External links
- Gekidan Shinpa official page (in Japanese)
Shinpa (新派) (also rendered shimpa) is a form of theater in Japan, usually featuring melodramatic stories, contrasted with the more traditional kabuki style. It later spread to cinema also.
The roots of Shinpa can be traced to a form of agitation propaganda theater in the 1880s promoted by Liberal Party members Sadanori Sudo and Otojirō Kawakami. [1] Theatre historians have characterized Shinpa as a transitional movement, closely associated with the Meiji restoration, whose primary rationale was the rejection of "old" values in favor of material that would appeal to a partially westernized urban middle class which still maintained some traditional habits of thought. [2] Some of the innovations associated with Shinpa included: shortened performance times, the occasional re-introduction of female performers to the stage, the abolition of teahouses that had previously controlled ticket sales, the use of contemporary patriotic events as subject matter, and the frequent adaptation of western classics, such as the plays of Shakespeare and The Count of Monte Cristo . [2]
It eventually earned the name "shinpa" (literally meaning "new school") to contrast it from "kyūha" ("old school" or kabuki ) due its more contemporary and realistic stories. [1] With the success of the Seibidan troupe, however, shinpa theater ended up with a form that was closer to kabuki than to the later shingeki because of its continued use of onnagata and off-stage music. [1] As a theatrical form, it was most successful in the early 1900s as the works of novelists such as Kyōka Izumi, Kōyō Ozaki, and Roka Tokutomi were adapted for the stage. [1] With the introduction of cinema in Japan, shinpa became one of the first film genres in opposition again to kyūha films, as many films were based on shinpa plays. [3]
Some shinpa stage actors like Masao Inoue were heavily involved in film, and a form called rensageki or literally "chain drama" appeared which mixed cinema and theater on stage. With the rise of the reformist Pure Film Movement in the 1910s, which strongly criticized shinpa films for their melodramatic tales of women suffering from the strictures of class and social prejudice, films about contemporary subjects eventually were called gendaigeki in opposition to jidaigeki by the 1920s, even though shinpa stories continued to be made into film for decades to come. [3] On the stage, shinpa was no longer as successful after the Taishō era, but good playwrights such as Matsutarō Kawaguchi, actresses like Yaeko Mizutani and such Living National Treasures as Rokurō Kitamura and Shōtarō Hanayagi helped keep the form alive. [1] Shinpa also had an influence on modern Korean theater through the shinp’a (신파) genre. [4]
ISBN0521434378 shinp'a.
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Kabuki (歌舞伎) is a classical form of Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate kumadori make-up worn by some of its performers.
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Hideji Hōjō was the pen name of a Japanese author, novelist, and playwright in Shōwa period Japan. His real name was Iino Hideji.
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Na Woon-gyu was a Korean actor, screenwriter and director. He is widely considered the most important filmmaker in early Korean cinema, and possibly Korea's first true movie star. Since he often wrote, directed and acted in his films, he has even been said to have started the auteur film-making tradition in Korea.
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Tomoyoshi Murayama was a Japanese artist, play writer, novelist and drama producer active during the Shōwa period in Japan.
Kunio Kishida was a Japanese playwright, dramatist, novelist, lecturer, acting coach, theatre critic, translator, and proponent of Shingeki. Kishida spearheaded the modernization of Japanese dramaturgy and transformed Japanese theatre acting. He was a staunch advocate for the theatre to operate as a dual artistic and literary space.
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Shingeki was a leading form of theatre in Japan that was based on modern realism. Born in the early years of the 20th century, it sought to be similar to modern Western theatre, putting on the works of the ancient Greek classics, William Shakespeare, Molière, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekov, Tennessee Williams, and so forth. As it appropriated Western realism, it also introduced women back onto the Japanese stage.
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Harue Tsutsumi is a Japanese playwright. She specializes in kabuki, specifically kabuki in the Meiji Era.
James Rodger Brandon was an American academic who was a professor of Asian theater specializing in Kabuki and Sanskrit theater at the University of Hawaii. He was a member of the generation of scholars who first brought Asian theater to English-speaking audiences in the postwar period, translating dozens of plays and directing many performances, some of which toured widely throughout the United States.
Carol Fischer Sorgenfrei is a scholar, translator, editor, and playwright who assumes the title of "founding mother" of Asian theater studies for her contributions to the study of cross-cultural performance and her expertise in Asian theatre. She has published extensively on Asian cultural practices and has written plays incorporating elements of traditional Japanese drama. Currently Professor Emeritus at UCLA, Sorgenfrei continues her creative work as a playwright.
