Director's Notes
When we look up from the history books and consider our role in WWII, we think of ourselves as heroes. To the Japanese, we were simply conquerors. Kobo Abe's The Ghost Is Here was written in the years following the defeat of Japan and subsequent occupation by the US, when the identity of a country was altered forever in the moment an atomic mushroom cloud engulfed Hiroshima.
On August 15, 1945 Emperor Hirohito took to the airwaves for the first time to address his people. Citizens of Japan huddled around radios among the rubble and in their homes to hear their leader announce that, "Despite the best that has been done by everyone...Japan has resolved to pave the way for the grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable."
When MacArthur stepped out of the airplane onto Japanese soil, he did so without a tie, shirt sleeves rolled up. With his arrival, Tokyo Rose stepped away from the microphone to be replaced by the Andrew Sisters. American beer sat next to sake in the bars, and Western dress and comic books invaded a Japanese culture and people searching for what it meant to be a Japanese citizen.
In the opening moments of The Ghost Is Here–in a scene reminiscent of a Sin City comic book–rain is falling on the occupied bridge above Oba, a petty thief, who like many of these characters, has wandered far from home. When he meets the war veteran Fukagawa–who sees the ghost of his dead wartime buddy–Oba sees the opportunity for capital and reinvention. Kobo Abe's play is filled with song, dance and a great deal of humor, but it is ultimately a play about survivors in a land of lost dreams–attempting to piece together the fragments, photographs, and echoes of their past to forge a new future.
Sixty-five years after WWII, I believe we too live in a nation far from a time when my grandfather returned home a hero. We pick up the paper only to be reminded that the stock market is simply the sale of illusions, retirements can disappear in a moment, and jobs can end. Like Fukagawa, I feel like we don't live in the land of heroes, but rather of fallen giants. Kobo Abe's play was born out of a Japanese history and culture, and here in Chicago in 2012 I believe The Ghost Is Here is a play about Japan and the unseen ghost that occupied them. We too are at a crossroad, and the moment of reinvention lies before us. And if we are no longer heroes, who are we?
Japan On the World Stage: 100 Years of Cultural Identity in Transition
1854: The USA forces Japan to sign a trade agreement ("treaty of Kanagawa") which reopens Japan to foreigners after two centuries
1855: Russia and Japan establish diplomatic relations
1864: British, French, Dutch and American warships bomb Choshu and open more Japanese ports for foreigners
1869: Yukichi Fukuzawa's "Conditions in the West" launches the wave of Westernization
1869: The Confucian school of Edo becomes a Western-style university (later renamed University of Tokyo)
1870: The first newspaper
1871: The yen debuts
1871: The revolutionary government dismantles the feudal system and forbids the samurai lords from retaining private armies
1872: Western dress is prescribed for official ceremonies
1873: Japan grants religious freedom and adopts the Gregorian calendar
1875: Russia exchanges with Japan the Kurile Islands for the island of Sakhalin
1876: Japan forces Korea to sign the treaty of Kanghwa
1877: The samurai revolt against the emperor who has forbidden them to carry swords, but are defeated by the regular army
1879: Japan holds regional elections, the first democratic elections outside of the West
1885: China and Japan agree to pull out their troops from Korea
1889: Emperor Meiji (Mikado) promulgates a parliamentary constitution
1891: The government founds the Yawata Iron Works
1894: China sends troops into Korea and Japan invades China (first Sino-japanese war)
1895: Japan defeats China and China is forced to cede Taiwan and recognize Japanese supremacy over Korea at the treaty of Shimonoseki
1895: Sumitomo establishes a bank
1896: The European powers force Japan to surrender the Liaotung peninsula of China
1896: A law code based on the German one is adopted
1899: Nippon Electric Corporation (NEC) is founded specializing in communications, the first joint venture with foreign capital (USA's Western Electric)
1900: The population of Japan is 44 million
1902: Japan signs the London treaty with Britain that recognizes Japan's rights in Korea and Britain's rights in China
1904: Japan attacks Russia in Manchuria, destroying the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, the first time that a non-European country defeats a European power
1905: An eight-year economic boom begins
1910: Namihei Odaira starts the electrical repair shop Hitachi in Japan
1911: Marxist movements are wiped out after the discovery of a plot to assassinate the emperor
1914: World War I breaks out in the Balkans, pitting Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, USA, and Japan against Austria, Germany, and Turkey
1914: Car manufacturer DAT (later Datsun) is founded
1915: Second economic boom
1917: Nikon is founded
1918: The United Nations assigns the Mariana Islands to Japan
1920: Prices collapse and a long stagnation begins
1922: The Japanese Communist Party is founded
1923: The great Kanto earthquake devastates Tokyo
1924: The US Congress approves the Exclusion Act, that prohibits further immigration from Japan
1927: Collapse of the banking system
1928: Japan's population is 65 million
1928: Aikawa Yoshisuke founds the holding company Nippon Sangyo (later Nissan)
1930: Britain, Japan, France, Italy and the USA sign the London Naval Treaty, an agreement to reduce naval warfare
1930: Four zaibatsu ("money cliques") dominate Japan's economy: Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Furukawa, and Sumitomo
1931: The Japanese army provokes an incident and invades Manchuria
1932: Following a devaluation of the yen, the Japanese economy begins to recover ahead of Western economies
1932:The Japanese army institutes the first "comfort houses"
1932: War minister Araki Sadao promulgates the "Kodoha/ The Imperial Way" ideology of nationalism and expansion
1933: Following the condemnation of Japan's occupation of Manchuria, Japan Leaves the League of Nations
1935: The Fuji Electric corporation spins off Fujitsu, specializing in telecommunications
1935: The Soviet Union declares that the fascist states of Germany and Japan are the enemies
1936: Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact (de facto, an anti-Soviet pact)
1937: Japan begins a secret program of naval construction
1937: A clash between Chinese and Japanese troops leads to a general war
1937: Japan captures Nanjing (350,000 Chinese are killed and 100,000 women are raped during the "rape of Nanking")
1938: Prime minister Konoe announces the "New Order" in Asia
1939: Japan establishes the "Unit 731" research laboratory for biological warfare in Harbin, China, and tests biological weapons on war prisoners (10,000 die)
1939: Toshiba is founded to produce home appliances
1940: Italy, Germany, and Japan sign the pact of the "axis"
1940: The population of Japan is 73 million and the population of Tokyo is 6.8 million
1940: Japan inherits French Indochina (Vietnam) from France (Vichy government) and announces the intention of creating a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"
1940: Japan bombs the Chinese city of Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague
1941: Japan signs a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union
1941: Japan invades French Indochina, the Philippines, and Thailand
1941: General Hideki Tojo becomes prime minister
1941: Japan attacks the USA fleet at Pearl Harbor
1942: Japan captures Burma and invades the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and British India
1944: The USA drops 22,885 tons of bombs on the Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama area
1945: The USA lands in Okinawa, Germany surrenders to the USA, British, and Soviets
1945: The USA drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and emperor Hirohito surrenders, World War II ends, and Japan is forced to retreat from the land it occupied
1946: Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka found TTK (later Sony)
1947: Japan ratifies a new democratic constitution with the emperor a mere figurehead
1948: Soichiro Honda founds a motorcycle manufacturing company
1948: Tojo is hanged
1951: Japan's GNP is US$14.2 billion, 4.2% of the USA's GNP, 1/2 of West Germany's, 1/3 third less than Britain's
1952: The USA returns Japan to independence
Source: http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/japanese.html
