Setsuko Otani, Faculty of Arts and Literature, Seijo University

Kyogen is a traditional Japanese theatrical genre, dating back 650 years. However, Kyogen Theatre is steadily taking root in the Czech Republic, being performed by Czechs for Czech audiences in the Czech language. Kyogen plays have now been translated into Czech, with over 500 Kyogen performances by Czech players. Many Czechs see Kyogen as something very familiar; perhaps more familiar than it is for Japanese people. Czech Kyogen is not merely something people go to see at the theatre. The fact that many Czechs, young and old, are learning how to perform Kyogen suggests that this is much more than a passing fad. To study the proliferation of this traditional Japanese theatrical genre in a Central European nation, far from the shores of Japan, is also to consider the significance of Japanese classics in today’s world, and to consider the fundamental essence of Kyogen comedies.
I interacted with Japanese-classics researchers and theatre-studies researchers in the philosophy and arts departments of Masaryk University, Charles University in Prague, and the Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. I also visited the studios of the actors who play the principal roles in Czech-language Kyogen productions, as well as the venues of Czech Kyogen rehearsals, and interviewed the people who are learning Kyogen.
I was interested in the intergenerational transmission of Kyogen Theatre in Central Europe today, and what it means for the Czech people who view performances or learn Kyogen themselves. In examining these questions, I came to realize that the reception of Kyogen in the Czech Republic is a product of the interplay of historical necessities and several coincidental occurrences.
Performed continually throughout its 650-year-long history, Kyogen has a power that cannot be attributed solely to the universal themes of its plays. As a classical Far-East–Asian theatrical genre, Kyogen is temporally and spatially distant from the today’s West. As such, the fact that it has become part of Czech culture implies that something very local can have a global value.