at Tokyo
Metropolitan University, will give a lecture "Shakespeare with Four
Hundred Years of Age: Between Media and Mannerism". Professor Takayama is
widely known for his encyclopedic knowledge of literature and art, and his
lecture will no doubt be both stimulating and intriguing. Then Yukio
Ninagawa, director with international reputation, will discuss his own
work with Kazuko Matsuoka, drama critic and translator. Mr. Ninagawa's
Shakespearean productions have been enthusiastically received both in
Japan and abroad, and most recently he directed King Lear for the
Royal Shakespeare Company. Ms. Matsuoka has been working closely with him
for the last few years, and their discussion will be an invaluable
opportunity to probe into the art of producing Shakespeare now. I would
like to thank Professor Takayama, Mr. Ninagawa, and Ms. Matsuoka in
advance. The Society's annual conference is scheduled
to be held at Shoin Women's University in Kobe on 28th and 29th October.
One of the highlights of the conference will be a lecture by Professor
Michio Fujisawa, specialist of Renaissance literature in Italy, who will
talk about Michelangelo's lyric poetry. In addition to the customary short
papers and seminars, the programme will include a symposium for the first
time in several years. Professor Masao Tanaka has agreed to organize it.
The reason why we are going to revive the idea of a symposium is that it
will draw audience who are not registered members of the seminars and thus
make discussion at seminars easier to carry out with relatively small
number of members participating. Last year's conference was a great success,
if I may say so, not least thanks to the academic staff and students of
Iwate University who were most generous in offering their time and
expertise. It was simply impossible for me to attend all the sessions
which took place concurrently, but I understand the standard of the
presentations was uniformly high. Since this was so, I do hope I am not
too churlish if I say I have one serious reservation. I wish there had
been more short papers, especially those by so-called junior members of
the Society! These days they seem to be more drawn by seminars, and I have
absolutely no objection to their interest in seminars. However an academic
conference should put at least the same amount of emphasis on short paper
sessions, if it is to function healthily. I really hope the situation will
be somewhat rectified this October. Will it be too early to talk about the year
2001, the fortieth anniversary of the Society? This really will be a
memorable year. The Society has invited distinguished scholars from abroad
approximately every five years, and Professor Jean Howard, Columbia
University, has accepted our invitation to visit Japan in October 2001 and
give a few lectures and possibly hold a seminar or two. Of course
Professor Howard's works are familiar to many of us, but I was fortunate
enough to listen to her lectures twice in 1998 - at academic conferences
in Queensland and Stratford-upon-Avon. She turned out to be an
exceptionally lucid and intelligent lecturer, and like many members of the
Society I greatly look forward to her visit. As in the past, the Society is planning to
publish a collection of essays by its members to commemorate the
anniversary, but the details are still to be confirmed. Regular visitors to this website must have
noticed its constant growth. I am glad to say it has been warmly received
not only in this country but outside Japan as well. One of the signs to
prove this would be the links we can boast of. Our website is now linked
to those of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and German Shakespeare
Society, to name just a few. It is heartening to think that we share the
same devotion to Shakespearean scholarship with people from every part of
the world, most of whom we have never met and perhaps never will meet.
Still we know they are there. Let us hope this spirit of camaraderie will
prevail throughout the year. @ Tetsuo
Kishi
President: Tetsuo Kishi
1 January 2000
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The Shakespeare Society of
Japan Life is full of surprises. I served the Shakespeare Society of Japan for many years as a member of the executive committee, and when I was finally released from this duty in March 1997, I said to myself, "This really should be the end". I now realize I was too optimistic. Fortunately (to me as well as to the Society) I am supposed to serve as the president only for one term, because I will reach the mandatory retirement age within two years. Fortunately (again to me as well as to the Society) Yuji Kaneko, who is one of the most well-organized persons I know and whom I worked closely with for the Fifth World Shakespeare Congress held in Tokyo in 1991, has agreed to serve as the Executive Secretary, and with him and other competent members of the Committee in control, I am very optimistic indeed about the future of the Society. This does not mean, however, that I can just sit back and relax. The Society is too complicated an organization to allow the president to do so, and I have volunteered (to myself, that is) to edit the official newsletter of the Society. So far my work has been phenomenally successful, as I have been able to secure the service of Yukio Kato, the computer genius of the Society, who will not only establish the editorial policy of the newsletter with me but prepare a camera-ready copy, thus saving a considerable amount of money for the Society. In other words he is the kind of co-editor any editor would dream of. We now hope we can publish the newsletter three times a year rather than twice. We would also welcome contributions from members of the society in the forms of "Letters to the Editor" and "Notes and Queries". I am planning to contribute to each issue myself so that I can frankly discuss the situation of the Society. I am certain that members of the Society will be happy to learn about the opening of the official home page of the Society (http://wwwsoc.nacsis.ac.jp/sh/). In addition to the information provided by printed materials, the newsletter among them, we are planning to send out the kind of information they cannot cover, possibly updating it regularly and frequently. I am afraid members cannot write in their opinions, for the time being anyway, since properly controlling the home page could involve many unpredictable problems. For many years Yukio Kato was responsible for preparing a camera-ready copy of Shakespeare Studies, the official bulletin of the Society. He will be succeeded by Shigeki Takada, and Shoichiro Kawai will work in a similar capacity for the programme of the annual meeting of the Society. Yuji Kaneko will oversee the whole work. Altogether the Society will be able to save the printing cost by the million for years to come. One problem (yes, I call it a problem) the Society is expected to solve is the way seminars are run during the annual meeting. It seems seminars are forced to accommodate too many auditors, thus making discussion among registered members somewhat difficult to carry. I have asked Hiroshi Ozawa and several other members of the executive committee to reexamine the organization of the annual meeting. Several years ago the Society planned for the first time to publish a collection of essays in English, and although there has been a delay, the volume is likely to appear any time now under the title of Hot Questrists after the English Renaissance: Essays on Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. The book will be a memorable landmark in the history of the Society which has always tried to be as international as possible. As it happens, the Society will celebrate its fortieth anniversary in 2001, and as in the past we are hoping to invite a distinguished scholar from abroad. I have asked Akiko Kusunoki and other committee members to choose a candidate. The annual meeting for the year 1999 is
scheduled to be held in the northern city of Morioka on 23 and 24 October.
I look forward to meeting you all there! Tetsuo
Kishi |