Juro Kara, insurgent playwright behind Japan’s fashionable underground theater, dies at 84
TOKYO — Juro Kara, who helped form Japan’s postwar avant-garde theater, defiantly but playfully remodeling the essence of Kabuki aesthetics into fashionable storytelling, has died. He was 84.
The playwright, director and troupe chief died late Saturday from a blood clot within the mind after he collapsed at dwelling and was rushed to a Tokyo hospital on Could 1, his theater group Karagumi mentioned in an announcement on Sunday.
Kara, whose actual title was Yoshihide Otsuru, rose to stardom within the so-called Japanese underground motion of the Sixties generally known as “un-gura,” characterised by a kitsch rebellious fashion additionally present in his contemporaries Shuji Terayama and Tadashi Suzuki.
Kara’s colourful exhibits, usually in makeshift tents evocative of a touring circus, rejected the established theatrical modes then dominating modernizing Japan that had been largely Western, center class and well-behaved.
His performs, resembling “Koshimaki Osen,” had been characterised by a uncooked energetic physicality, blatantly devoid of any pretense at naturalism.
Kara as soon as in contrast his method to “a womb lined in blood.” His theater got here to be generally known as “the pink tent.” A wandering group would placed on his exhibits wherever the tents went up, most famously in a spot close to a shrine in Shinjuku in downtown Tokyo.
Audiences discovered themselves immersed in otherworldly, dreamlike settings. The flashy posters that artist Tadanori Yokoo usually created for Kara’s works exemplified that signature pop surrealist fashion.
Kara’s group continues to be energetic right this moment, performing exhibits that stick with it his legacy. His theater additionally served as a breeding floor for a few of Japan’s prime actors, together with Kaoru Kobayashi and the late Jinpachi Nezu.
Born in Tokyo, Kara majored in theater at Meiji College in Tokyo, which boasts an intensive archive of Kara’s works.
In 1983, Kara gained the celebrated Akutagawa Award for brand spanking new writers for his novel “Letters from Sagawa.” He additionally acted in numerous movies, usually in bit character roles, together with “Demon Pond,” directed by Masahiro Shinoda.
Funeral preparations weren’t set however can be for household and associates, Karagumi mentioned. Kara is survived by his spouse Michiko, sons Gitan Otsuru and Sasuke Otsuru, and daughter Minion Otsuru, all actors.
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Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
