The Impact of Japan on Derek Walcott's Early Plays Laurence A
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ISSN 1347-2720 ■ Comparative Theater Review Vol.13 (English Issue) March 2014 The Impact of Japan on Derek Walcott’s Early Plays Laurence A. Breiner Abstract In his autobiographical writing and elsewhere, Derek Walcott acknowledges a Japanese influence on his early drama, associated with his youthful study in New York, but critical attention to this episode has been limited. It is possible to estab- lish with some confidence what works he probably encountered: above all the films Ugetsu and Rashomon, the texts of the nô play Eguchi and perhaps some others, and secondary materials about Japanese theater. For a short period this Japanese archive visibly affects setting, atmosphere, and the use of literally dead or figuratively haunt- ing characters in his plays. It also shapes two aspects of the plays about which Wal- cott was much concerned at the time: characterization and acting style. The notion of “creole” as opposed to “classical” acting that Walcott was formulating to develop a distinctively West Indian theater unexpectedly draws upon his limited exposure to Japanese culture, as does the seemingly very Caribbean notion of the “race contain- ing symbol” explored in characters like Chantal and Makak. Analysis of the impact of these works on his own early plays (especially Ti-Jean and his Brothers, Malcochon, Dream on Monkey Mountain), enables us to describe more fully what he learned (or did not learn) from Japanese artists, how he employed what he learned in his own plays of this period, and what his objectives were. It was during two stays in New York (in 1957 and 1958-59) that Derek Walcott discovered Japan. The time was brief, and the number of Japanese cultural products he actually experienced seems to have been remarkably small, but he was inspired by the encounters to an extent that has affected his work not only in the short term, but throughout his career. There is no sign of these encounters in his poetry, perhaps because little poetry survives from that period (King 2000, p.152). But in his inter- views and autobiographical writing as well as in materials associated with the texts of his early plays (such as production notes), Walcott frankly acknowledges Japanese influences and they are especially apparent in several aspects of these plays, including setting, production design, characterization (for example the use of ghost characters), and acting style. Walcott’s enthusiasm for Japan was, like Pound’s, short-lived (artists notoriously take what they want and then move on). Perhaps for that reason, there has been limited critical attention to Walcott’s exposure to Japanese cultural material. Even Bruce King, who has written two enormously detailed biographical studies (1995, 2000), chooses his verbs so care- fully that he sounds almost dismissive when he describes Walcott’s encounter with things Japanese: “While in New York he saw Kurosawa’s film Rashomon, and discovered Noh and Kabuki drama” ■ Laurence A. Breiner - 27 - The Impact of Japan on Derek Walcott’s Early Plays ISSN 1347-2720 ■ Comparative Theater Review Vol.13 (English Issue) March 2014 (King 1995, p.24). But Walcott’s engagement was deeper (if not much broader) than that curt summary suggests, and consideration of this episode sheds light on the early development of his drama. Consistent with the terms of his Rockefeller Fellowship, Walcott’s time in New York was a period of immersion in the craft of the theater, a period of intensive study but also of great productivity that established him as a dramatist. After an initial short visit to New York in September 1957 dur- ing which he wrote the first version of Ti-Jean and His Brothers (Walcott 1970b, p.46), Walcott then returned to live in the city from October 1958 through June 1959, supported by his fellowship. It was during this second visit that he also wrote Malcochon and the first version of Dream on Monkey Mountain. Of course Walcott was not thinking only about Japan; no doubt he was absorbing all kinds of new ideas and information which would have combined with one another in sometimes unex- pected ways. Some may have been useful to him immediately, while others percolated into his work only later, perhaps significantly modified from their original forms. Moreover, Walcott is a habitual reviser, and this can complicate any investigation of sources and influences. The three plays associ- ated with New York were no exception, and Dream in particular went through various changes, vari- ously motivated, between its beginnings in 1958 and its first performance in 1967. With such cautions in mind, however, we can be fairly specific about the Japanese influences that he encountered. They were primarily limited to three realms: