In 1933, when George Bernard Shaw, a British playwright, visited to Japan, he heard from a Japanese that most of his plays have been translated and presented in Japan. He was surprised and said, "I didn't know that, and I have never received any royalties."１

More than sixty years later, Chikao Tanaka, one of Japan's greatest playwrights, died in December of 1995. At that time, Asahi-Shinbun, the most influential newspaper in Japan, said, "This year, Tanaka's The Edge of a Cloud (kumo no hatae) was revived and The Head of Mary (Maria no kubi)was performed in Japan by an Australian theatre company. Thus, reevaluations of Tanaka's plays were proceeding."２

As the article described, Tanaka's masterpiece The Head of Mary was performed by the Playbox Theatre in 1995 as a part of the project called The Japan-Australia Cultural Exchange Program in which John Romeril's The Floating World was included. Comparing the two stories about Shaw and Tanaka, one may wonder what has happened in last sixty years. The name of the Australian theatre company which performed The Head of Mary will remain in the memory of Japanese, and its production will be an essential monument in the stage history of Tanaka's plays. It is a brilliant act to not simply absorb the foreign culture unilaterally but to have an exchange between two cultures, affecting each other. The Japanese version of The Floating World, presented along with The Head of Mary in Japan and Australia, also confirmed my conviction.

The Japan-Australia Cultural Exchange Program was jointly produced by the Tokyo International Festival of Performing Arts '95 and the 10th Melbourne International Festival of the Arts. In this program, Japanese and Australian theatre companies performed each other's plays in their own country's language. The two productions were shown at both festivals.

Moreover, there was an important aim to the project. In 1995, during the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War 2, both Japanese and Australian theatrical people and audiences have given a consideration to the past and present relationship between two countries with the theme of war. In The Head of Mary, a story which is set in Nagasaki, where one of the A-bombs was dropped, Japanese survivors pray for peace and their sorrow is healed by their faith in Christianity.

On the other hand, The Floating World is a story in which Japanese torment the people of other countries. In the middle of 1970's, an Australian ex-serviceman who has been forced to work on the construction of the Burma-Thai railway starts on a trip to Japan by sea. During the voyage, he is haunted by the ghost of an Australian soldier and a phantom of Japanese soldier. When the ship arrives at Yokohama, he is, in a paranoid state, reliving the maltreatment dealt out by the Japanese army at the camp. It is very important for Japanese in particular to look squarely at these historical facts shown by an Australian. Tadao Nakane, a director of the Tokyo Festival, says, "Though many plays with a war theme are being presented this year, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of war, most of them are from the view point of Japanese, and plays describing Japan as being responsible for the war are very rare."３　 However, all the countries of the world have requested that Japanese face the experiences that both sides faced during the war.

THE DIRECTION BY SATO

The Japanese version of The Floating World (this means the play was performed in Japanese with English subtitles) was directed by Makoto Sato, one of the leading playwrights and directors in contemporary Japanese theatre. He leads his own itinerant troupe called Black Tent, but this time he gathered most of the actors from outside of Black Tent for this production.

The casting is very interesting because it is rich in variety. Isao Natsuyagi as Les Harding was originally a very popular film star who appears in many films and TV programs. Akio Miyabe as Herbert Robinson is an actor from Shingeki, a new school which developed towards the end of Meiji Era as a post-Kabuki theatre. Katsumi Muramatsu is a member of Sato's Black Tent, who has been involved in the post-Shingeki movement since the 1960s. Yumiko Itoh (as Irene Harding) is an actress from a young theatre company which is categorized as the third generation of the small theatre movement of Black tent is considered the first generation. Moreover, Yuki-za, a puppetry troupe whose puppets act as other characters, has a 350-year-tradition and performs classic plays. On the other hand, it often commits itself in modern plays too. Thus, performers belonging to various genres in Japanese traditional, modern and contemporary theatres were assembled for this production. How, then, was the production directed by Sato? How was it different from the ones which have been presented in Australia up till now? Fortunately I had an opportunity to see the production of The Floating World presented by Black Swan Theatre Company and The State Theatre Company of South Australia in 1995. I will illustrate the Japanese production, comparing it with Black Swan & The State Theatre production or former ones described in writings.

1. "Drum Poem One"

According to the text Harry, tells a story of a Japanese businessman who comes to Australia to construct resorts and Australian "Judases" who sell out their land to Japanese in this first scene. In the production of Black Swan and the State Theatre that Japanese businessman appears as a puppet, and also not as Harry, but as Comic, chanting "Drum Poem One" just like a Joruri singer of Bunraku puppet theatre.

