Pt. 4: John Masefield’s The Faithful
(Butler Rare Book
Library)
47. John Masefield’s The
Faithful: (1) The
Original Play
The
Chûshingura
story of the revenge of the 47 Loyal Rônin of Japan became widely
known
in the
West from the second half of the nineteenth century, thanks in
particular to
translations of
Kanadehon Chûshingura
(of which examples are on exhibit at the entrance to the East Asian
Library in
Kent Hall). Although well known in
Europe and
America,
however, Chûshingura has rarely provided inspiration for Western
writers. The
one striking exception is a play by John Masefield (1878-1967) entitled
The Faithful, which was first published
and performed in
England
in 1915.
The play enjoyed a brief
success on the stage in Birmingham in 1915, and then again in New York
in 1919,
but perhaps the most interesting aspect of its history was a period of
fame in
Japan in the 1920s, when it was translated and twice staged by one of
Japan’s
leading dramatists, Osanai Kaoru, who promoted it as a “reverse import”
of Chûshingura.
John Masefield,
of whom you will see a fine portrait directly in front of you on the
wall of
the glass-encased reading room, is best known as the poet laureate of England
from 1930 until his death in 1967. At the time he began writing The Faithful in 1913 (two years before
its actual publication in 1915), he was already a well-known poet,
particularly
for poems based on his early experiences as a sailor (of which
“Sea-Fever”
continues to be widely anthologized: “I must go down to the seas again,
to the
lonely sea and the sky . . .”).
It is not clear
exactly how Masefield came to be interested in the Chûshingura
story,
but it
may well have been through his friend Lawrence Binyon, curator of
oriental art
at the British Museum and an expert on Japanese woodblock prints.
Masefield
himself said that he relied on information from some Japanese students
in
England and on translations of the play Kanadehon
Chûshingura, although judging from his use of the actual
historical
names
of the protagonists, he may have relied more on A. B. Mitford’s
retelling of
the story in Tales of Old Japan
(1871).
Masefield’s
adaptation of Chûshingura in The Faithful
suggests that he did not study Japanese culture or history all that
closely--or
perhaps rather that he was simply not interested in the Japaneseness of
the
story. Kira is turned into a rival warlord of Asano who has amassed a
huge
territory nearby and threatens to invade. The emperor is mentioned, but
the
Tokugawa regime is entirely absent. There are numerous small cultural
glitches,
such as scenes of cows grazing in pastures and people throwing open
castle
windows, suggesting that Masefield’s image of old Japan to be largely
derived
from old England.
Judging from the
review in The Nation [far left] of
the New York edition of The Faithful [immediate left],
contemporaries tended to see it less as a play about Japan
than for its universal values and dramatic qualities.
A taste of the play is given in the
passage to which the copy above is opened, the end of Scene 2, Act III,
where
the rônin of Asano vow to avenge his death and recite their death
poems.
48. John
Masefield’s The
Faithful: (2) The New York Production
The
Faithful was first staged at the
Birmingham Repertory Theatre on December 4, 1915, and another performance was
given almost two decades later
for two days in December 1934 in London
at the Westminster Repertory Theatre. It seems to have enjoyed far
greater
success in the United States,
however, when it was staged for six weeks by the Theatre Guild from October 13, 1919, at the
Garrick
Theater (64 West Randolph St.,
destroyed 1961). A copy of the
program [right] is preserved in the Theatre Guild Papers, Yale
Collection of
American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University.
The New
York performance attracted considerable
attention,
and was taken seriously by reviewers at the time. The review by
Alexander
Woolcott [far right] in The New York
Times was on the favorable side, despite panning the performance of
the
actor who played the lead role of Kurano (Ôishi Kuranosuke).
While
praising
Masefield’s “spirited and imaginative text” for its moments of “genuine
poetic
beauty,” however, Woodcott raises the revealing issue of whether the
exaggerated melodrama of the Chûshingura story itself tends to
“verge
perilously
on the ludicrous” to a Western audience, which ends up giggling at
moments of
high seriousness. The reference to The
Mikado also suggests that appreciation of the play, at least in New
York, was constrained by an inability to take
it with
the utter seriousness that Masefield intended.