drama, film, and visual art (particularly woodcuts). In fact it seems quite likely that his Japanese experience began with reading about Japanese theater as it was depicted by High Modernists, that the serendipitous availability of Japanese films in New York at the time powerfully reinforced what he was discovering in his reading, and that woodcuts were a way of supplementing his knowledge of the appearance and atmosphere of Japan whose representation so excited him in the films he saw. Other potential areas of interest— for example architecture, costume, music, ritual, even poetry —attracted his attention not on their own terms but only as they were pres- ent in those primary three. Perhaps surprisingly, he seems to have taken no interest at all in Japanese myth, religion, history, or food. Visual Arts I say “perhaps” because Walcott the writer was also trained as a painter and draftsman, so it is not surprising that his interest was primarily visual and compositional. Thus he himself explains: “because I draw, I used [while in New York] to look very carefully at the woodcuts of Hokusai and Hi- roshige” (Walcott 1970b, p.47). Throughout his career he has maintained “another life” as a painter (his 1973 poem of that title is largely concerned with choosing between writing and painting). His work appears on the covers of some of his collections and the hardcover edition of Tiepolo’s Hound (2000) includes reproductions of twenty-six of Walcott’s watercolors. Even growing up in colonial St. Lucia, a small island with only about 60,000 inhabitants during his childhood, Walcott worked with local painters and studied closely the books of reproductions available to him (the books like the artistic talent were in- herited from his father, who had died when Walcott was an infant). Above all Thomas Craven’s A Treasury of Art Masterpieces (1939) was the closest he could come to a museum.(1) Later in life he made a point of visiting actual museums in his travels, so it is reasonable to presume that he spent some of his time in New York visiting both the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum, with its exten- (1) For details of how extensively Walcott used this book see (Walcott 2004, pp.212-214). ■ Laurence A. Breiner - 28 - The Impact of Japan on Derek Walcott’s Early Plays ISSN 1347-2720 ■ Comparative Theater Review Vol.13 (English Issue) March 2014 sive collections of Asian art and of Western art influenced by Asia. He probably did not venture as far as the Brooklyn Museum, but it is possible that he saw exhibitions and consulted books at two other venues in Manhattan: the Japan Society, which had reopened in 1952, and the Asia Society, founded in 1956. One reason to suspect this is the Rockefeller connection; John D. Rockefeller III, who was post-war president of the Japan Society and then founder of the Asia Society, also served in the early 1950s as the head of the Rockefeller Foundation —the source of Walcott’s funding.(2) Quite a bit of Walcott’s own painting is functional; the margins of his manuscripts are full of drawings and even watercolors, and in the case of his plays these are often sketches for costumes, sets, blocking, and so on. Knowing Walcott’s involvement (as author and often director) in the visual design of his plays, his study of Japanese prints would have had an effect on costuming and scenery, but the extent of that effect would be difficult to tease out, since these are collaborative aspects of production and in any case not well-documented. It might be possible to identify some particular woodcuts that he saw or could have seen, but that research might not be worth the effort. There is for example an entire genre of woodcuts depicting scenes, characters, or actors in specific nô and kabuki plays, but I’ve found no evidence that they attracted Walcott’s attention; the role of woodcuts in his development seems primarily to have been providing confirmation of his impressions of the country’s topography and atmosphere, impressions initially made with more immediacy from his experience with a few Japanese films. Film Film was Walcott’s crucial source, and as it happened Japanese film was on the cutting edge for sophisticated American moviegoers in the late 1950s (it was a moment comparable to the discovery in the 1990s of the Hong Kong “New Wave”: John Woo, Wong Kar Wai and Tsui Hark among others). His own later statement in an interview acknowledges that his interest was partly programmatic and partly fortuitous: “I came back to New York... and I began to study Japanese films... There was then a very strong popular interest in Japanese cinema – in Kurosawa, and films such as Ugetsu, Gate of Hell, Rashomon, etc.” (Walcott 1970b, pp.46-47). The extent of the rage for Japanese cinema almost immediately after World War II is worth docu- menting as a context.