Now Sato rewrote the whole of this scene by himself and has two Japanese couples appear in it. The first are typical Japanese honeymooners wearing matching T-shirts and jeans, and the other couple are the executive of a company which is advancing into the tourist industry in Australia, and his secretary. These characters, portrayed by Yuki-za without puppets, recite a new poem which seems more contemporary. For instance, the executive makes sure where Mururoa is on a map and one of the young couple swears not to buy French products at Balmain market in Sydney. They are asymbol of Japanese today, and that is why they are to work as a device to mix images of the past and the present when they appear once again with puppets of Japanese soldiers in the last scene, "Drum Poem Two".

2. The usage of puppets

One of the special characteristics of the Japanese version is the use of puppets. Puppets were used in the Black Swan and State Theatre production also, but the difference between the two productions concerning the usage of puppets is clear. In the Black Swan and State Theatre production, puppets appeared only to portray some images which were narrated. In Drum Poem One, an image of a Japanese businessman whose words are chanted by Comic, a Joruri singer, is embodied as a Bunraku puppet. When Waiter sings a Japanese military song, a puppet appears in that song as a Japanese soldier. When Les recalls the miserable life in the camp filled with disease and starvation, a puppet like a skeleton appears as a symbol of the prisoners.

On the other hand, in the Japanese production puppets manipulated by Yuki-za are actual characters in the play such as Comic, Waiter, Harry and Ship's Officer. In most cases puppeteers wore the same costumes as their puppets; this means that the puppeteers exposed their faces, unlike puppeteers in the Black Swan and the State Theater production or in Japanese traditional Bunraku theatre. As a result, the audience is able to enjoy the performances of both puppets and puppeteers. When Waiter becomes a Japanese soldier and Comic becomes an Australian army officer, only the puppets are quickly exchanged.

It seems like a good idea to have puppets act the roles of Comic, Harry and Waiter. Comic is the character who keeps telling dirty jokes, but most of his jokes are difficult to translate into Japanese, or even if were is possible, they might be dull for the Japanese audience. The puppet as Comic, however, performed the lion dance, a Japanese folk entertainment, and acrobatics instead of jokes, and interested the audience.

Harry is a difficult role to present on stage. When Harry is performed by a single actor, the limited personality may give an obscure impression. In the Sydney Theatre Company production (1986) Harry's Drum Poem One was delegated to McLeod４ and in the Black Swan and State Theatre production, as mentioned above, it was replaced by Comic. As I saw in the Black Swan and State Theatre production, no matter how the part of Harry is curtailed, it required at least one actor, and the existence of that actor was vague. However, in the Japanese production, the puppet fitted the mechanical role of Harry very well.

However, it seems that the largest advantage comes from the use of a puppet to portray Waiter. When Japanese casts perform The Floating World, the question is how they can express that Les, with an Asian face, racially discriminates against Asian Waiter. But if a puppet performs the part of the Waiter, it is possible to dissimulate this Asian as an object of the racism from other cast members such as Les, Irene and Robinson. In addition, the rapid transformation between Waiter and Japanese soldier in Les's imagination was simply expressed by exchanging puppets.

3. The Dippy Birds

When The Floating World was first staged, the Dippy Birds were used as a symbol of the Japanese economic invasion of Australia. In those days, the dippy birds, invented in Japan, were a fad around the world and a large number of them were exported from Japan to Australia. Furthermore, they were also a symbol of the cheapness of Japanese products. However, nowadays with Japanese products considered to be high quality ones, who can find the original meaning given to the Dippy Birds?

Elizabeth Webby commented on the Sydney Theatre Company production as follows: "the political message of the play was very much altered by replacing Dippy Birds, symbols of the inanity of contemporary Japanese commercialism, with Kabuki warriors, a symbol of traditional Japanese culture and art. A negative symbol is replaced by one with positive connotations."５ In the Black Swan and State Theatre production, the scene called "First-rate Japanese Product for International Market" remained and Waiter who became a Japanese businessman explains the instructions for the dippy birds, while they no longer appear in the last scene, Drum Poem Two, despite a stage direction saying that the Dippy Birds were put around Les and "they nod away in perpetual insanity."６

In the case of the Japanese production, the Dippy Birds were used. It was impressve that, in the latter half of Drum Poem Two, after the Japanese honeymooners and the executive and his secretary manipulated their puppets, they appeared again with the Dippy Birds and made them surround Les. Well, why did Sato dare to use these objects whose symbolism had already faded?