A number of stage
photographs survive of the New York
performance [above]. The exact scenes are difficult to identify, but
they give
a good sense of the sets and costumes that were used.
Photo
Credits:
Upper
row: Theatre Guild Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature,
Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale
University.
Center:
Photo by Francis Bruguiere (American, 1879-1945), George Eastman House
Still
Photograph Archive.
49. John Masefield’s The
Faithful: (3) The
Japanese Translation
At
some point,
John Masefield’s play
The Faithful
came to the attention of Osanai Kaoru (1881-1928), a talented novelist
and
dramatist who had already established himself as a leader of the modern
theater
movement in
Japan
in the Free Theater (Jiyū Gekijô) of 1909-19. Osanai translated
the
play, and
directed its production in
Tokyo
in
1921 [see adjacent case to the right].
Above and to the
left are two copies of the Japanese translation of The
Faithful, which Osanai rendered simply as Chūgi 忠義, or “Loyalty.” The book was
published in Tokyo by
Tôadô in late
June, 1921, shortly after the first run of the play at the Meijiza theater. In addition to the frontispiece
photograph of
Masefield seen above, the Japanese edition included three stage
photographs
from the New York
performance,
suggesting that this was the major inspiration for Osanai in
translating and
producing the play.
To the
left is a
newspaper ad from the summer of 1921 in the
Yomiuri
newspaper, declaring that “Chûshingura written by a Westerner Has
Appeared!!”
The
accompanying text claimed that the famous English poet Masefield had
spent
years of research in order to write the play, and that he showed a deep
understanding for Japanese culture--neither of which was particularly
true. It
further recommended the work for not only lovers of literature, but for
historians as well, as evidence of the way that the Japanese were seen
through
Western eyes.
50. John Masefield’s The
Faithful: (4) The Tokyo
Productions
The
first
production of
The Faithful on the
Japanese stage as “
Chûgi” was
described in the
Yomiuri newspaper
article [above] by Osanai Kaoru, the translator and director, five days
before
the opening of the play at the Meijiza Theater on
May 5, 1921. The title of the article
declared it to be
a “reverse import (
gyaku-yunyû 逆輸入)
of Chûshingura,” and the contents
reveal Osanai’s acute sensitivity to the problem of staging such a
work. He
argued that in such cases of of producing a play from another culture
about one’s
own culture, it was essential to project the essential “spirit” (
tamashii 魂)
of the author, and not be preoccupied with its faithfulness to the
culture
about which it was written. Osanai admitted the various inaccuracies of
Masefield’s idea of
Japan,
but argued that to correct them would be to undermine the spirit of the
entire
play. Hence he opted for as literal a translation as possible. He went
on to stress,
however, that in matters of sets and costume, the Japanese production
made its
own necessary adaptations.
The Japanese
production of Chûgi in 1921 appears
to have been a success, particularly with the famous actor Ichikawa
Sadanji
playing the role of “Kurano” (Ôishi Kuranosuke), but it did not
become
a
standard part of the repertoire of modern Japanese theater. It was,
however,
performed once again eight years later, from January 1-20, 1929, in the midst of a
great wave of new
interest in Chûshingura. Osanai had in the meantime been one of
the
founders in
1924 of the Tsukiji Little Theater, the venue for the January 1929
production
and a critical institution in the evolution of modern theater in Japan.
The Yomiuri newspaper article [top
right] announced the coming production again as a “reverse import,”
while the
advertisement [center right] on New Year’s day described it as
“Chûshingura as
seen by an English poet.”
Sadly, Osanai
himself did not live to see this revival of Chûgi,
however, dying on December
25, 1928,
at the age of forty-eight, one week before it opened at the Tsukiji
Little
Theater. There survives a photograph of the production [right] from a
Japanese
magazine that remains to be identified, providing revealing evidence of
the way
in which the play was staged in this return of Masefield’s The
Faithful to the land in which it was set.