‘Shogun’ a Paean to Japanese Pop Culture

“Abarenbo Shogun” (The Ruffian Generalissimo), which played Friday and Saturday at the Wiltern Theatre, is a theatrical version of a popular Japanese television series, making the leap over the Pacific to reward its loyal fans in America as part of its 20th anniversary celebration.

The play takes a popular story line, “Futari Yoshimune” (Two Yoshimunes), and re-creates 3 1/2 hours of audience-pleasing antics while remaining uncomfortably true to its small-format origins. This is popularized history that contrarily panders to middle-class sensibilities.

The television series follows the heroics of the eighth Tokugawa shogun, Yoshimune Tokugawa (Ken Matsudaira), who disguises himself as samurai Shinnosuke in order to walk among the common folk and carry out social reforms. In this particular plot thread, Yoshimune trades places with Seiji, a boatman (also played by Matsudaira), who bears a striking resemblance to the shogun. Yoshimune uses this ruse to quell a conspiracy to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate. Along the way, he also manages to save a princess (Mayumi Oka) in distress, reunite Seiji with his long-lost mother (Harumi Matsukaze) and free Seiji’s girlfriend (Kazuyo Asari) from her indentured service in the floating world of the courtesan district.

It is, of course, a romantic account with much wishful thinking about how shoguns should have been--not unlike Western dreams of Camelot and medieval chivalry. In reality, although the military state of the Tokugawa Shogunate brought Japan two centuries of domestic peace, it also saw members of the lowest social classes, the merchants and the bourgeoisie, ascend into financial power. Samurai were given station, status and standards of conduct but did little soldiering and had less money.

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The real Yoshimune, who became shogun in 1716, did institute changes that attempted to suppress the rising townsmen class, prohibiting lawsuits between samurai and the money-lending merchants. He also encouraged a life of austerity and economy for the military--the spirit of understated elegance that has come to be associated with the Tokugawa era.

Yet this production made no attempts to embrace the minimalism of Zen and the samurai class. Yoshimune’s castle was represented by garish yellow panels with vibrant green impressionistic floral scenes. In wild contrast, Yoshimune appears in a predominantly purple outfit. Obviously, the real Yoshimune was fighting a losing battle against the bourgeoisie.

Matsudaira is a personable actor who transformed easily from the slightly rough-and-tumble, top-knot askew boatman with a silly smile to the swaggering lord of all Japan. He knowingly played to an adoring audience, posing to acknowledge the double-role plot device. Tatsuro Endo was funny as the shogun’s elderly advisor, who takes on the difficult task of giving the good-natured Seiji etiquette lessons and attempting to teach him formal court language.

The broad acting style and slapstick physical comedy translated over the cultural divide, but the sometimes clumsy and apparently unscripted simultaneous interpretation cannot express the changes of dialect and class, formality and informality. This is also partially because of the necessary inclusion of brief cultural notes for such things as the significance of costuming--a fireman’s uniform or that of a courtesan’s.

The production itself tended to be rather myopic, not seeing the whole integrated picture. Shigeo Dobashi’s script is less a play than sequential television episodes; each scene builds to a dramatic climax, with lengthy scene changes (with lights up) in between. One almost wanted a commercial or a teaser for the next episode. While this made for less satisfactory theater, it did allow many emoting opportunities for the actors.

Director Rinsuke Tanaka also preserved the television feel with his use of spotlights in place of talking-head close-ups, as well as a marked tendency to distill the action to one focal point.

The costuming did not always harmonize with the background and set. The balance and clash of colors wasn’t well thought-out and sometimes was just plain distracting.

The last part of the show, “Utauezoshi 1997,” consisted of four songs and one costumed dance with the glitz and gaudy glamour of a Japanese New Year’s television special. Matsudaira’s voice is serviceable if not remarkable, and the songs were as hip as Wayne Newton. Looking at Matsudaira in a long-tressed wig conjured nightmarish visions of a Las Vegas Elvis.

Yet for all its faults, “Abarenbo Shogun” served well as a long love fest, depending largely upon fan adulation and indulgence for the amiable Matsudaira. It’s not history; it’s not representative Japanese theater. Rather, it’s a glimpse of enduring Japanese popular culture.