Sato explains the reason in his personal notes as follows: "In this production, the significance given to the Dippy Birds is larger, more equivocal, than what Romeril intended in his play. What do the Dippy Birds mean? I leave the question to each member of the audience. This is the technique I often use to write and direct plays. It is a so called "chasm" that I intentionally created to make each spectator's imagination intervene in the drama. That's why I want to show the Dippy Birds impressively before the audience decides how to interpret the drama. The question of what they are stays close to the audience throughout and doesn't allow them to feel comfortable. I want to emphasize that what's happening on the stage is not a ready-made story, but a story that will be completed only after the imagination of each spectator takes part in the drama."７

4. The Drum Poem Two

The running time of the production in Tokyo was more than two and a half hours though a great deal had been cut. It is common for the length of a play written in English or other European languages to become longer when translated into Japanese. However, it was necessary for the production in Melbourne to be two hours. Romeril saw the show in Tokyo and suggested that Sato shorten not only some scenes but also Les's monologue. As the subject of a cut, he mentioned Les's pre-war memory which doesn't have a direct bearing on the miserable situation in the camp.

According to Wayne Harrison, the same kind of cut was also done in the Sydney Theatre Company production. However, Sato didn't dare to cut this part. He explains this reason as follows: "Indeed, Les's recollection of his childhood is out of context. But I am not inclined to cut it because it makes an effective contrast with the other episodes spoken in the monologue. I want to make full use of the characteristics of the monologue such as leaps of imagination, devices of the writing style, and plays on words."８

Indeed, this monologue was, so to speak, the highlight in the Japanese production. In striking contrast to the quiet and gloomy tone of Les in the Black Swan and State Theatre production, this scene was filled with brisk movements, rapid changes of rhythm and tone, and fine visual effects. For example, in the middle of the monologue Les is surrounded by puppets of Japanese soldiers, and when he struggles to shake off them, their faces and bodies are split in two and their heads fall off. (This is not only a nightmare for Les, but from the Japanese audience's point of view also a pitiful image of Japanese soldiers who died tragically on the south sea islands.) Moreover, when Les tells the story that he stole a bottle of vitamins from the Japanese and eats them, he holds a real bottle filled with pills aloft and sprinkles them on his hand. It was a beautiful effect of both sound and sight that the pills passed through his hand and scattered on the linoleum floor.

5. The relationship between Les and Irene

In the text, Irene is described as an unrefined and uncultured character. Since numerous misstatements showing her ignorance, such as "Gherkins", "the Saveloy Plaza" and "a pathochronic liar", are difficult to translate into Japanese, Irene doesn't make so many mistakes in this production. The stereotype of a middle-aged woman, one characteristic of Irene, was depicted to some extent by Yumiko Itoh who is good at comical roles; still, she might be too refined for the part.
Sato provided a couple of scenes showing a new interpretation of the relationship between Irene and Les. The first is Scene 17 "Listen to the Band", in which, after the breakdown of the friendship between Les and Robinson, Les tightly embraces and kisses Irene who has just come from a restroom. Sato likes this scene which he added himself, and considers that it is "the last embrace, though neither Les nor Irene has noticed yet that it will be the last."９ In Sato's interpretation, "Les, like a drowning man, seeks Irene's helping hand unconsciously. But she misses his sign because she can't understand the meaning of his behavior."１０ In other words, Sato interprets that there still remains a slight mutual reliance between Les and Irene at the heart of their cold relationship as shown in previous scenes.
The other is the Scene 19 "Yokohama Blues," in which Irene regrets that she has missed Les's inner voice asking for help and, even after the Scene 20 "Drum Poem Two" starts, she stands there, blaming herself. Then Les is uttering his insane monologue beside her. This new scene shows the tragedy in which they have been separated at last, though their unconscious affections still remained.

6. Set design and music

Sato was in charge of the set design too. The design was fairly simple. There were railings of the deck at both wings of the stage. Steel screens with meshes were situated in the centre of the stage. Opening them allows some scenes to begin like using a curtain; moreover, since it was possible to make the rear figures appear on the screens by using a backlight, they were used to express an imaginary cage in which Les was shut up. On the left side of the stage was the space where Yas-Kaz, a musician, played music, and it was full of equipment such as synthesizers.

