James Brandon has written the book most scholars would like to have crafted at some point in their career—eminently readable, fascinatingly in-depth, chock-full of insightful commentary on a field rarely accessible to non-specialists. If I were to push a sports metaphor, I would have to say that he hits a grand slam on all fronts. According to Brandon, wartime kabuki not only reflected Japan's wartime aims, it glorified, supported, and sold the war as a product to be consumed. Brandon does not treat his topic lightly and thus, at times, the encyclopedic coverage of a stunning amount of research concerning all aspects of kabuki theater threatens to dislodge the interested reader from the main focus. The full treatment of both the history of kabuki during the early twentieth century and its role in the war suggests that there were almost two books here fused into one. At the same time, the details do rigorously advance Brandon's thesis, that kabuki was already socially and economically entrenched in popular Japanese culture and therefore, unlike facile postwar apologists’ interpretations, was not merely an elitist refuge.
Brandon's investigations through careful reading of scripts, scrutiny of actors' memoirs, and rollicking in a mass of theater memorabilia shows that kabuki actors were not bystanders during the buildup of war. In fact, as he outlines, the pace of cultural production that supported Japan's fifteen-year war (1931–45) slowly picked up pace and by the 1930s theatrical productions concerning Japanese war heroes, like General Nogi Maresuke, had risen to forty productions. Such war-themed fare was popular with audiences but also tied into the Shinpa, or the new theater movement. While the new theater movement was stocked with left-leaning socialists and similarly oriented staff and actors, they wished to rebel against the confines of traditional Japanese performing arts productions and the stranglehold that monopolistic corporations, like Shōchiku, maintained over managerial aspects. The participation of kabuki in support of the war satisfied two goals: it allowed audiences to vicariously enjoy the war as a performance and it assisted in the “modernization” of kabuki, an effort struggling actors and theater owners used in their bid to renovate it and save it from turning into an ossified cultural icon.
Brandon's attention to the production and reception of wartime kabuki feeds into his descriptions of wartime censorship—not a new process, as preproduction censorship had been implemented since 1900—nor necessarily a draconian one. In fact, he suggests the system was usually quite capricious—in some ways similar to the farcical situations illustrated in the humorous 2004 Japanese film, Warai no daigaku (University of laughs). One censor forbade the use of specific terms because he did not understand the vocabulary (p. 32). We might be left wondering if such bureaucrats were too lazy to consult dictionaries or just could not be bothered. Censors also kept tabs on local theater with unannounced visits during live performances, but their stringency depended more on locale than on following specific ordinances. In the end, as the author notes, there was little uniformity from rural to urban location and from north to south.
Kabuki began to occupy more proscenium space after the Manchurian Incident in September 1931 and started to showcase heroic Japanese deaths. This feature developed more fully in the “Human Bomb” spate of plays and parallels other stage productions that Jennifer Robertson has discussed, in part, in Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). There were even commercial product tie-ins: Kirin Beer entered the fray with a strange visual rendition of what might have occurred when war heroes died, holding cans of beer aloft in the advertisements. How the war encouraged the imbibing of alcoholic beverages begs larger questions but the interaction of theater and consumption in the larger spectacle of war demonstrates the intricate fabric of public opinion that was woven from such relationships.
In a similar manner to what occurred in the literary and media worlds, Japanese theater also produced many victims of tenkō, those who changed their political orientation due to social and police pressure. The originally “liberal” kabuki theater productions toed the party line for Japan's war and as such Brandon's work demonstrates that our perceived notion of the theatrical industry as inherently opposed to conservatism may require reanalysis, though that is more of an implication drawn from Brandon's work than an assessment of his conclusion.
Brandon addresses the manner in which kabuki followed current events but the work does not ask the corollary question, why did it follow? It may be because he spends so much time on the precise detail of the performances and explanations of how the industry operated during these crucial years, that while art imitated life, we are left unsure if life ever imitated art. After all, the book describes how the fall of Nanjing was elaborately celebrated on stage (pp. 80–81), but did that energize young theater-goers to war or toward war support? Obviously, these are tricky issues to gauge but given the author's expert knowledge the proffering of a risky opinion here and there would be welcomed.
The author periodizes the era and informs us that theater was breathless at first, in its initial gleeful depiction of Japanese battlefield valor. After 1937, when the imperial forces got bogged down in China, theater managers realized they were in for the long haul and had to respond. By 1940 there was a “Heil Hitler” musical review and scores of new history plays were written and produced for the 2,600th anniversary of Japan's supposed imperial founding (p. 116). Brandon reveals kabuki with all its warts, but how were “others” depicted in the scenes? If kabuki was intent on following the aims of empire, did it only reflect Japanese images or were Koreans and Chinese depicted as well? Wartime film had already incorporated these elements; did the theater excise such treatment?
Kabuki's Forgotten War trumps other theater history books because Brandon does not neglect the industrial aspects. In contrast to the Soviet Union where theater really did become an arm of the state, in Japan the government never took direct control of the production of the arts. Theaters were regulated, harassed, and taxed, but their voices remained their own, even if they frequently pandered to the masses. As with wartime music and film, kabuki, too, held public contests to encourage participation and ticket sales. It was far from being a passive player. But in 1941 the field stood at a crossroads; kabuki reformers wanted to gain the upper hand because performances were steadily losing audiences and louder forces called for a more entrenched production of war themes instead of incessantly discussing theatrical theory.
The end of 1942 saw more restrictions placed on kabuki, and once victory was no longer assured in 1943, plays began to focus on validating the death of particular heroes. But a war raged within kabuki as well, and here Brandon excels at explaining just what forces pulled this traditional art in different directions. Near the end of the war many were calling kabuki indolent and self-absorbed, and it grew to be seen by some as a vice instead of a virtue. In 1944 the slogan “Luxury is the Enemy” became a reality, and when the United States relentlessly bombed major Japanese cities, kabuki felt the brunt with a severe downturn in audiences. The years following surrender were not much easier. U.S. occupation authorities ordered the Japanese industry to create 30 percent new plays, in some ways mirroring the playwrights of the 1920s who had wished to renovate what they saw as an inflexible form of entertainment. I cheer the inclusion of the postwar chapter where the author demonstrates how the theater aimed to quickly shed its military grey for new costumes once it was clear in which way the times were changing.
Brandon leaves no scenario unread, no newspaper unopened, no photo unused in his pursuit of the thesis that kabuki played a significant role during the war. He does not proclaim that kabuki was responsible for the war, and perhaps he does not view it in the same league as other wartime propaganda, but Brandon's research definitely proves that we can no longer ignore it.
