TOKYO -- More than five years after Japanese literature scholar Donald Keene passed away, a bilingual comical play event with a Keene connection called "The Blue-eyed Taro Kaja" was held in September 2024 in Tokyo and Kyoto by his students and others connected to him.

Keene's connection with "kyogen" comedic stage productions was deep. He was first introduced to the art as an international student at Kyoto University around the end of 1953, when he was 31. The following February, he began practicing kyogen once a week with the renowned performer Shigeyama Sennojo II as his mentor. In 1956, he appeared on stage as "Taro Kaja," one of the leading characters. In attendance were friends such as writers Yukio Mishima and Junichiro Tanizaki.

Later, in the autobiography he wrote when he was 49, Keene counted the experience as one of the greatest joys of his life in Japan:

I went sightseeing almost every day, attended the theatre often, spent many hours talking with friends and with professors at Kyoto University, and, on top of everything else, I began taking Kyogen lessons. I was attracted to Kyogen especially by the distinctive rhythms of the delivery, and inquired about a teacher. Shigeyama Sengoro (now Sensaku), the head of the okura school in Kyoto, heard of my intention and decided that, since I was the first foreigner to study Kyogen, one of his sons should be my teacher. For the next year or so I had lessons every week from Shigeyama Sennojo.

My study of Kyogen ranks near the top of all my pleasant experiences in Japan. I enjoyed especially submitting myself to the discipline of learning to pronounce each line exactly in the manner of my teacher, and of moving and gesturing exactly in accordance with prescribed patterns. My voice, in which I never had much confidence, acquired unexpected strength. (I was told it could be heard across the valley in the hills of the Sennyu-ji). I eventually also acquired, thanks to my stage experience, a sense of timing that proved a most valuable asset when delivering lectures. Best of all, I enjoyed the company of the Shigeyama family, and learning from them what is involved in preserving a traditional art.

It was about time that a newspaper reporter bestowed on me the nickname "the blue-eyed Tarokaja," and when Shimanaka-san, who had assumed editorship of Chuo Koron, asked me for a series of monthly articles, he gave them the title "red-haired literary criticism". I was thus officially possessed of the traditional attributes of a foreigner, blue eyes and red hair, despite my determined efforts to be Japanese!

[From "Meeting with Japan"]

In the summer of 1957, Mishima went to the United States with the aim of turning his modern Noh works into plays. Keene, who translated them into English, accompanied him, acting as a guide of sorts. Attracting few sponsors, producers encouraged Mishima to insert kyogen into the program, apparently feeling that Noh alone was not different enough.

Improvising, Mishima then drafted a new kyogen version of the classic tale "Busu." Keene elaborated on this:

The producers were not able to raise enough money, with or without strings. They decided that the problem was that the three modern no plays they had chosen for a program were too similar in tone and therefore suggested to Mishima that he write a modern kyogen to be performed between Aoi no ue and Sotoba Komachi. Mishima was aware of the difficulty of preserving kyogen's humor in a modern adaptation, as it depends so heavily on exaggerated gestures and inflexions of speech. He decided nevertheless that it might be possible to make a modern version of Hanago, with the daimyo of the original changed into an industrialist and Tarokaja into a butler. The Zen meditation scene could be rewritten as yoga, which then was popular in New York.

Finally, knowing of my special interest in kyogen, he asked me to write a modern version. He recognized that certain passages in the original, though quite normal expressions in medieval Japan, would not be tolerated in a modern play.

For example, when the master threatens to kill Tarokaja if he does not obey his command, this would not seem comic to a modern audience. Conversely, Mishima thought that the daimyo's wife threatening to beat Tarokaja if he did not reveal why he was sitting in meditation was amusing and could be retained. Even today a woman carried away by anger might say the same.

Mishima gave me various other tips, but I was unable, even with great effort, to do what he always did so easily. I tried everything, even making it a comedy in the manner of Moliere and giving the characters Greek names. Nothing worked. I confessed my failure to Mishima, who thereupon bought a notebook of the kind American junior high school students use and wrote a modern kyogen, based not on Hanago but Busu. He dashed off the manuscript at full speed, changing hardly a word.

[Excerpted from Keene's "Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan"]

However, Mishima's version of "Busu" never saw the light of day in the U.S. The Japanese version, staged this time by performers including Shigeyama's grandson Doji, who uses the same stage name as the third-generation Shigeyama Sennojo, marked the first full-scale performance of the play. The story's setting was changed from medieval Japan to an antiques shop in New York, and the "poisonous thing" the two shopkeepers taste from the jars in the lead character's absence is not "sugar," but "caviar."

Prior to that, Keene's disciple Laurence Kominz, professor emeritus at Portland State University in the U.S., and students of his performed an English version of the classic "Busu." With a familiar story, audiences could quickly understand it. The charms of each language's version led venues filled with laughter.

It's been 70 years since Keene met luminaries including Mishima and Tanizaki. The then international student who arrived in Japan after longing for Kyoto was turned into a world-class researcher through his exchanges with the popular writers. This kyogen production has proven a precious chance to explore Keene's life at that time.

(Japanese original by Tadahiko Mori, The Mainichi Staff Writer and Donald Keene Memorial Foundation director)

This is a spinoff article related to a 60-part Mainichi Shimbun series about Donald Keene, exploring the near-century of the Japanologist's life along with his own writings. Spinoff articles are posted irregularly.

The original text of Donald Keene's autobiographies is used with permission from the Donald Keene Memorial Foundation. The foundation's website can be reached at: https://www.donaldkeene.org/ ;