Yas-Kaz performed all the tunes used in that show, and his music added weight to the play. The music composed by Yas-Kaz is characterized by its Asian tone. It stirs up not only Australian exoticism, but also Japanese. In the Black Swan and State Theatre production, a Japanese popular song was used whenever Waiter appeared as a Japanese.

The difference in music between the two productions might also arise from the difference in their purposes. In other words, the Black Swan and State Theatre production was presented on the assumption that only Australian audiences would see it, and only if the show presents a Japanese atmosphere can the production touch on the theme of the relationship between Australia and Asia in The Floating World.

On the other hand, the Japanese production was designed for both Japanese and Australian audiences. The exotic music indicates the important theme of the encounter with Asia to the audiences of both countries. Presumably, therefore, Yas-Kaz's music adds a more cross-cultural point of view to the Japanese production.

REACTIONS IN THE MEDIA OF BOTH COUNTRIES

1. Japan

Eight performances of The Floating World were given at the Small Hall #1 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space in Ikebukuro. The seating in the auditorium of this hall is variable, and 200 seats were prepared for this production. The theatre was nearly filled for every performance. Of course, publicity for the production was carried out on a large scale. Approximately 25 newspapers all over Japan and 15 magazines carried announcements for this production as part of the festival, thus it was well favored as a production of this kind in Japan.

However, the reaction by the Japanese media was limited. This resulted not from the merits of the production, but rather from the small scale of Japanese theatre criticism. Indeed, though an average of more than 50 plays are presented per week in Tokyo, only a few of them are written up in reviews. Nevertheless, the Asahi Shimbun, the only newspaper which has regular columns for theatre reviews, ran two reviews of The Floating World, a rare case.

The first review was written by Osamu Imamura, a theatre critic: Theatre companies of both Japan and Australia perform each other's masterpieces in translation---such an enthusiastic staging is produced by the Tokyo International Festival of performing Arts '95. The program, which is performed by a Japanese cast, is called The Floating World.... The completed stage has an extraordinary impact, which portrays the bitter memory of war unexpectedly shot from the rips of peaceful life.... Sato successfully directs the Yuki-za puppets (which have a tradition dating from Edo-period works) during the scene of delusion where the Japanese guards make a stage appearance. According to the original play, Waiter (Isshi Yuki) and Comic (Magosaburo Yuki) are supposed to perform a double role. But the use of puppets removes excess contemplation and conveys the cruelty more objectively.

However, this play is not only an accusation of the Japanese army's brutality. I think that the playwright clearly brings out the Australian people's identity and the nature of Japan-Australian relations, through the comparison between the Les's memory and his wife's simple-minded adoration of Japanese culture. At the same time, this intention confronts the audience with the tough question: who are we Japanese? Natsuyagi's long monologue is the highlight of this play and expresses the wounded heart in which truth and fiction are mixed together in madness. Yas-Kaz's music by synthesizers and percussion instruments is also quite effective.１１

The second article written by Akihiko Senda, the most prominent critic of Japanese contemporary theatre, is a further discussion on The Floating World.１２ In his review, Senda found a common point between this play and a new Japanese play called To the South (Minami e). This play, written by Oriza Hirata who is one of the youngest and most important figures in Japanese contemporary theatre, was presented in the Tokyo metropolitan area at the almost same time.

In To the South the story takes place on a ship which is carrying Japanese passengers to a southern island in the near future during the 21st century. On the ship Japanese reveal their racial prejudices toward an Asian waitress. Senda says, "Apparently, the author wrote this play as a warning against a potential future of Japanese who may become arrogant and exclusive as a result of becoming wealthy", and he points out that this prejudice is the same as that found in The Floating World.

Moreover, he quotes my own idea that the title The Floating World refers to "Australia floating on the Asian ocean"１３ and says, "If so, we can consider the ship in To The South as a symbol of floating Japan, too. These two ships are devices to embody "Asia" as images for both Australians and Japanese. The ship bound for the south and the ship bound for the north . By looking at ourselves in each ship as mirror images, we can see that today our two countries of are floating in Asia." Thus, Senda mainly discussed the play itself by comparison and concluded that this, so to speak, Australian classic was a piece which could offer quite an interesting point of view for Japanese, even in comparison with a new Japanese play.

