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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This is a forgotten story of the Japanese in Australia.
'“We take so many photographs. How do we know which ones are important? Which ones matter?”
'Inspired by the true story of Yasukichi Murakami, a Japanese-Australian photographer, entrepreneur and inventor who was a remarkable character in northern Australia in the early 1900s, this multi-disciplinary work is a contemporary framing of Murakami’s life through the lens of modern day Japanese-Australian theatre maker Mayu Kanamori.
'Along the way she uncovers a fascinating story of unlikely friendships, thwarted ambition and love. The play stirs our collective amnesia about the history of the Japanese in Australia.
'Yasukichi Murakami: Through a Distant Lens is a meditation on love, immortality, and in a digital age where cameras proliferate, the nature of photography. Combining live action with photographic projections, video, original music and soundscape, it is an immersive and poetic production, which adds significantly to the slim volume of Japanese Australian work for the stage.' ( Production summary)
Production Details
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Performed at the Lennox Theatre, Riverside Parramatta, 16-19 March, 2016.
Cast: Arisa Yura, Kuni Hashimoto, Yumi Umiumare (Video), and Terumi Narushima (Musician).
Original Concept: Mayu Kanamori.
Director: Malcolm Blaylock.
Dramaturge: Jane Bodie.
Lighting Designer: Benjamin Brockman.
Visual Designer: Mic Gruchy.
Composer/Sound Designer: Terumi Narushima.
Dramaturgical Consultant: Yuji Sone.
Producer: Annette Shun Wah.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Tolerance and History : Theatre of the Australia–Japan Relationship
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Theatre Review , November vol. 26 no. 4 2016; (p. 444-456)'Yoji Sakate’s Honchos Meeting in Cowra (Cowra no Hancho Kaigi) (2013–14) and Mayu Kanamori’s Yasukichi Murakami – Through a Distant Lens (2014–15) are two recent Australia–Japan theatre productions that unearth non-mainstream histories of the Japanese in Australia. The author participated in Yasukichi Murakami – Through a Distant Lens as a dramaturgical consultant during the development phase of the project in early 2014. Japanese names are written here in the English way: given name first, followed by family name. Yoji Sakate is the award-winning playwright and director of the Tokyo theatre company Rinkogun. Honchos Meeting in Cowra was written and directed by Sakate in Japan, and it toured to Australia in 2014 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the escape of Japanese Prisoners of War (POWs) in 1944 from a prison camp in Cowra, a small country town located 320 kilometres west of Sydney. Mayu Kanamori is a Japanese-Australian photographer, performance-maker, and playwright. For the above work, Kanamori looks at the history of the northern Australian towns of Darwin and Broome in the pre-WWII period through the life of Japanese photographer and businessman Yasukichi Murakami. Murakami died at an internment camp in 1944, and his remains were later reinterred in the Japanese War Cemetery in Cowra. Kanamori honours Murakami’s legacy through this play about her search for Murakami’s lost photographs. It toured around Australia during 2014 and 2015. These theatre productions have been discussed in mainstream reviews positively, as conversations between the past and the present in the context of ethnically diverse expression in contemporary ‘multicultural’ Australia. Through a close analysis of the reviews on the works of Sakate and Kanamori, I highlight the difficulty of sharing cross-cultural collective memory in the context of a paradigmatic multiculturalism.' (Introduction)
-
Tolerance and History : Theatre of the Australia–Japan Relationship
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Theatre Review , November vol. 26 no. 4 2016; (p. 444-456)'Yoji Sakate’s Honchos Meeting in Cowra (Cowra no Hancho Kaigi) (2013–14) and Mayu Kanamori’s Yasukichi Murakami – Through a Distant Lens (2014–15) are two recent Australia–Japan theatre productions that unearth non-mainstream histories of the Japanese in Australia. The author participated in Yasukichi Murakami – Through a Distant Lens as a dramaturgical consultant during the development phase of the project in early 2014. Japanese names are written here in the English way: given name first, followed by family name. Yoji Sakate is the award-winning playwright and director of the Tokyo theatre company Rinkogun. Honchos Meeting in Cowra was written and directed by Sakate in Japan, and it toured to Australia in 2014 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the escape of Japanese Prisoners of War (POWs) in 1944 from a prison camp in Cowra, a small country town located 320 kilometres west of Sydney. Mayu Kanamori is a Japanese-Australian photographer, performance-maker, and playwright. For the above work, Kanamori looks at the history of the northern Australian towns of Darwin and Broome in the pre-WWII period through the life of Japanese photographer and businessman Yasukichi Murakami. Murakami died at an internment camp in 1944, and his remains were later reinterred in the Japanese War Cemetery in Cowra. Kanamori honours Murakami’s legacy through this play about her search for Murakami’s lost photographs. It toured around Australia during 2014 and 2015. These theatre productions have been discussed in mainstream reviews positively, as conversations between the past and the present in the context of ethnically diverse expression in contemporary ‘multicultural’ Australia. Through a close analysis of the reviews on the works of Sakate and Kanamori, I highlight the difficulty of sharing cross-cultural collective memory in the context of a paradigmatic multiculturalism.' (Introduction)
