Shinpa
Shinpa (新派) (also rendered shimpa) is a modern form of theater in Japan, usually featuring melodramatic stories, contrasted with the more traditional kabuki style. Taking its start in the 1880s, it later spread to cinema.
Art form
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.[1] Some of the innovations associated with shinpa included shortened performance times, the re-introduction of female performers to the stage, the abolition of teahouses that had previously controlled ticket sales, and the frequent adaptation of western classics, such as the plays of Shakespeare and The Count of Monte Cristo.[1] 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.[2] Social and political struggles became new dramatic subjects,[3] as did patriotic events.[1] Aesthetically, shinpa performances distinguished themselves by darkened auditoriums, orchestra areas and scenery changes, and elaborate stage lighting.[3]
History
The roots of shinpa can be traced to a form of
Otojirō Kawakami.[2] After the dissolution of the Liberal Party in 1884, Sudō became a founding member of the Dainippon geigeki kyōfūkai ("Great Japan society for the reformation of theatre") as a means of an opposition against the conservative government, but its impact was only modest.[3] Kawakami formed his own theatre troupe in 1891 and celebrated his biggest success with the patriotic play Kawakami Otojirō semchi kenbunki ("Kawakami Otojirō reports from the battlefield"), which thematised Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War.[3] Beginning in 1903, Kawakami and his wife Yakko Sada, who both had previously appeared on stage in Europe, introduced plays by Shakespeare, Maurice Maeterlinck and Victorien Sardou to Japanese audiences.[3][4]
As a theatrical form, shinpa was most successful in the early 1900s as the works of novelists such as
Roka Tokutomi were adapted for the stage.[2] Notable groups were the Seibikan, the Seibidan, the Isamiengeki and the Hongōza, and actors like Yōhō Ii, Minoru Takada and Rokurō Kitamura grew to fame and shaped the new movement.[3] Although only short-lived,[3] the Seibidan troupe was successful with a more conservative form that was closer to kabuki than to the later shingeki ("new drama") because of its continued use of onnagata and off-stage music.[2][5]
On the stage, shinpa was less successful after the
Korean theater through the shinp’a (신파) genre.[6]
Spread to cinema
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.
See also
Notes
- ^ ISBN 0521434378. Retrieved 12 May 2015.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-231-14032-4.
- ^ ISBN 9780691043333.
- ^ "Japanese performing arts: Meiji period". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
- ISBN 9780674808164.
- ISBN 0-521-43437-8.
ISBN0521434378 shinp'a.
- ^ ISBN 0-8143-2926-8.
- ^ Powell, Brian (2002). Japan's Modern Theatre: A Century of Change and Continuity.
External links
- Gekidan Shinpa official page (in Japanese)
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