2. Australia

In Melbourne, the show was presented at Merlyn Theatre, the C. U. B. Malthouse. Five performances were given from 31 October to 4 November. Compared to The Head of Mary, which was performed by the Playbox alternately at the same theatre, The Floating World didn't draw as large an audience, but there was quite a good response from the media. Though it is impossible to present all of them in this essay, I will quote some typical comments to show how much praise the production received in Melbourne. Indeed, the level of the whole production and of the acting in particular were highly regarded in some reviews. They were as follows:

For me, the highlight of MIFA (Melbourne International Festival of the Arts) was the cross-cultural production of John Romeril's The Floating World.
...Director Makoto Sato did a terrific job capturing the careful, racist, suburban world of the Hardings, and Isao Natsuyagi was simply excellent as the deteriorating Les. (Fiona Scott-Norman. The Bulletin, November 21, 1995)

The vulgarity of Les and Irene Harding---in this immensely satisfying, theatric and brilliantly integrated performance---takes on an altogether different reality from its earlier purpose and intention. The ironies, and the meditative and musical qualities warm and inspirational, the outcome of an unlikely yet fortuitous exchange. (Bryce Hallett. The Australian, November 3 1995)

...an unequivocal success, a delightful, surprising, accomplished and moving theatre experience. It reveals all manner of fresh ideas on a play by now familiar to many Australian, and opens a fascinating window on Japan's current generation of theatre practices.
...Natsuyagi, along with Yumiko Ito playing Irene Harding, distill a universal humanity through very fine performances that do much more than simply imitate Australian characteristics.
...The standard of theatrical performance is superb. It is delight to witness such smooth, skillful and intelligent work. (Helen Thomson. The Age, 2 November 1995)

In addition, there were some comments on the remarkable characteristics of this production such as the Yuki-za, and Yas-Kaz's music:

The foreigners on the boat were represented by puppets, and these worked on both a metaphoric and theatrical level. (Scott-Norman)

The wonderful puppets are not only delightful, they also subtly alter the tenor of many scenes. Used to brilliant comic effect in the ship-board entertainment section, they represent, as well, the wartime dream characters who haunt Les.
Their diminutive status and exaggerated movements mean that the scenes of brutal conflict are removed from actual physical representation into the realm of play within a play.
They are still sinister and theatening, but controlled by their puppetiers, their small size increasing their malevolence but also signalling their status as imagined and remembered characters now only alive in Les's mind.
Yas-Kaz's music, a combination of electoric and traditional, throbbing and pulsing in the background, not only creates an extraordinary atmosphere, but also signals the growing disorder of Les's mind, taking us deeper into his pain as the play proceeds. (Thomson)

Furthermore, we can find several comments on the fact that the Japanese company performs this particular play at this point in time:

...the fact it has been mounted by Japanese company is a gesture of breathtaking humanity and heroic mobility.
It is worth 10,000 official apologies. The war, at last, is over. (Chris Boyd. Herald Sun, 4 November 1995)

This was an astoundingly brave production and one can only wonder how this Australian play about Japanese war crimes went douwn in Tokyo in the reciprocal production. (Scott-Norman)

In Australia, two productions of The Floating World both by the Japanese company and by the Black Swan were presented, but these reviews show that the importance of the Japanese production didn't decrease at all and that it provided a great inspiration to the Australian audience. There is no doubt that this production surmounts a difficulty concerning the language, introduced a sample of contemporary Japanese theatre to Australians, and, in addition, that they appreciated the significance of the fact that the Japanese company staged this play during the 50th anniversary of the end of war.

PERSONAL REACTIONS AS A TRANSLATOR

1. Publication of the translation of The Floating World

　 In order to talk about my impression of the production, I will discuss my part in this project. In 1993, my translation of The Floating World was published by Oceania Press in Japan as the first volume of The Australian Drama Series. The purpose of this series is to introduce major Australian plays to Japanese. Until then, Australian plays hadn't been well known to Japanese at all. Only some plays by Roger Pulvers had been translated and published in a magazine during the 1970s. Needless to say, neither Lawler nor Williamson nor Nowra is widely known. Most Japanese scholars hadn't even imagined the natural fact that theatre existed in Australia. Japan has a long and rich tradition as a so-called "translation culture" which has continued since the 19th century, as a result numerous American and European plays have been translated. We can enjoy even the latest Broadway and West End hits in Japanese soon after they are staged in the country of origin. It seemed unbalanced to me that Japanese who absorbed other foreign cultures with great curiosity had never turned their eyes toward Australian culture.

There are two reasons why I chose The Floating World as the first play to translate when I was given a chance to introduce Australian drama in Japanese. First, I was convinced that, if this play was translated, it would create a new paradigm for Japanese people. Australia's direct approach to Japan is illustrated in this play, even if it is negative. Despite depicting a head-on collision between Australia and Japan/Asia, it is filled with a new and powerful intention to encourage their coexistence. This direct approach requires Japanese to change their outdated attitude that they indulge in absorbing only Western culture. It is nearly a novel experience for Japanese to have a foreign culture require them to directly inspect the past and the present of their own country. In this respect, The Floating World suggests an entirely new direction for Japanese thought.

Secondly, of course, the theme of war which The Floating World deals with is one of the most important matters for Japanese. To my surprise, there is a wide gap in perception between Japan and Australia concerning the war. Though many Japanese know that they fought against such countries as the United States, Britain, and China in World War II, Australia is not considered to be part that list at all. I doubt whether even old Japanese are aware of the history of events between Japan and Australia. Meanwhile,Japan-Australia relations have rapidly deepened in recent years. Nowadays, it is not too much to say that the country which Japanese most want to visit is Australia, but their understanding of the present relations between the two countries is not at all connected with past events. While the memory of the war against Japan still lingers in Australia, overwhelmingly, the Japanese people who go there have no knowledge of the shared history. In such a situation, can we really establish a true friendship between the two countries? That was why I wanted Japanese people to know of the undeniable history shown in this play, and begin to bridge this large gap.

About two years later, although the translation of The Floating World was largely ignored, at least in Japanese academic circle, its value was recognized by theatre practitioners and as a result it received the great opportunity to be staged not only in Japan but, also in Australia.

2. Who are we Japanese?

For the reasons mentioned above, my interest was mainly in how this particular play would be perceived by the Japanese audience. Some reactions were as I had expected. Akihiko Senda agreed with me about the possibility of interpreting the Australian characters in this play as allegories for Japanese of today. Although the review by Osamu Imamura, was written in very simple terms, I feel that it held something in common with my thinking.

For example, Imamura says, "This play is not only an accusation of the Japanese army's brutality." If the stories of numerous atrocities of the Japanese army at camps on the Burma-Thailand Railway told by Les existed only to arouse hostility toward Japanese, there would be no room for Japanese to be involved in the realm of this play and reflect on various problems around them. If Les were a character whose only purpose is to list past agonies suffered at the hands of the Japanese army, the Japanese today would only hear his words with a slightly guilty conscience. However, these are not the only messages that this play can provide for Japanese.

Les's fight was not only against Japanese soldiers, but also against a doubt about the rightness of the army of his country, and a contradiction between his racial prejudice to Japanese and his own approach to Japan. Then he was defeated, received many wounds, and was imprisoned into the past. I think this is the scene we Japanese must never avert our eyes from. Today, Japan is being called on to account for war crimes such as the Burma-Thailand Railway. Imagine how painful it is for Japanese to take responsibility for such actions. While the A-bombs which were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are usually viewed as justifiable in international common thought, numerous survivors are still suffering from the aftereffects of the A-bombs. Nevertheless, Japanese must positively face responsibility for their past. Therefore, they can't ignore Les's agony which affects even his very identity. His agony is another burden that Japanese must shoulder. Imamura says that this play confronted the audience with "the tough question of who we Japanese are." I think this means that, even if it causes a crisis of pride, Japanese must squarely look at the past and present and discover their real identities.

3. Some opinions of the Japanese audience

Here again the reactions were not what I had expected. Information was gathered by questionnaires at each performance in Tokyo. These questionnaires were set out by the producer of the Tokyo Festival. Though there were only about thirty valid replies, it was believed that this was a good opportunity to hear Japanese audiences' candid opinions.

Most opinions from the comparatively old spectators indicate that the show gave them the opportunity to seriously face the war. For example:

"I could really feel Les's deep grief." (woman, 67)
"The show made me remember my experiences during the war. Till now, I had thought we were victims of the war, but I noticed we were guilty at the same time." (woman, 70) "I saw for the first time a play showing the war guilt of Japanese. Les's guilty feeling about the dead makes us Japanese feel more guilty. I wish to live without forgetting them." (man, 65)

On the other hand, reactions of younger people surprised me because many of them avoided the theme of war. People in their twenties and thirties insisted that the war is none of their concern. Typical opinions were as follows:

"As for the theme of this play, that's not my business because I was born in the '70s. It sounded like a fairy tale to me." (man, 22)
"Stories of war are like one scene of a film and don't have any reality for me. So hearing such stories is a great burden." (woman, 32)
"I can't understand the purpose of showing this play to Japanese now." (woman, 27)

I was quite surprised by such a generation gap. Above all, I would never have expected young Japanese to be so indifferent to the history of their country. This was a great blow to me because I also belong to this generation. Of course, the most serious cause of this situation must be a defect of historical education in Japan which has recently received a lot of criticism. Is it impossible to teach the reality of the war to the younger generation of Japanese which has been blessed with peace and wealth? If so, the history will become forgotten and the next generation will not learn any lesson from the past. However, some high school students who are much younger also came to see the show. Though students wrote in their questionnaires that the story was too difficult to understand, they tried to accept the play seriously rather than avoid its implications. I remember that I was impressed by the many Australian junior high and high school students who came to the theatre where the Black Swan production of The Floating World was staged. In order to teach Japan's younger generation about real history, it might be a good idea to adopt plays of this kind as a part of their historical education.

Moreover, another discovery arising from the opinions of the audience is that many people, irrespective of age or sex, were repulsed by Les's dirty words. There is no equivalent to the dirty limericks Les recites in Japan. Though there are jokes in Japanese verse called `Senryu` which have the same metre as Haiku, they don't contain obscene elements, only satire. When I translated Les's limericks into Japanese, I adapted the contents to the traditional Japanese metre. But the audience seemed to be not a little amazed by the Australian characters who kept incessantly uttering coarse things.

Taking notice of the limerick also helps to reveal cultural differences between the two countries through the varied reactions of the audiences in the theatres of the two counties. There are many limericks in the Les's last monologue. Whenever the limericks are funny, Australian audiences laugh at them even though they are part of a serious scene. The Japanese actors were amused by that kind of reaction at the Malthouse. They told me that Japanese audiences never laugh during such a serious scene even when it contains funny lines. This is how the reaction of audiences of the same performance in the different countries shows each country's cultural background in some way. This is perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the cultural exchange between different countries.

4. Romeril and Sato

In this cross-cultural program, it was the fact that Sato directed Romeril's play that attracted me the most. This collaboration is, in fact, very significant from the comparative point of view between Japanese and Australian contemporary theatre. This is because both Sato and Romeril are influential artists who represent the reformation of theatre in both Japan and Australia from the 1960s to mid-70s, and the generation of the rise of counter-culture.

In this short essay, I don't dare to discuss how Romeril and other Australian playwrights such as Hibberd and Williamson, through La Mama and APG, revolutionized Australian theatre. However, I noticed that Australian New Wave and Sato's style have something in common. Sato, along with his contemporaries such as Tadashi Suzuki, Yukio Ninagawa, Shuji Terayama, and Juro Kara, have played an important role in the reformation of Japanese theatre. Until the '60s when they appeared, Shingeki (modern theatre) had represented main-stream Japanese theatre; promoting the modernization of Japanese theatre under Western influence from the time it had advocated the anti-Kabuki movement during the Meiji Era. Even after World War II, however, the prevailing tendency in Shingeki was toward Chekhovian realistic plays, and there was little room for the creation of new theatre. The first generation of the Little Theatre movement, like Sato and his peers, criticized Shingeki for its persistence in the translation of plays of realism, and engaged in a thoroughgoing reconsideration of theatrical concepts like acting, theatre, and audience, and also tried to establish a firm footing by emphasizing Japanese folklore. Their activities spread out, gave shape to out-door theatres, street theatres, and itinerant theatre using tents, and came to be filled with imagination and acting style which were closely related to the Japanese nature. That is why they had a lot in common with the Australian New Wave like APG which pursued Australianism by repelling the main stream whose performances were mainly only foreign realism plays, and they also tried a variety of experiments such as out-door theatres and street theatres.

It was Romeril that choose Sato as the director of The Floating World and Sato also seems to be conscious of the fact that he and Romeril have a something in common. He says:

In the early 1970s, John Romeril's The Floating World was born out of the new theatre movement in Australia. At the same time, similar changes were occurring in Japanese theatre; there emerged a need to find a new voice, a new way of looking at ourselves and of breaking away from the old traditions. My company Black Tent was formed in this atmosphere. When we started performing there were threats and warnings about the work we were doing, which called attention to things that were not right with society and history. Many people did not want to hear this. Some decades later, I am sure John Romeril will agree, when I say that we share and express the same ideologies, and that this collaboration is indeed a fortuitous event.１４

Indeed, Romeril and Sato have continued their discussion during the process of producing this show and have developed a congenial relationship. This causes me to predict future collaborations between the two. If this exchange continues, Japanese and Australian theatre, which they have led, will grow closer and become a great stream in the development of world contemporary theatre.

CONCLUSION

Thus, the Japanese version of The Floating World presented in Tokyo and Melbourne attracted great interest in both countries. In Australia, the production showed the high standard of Japanese contemporary theatre, while in Japan it became the first opportunity for Japanese to experience Australian drama. Besides, it clearly brought out the problem of Japanese facing the truth of their past. People from both countries had the precious opportunity to see themselves from the point of view of the other country. In that respect, this production played an important role as a cross-cultural experience. Besides, it is also important that there was an exchange between the Japanese company and the Playbox, including the technical staff. Of course, the new relationship between Romeril and Sato also merits attention. I would like to follow how these exchanges proceed in the future.

I plan to keep translating Australian plays and introduce them in Japanese because there are many pieces which could attract the interest of Japanese audiences. Moreover, I want Australians to know more about Japanese contemporary theatre. Not only the traditional, but also contemporary theatre in Japan has an attractive power. I hope such a cultural exchange will continue and provide many opportunities for the staging of plays in each other's country.

NOTES

1 The fifty years of the Theatre Museum (Engeki hakubutsukan goju nen) (Tokyo: The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University, 1978) p.151.
2 Asahi-shinbun, 29 November, 1995. (Author's translation)
3 Program note for The Floating World and The Head of Mary (Tokyo Internaional Festival of Performing Arts '95, 1995) (Author's translation)
4 Harrison, Wayne, "Maintaining the Rage" in Holloway, Peter (ed.) Contemporary Australian Drama. Revised ed. (Sydney: Currency Press, 1987) p.517.
5 Webby, Elizabeth, Modern Australian Plays. (South Melbourne: Sydney University Press, 1990) p.38.
6 Romeril, John, The Floating World. Revised ed. (Sydney: Currency Press, 1985) p.90
7 A note which Sato wrote to discuss the directions with Romeril. (Typescript in Japanese, 1995) (Author's translation)
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Osamu, Imamura, "Review of The Floating World" Asahi-shinbun, 27 September, 1995. (Author's translation)
12 Akihiko Senda, "Two contemporary plays (Futatsu no gendaigeki)" Asahi-shinbun, 3 October, 1995. (Author's translation)
13 A summary of my note for the program for the Tokyo production is as follows:
The title, The Floating World, means "Australia floating on the Asian ocean". In other words, Australia as a nation, needs to survive in an Asian ocean where the cultural basis is not Australian, and her cultural basis is far away from Europe as well; she also noticed for the first time that she was threatened by Asia during World War II. Furthermore, nowadays she is exposed to the economic advance of Japan. The play severely reveals Australians' xenophobia and prejudice toward Asian people and warns them to overcome that attitude since they live together with Asians as part of the Asia-Pacific area.
Japanese people can't help considering this Australian problem as their own problem too. First, as the importance of the Asia-Pacific area grows, Japan realizes that she must strengthen her relationship with neighboring countries in this area, even though Japan has mainly favored Western countries since the Meiji Restoration. And yet, Japan still can't abandon her respect for the West, thus maintaining her prejudice toward Asia. This is an attitude common to both Japan and Australia. Secondly, there is no room to doubt that the symbols of the menace of Asia to Australia are the fury of Japanese army during World War II, and Japan's present-day economic advance. Unless Japan works to reduce Australian anxieties, these two countries will never become true partners. That is why we Japanese must look squarely at the history of relations between Japan and Australia. As to present-day relations between two countries, the poverty of people's thinking whose only concern is the fulfillment of their own desires, such as speculation or tourism, must be reconsidered. As a great number of people are coming and going to each other's country, we should be willing to learn more about each other's way of thinking. [Sawada, Keiji, Program note for The Floating World and The Head of Mary. (Tokyo International Festival of performing Arts '95, 1995)]
14 Makoto Sato, "Director's note" in The Floating World program (Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, 1995)