Originally published 5 March 1957 Illustrator Tetsurō Komai | Playwright Yukio Mishima | |
Similar Madame de Sade, Dōjōji, Aida, Aspects of Love, Evita | ||
Rokumeikan is a four-act costume drama by the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. It was commissioned by the Bungakuza group for its 20th anniversary, and its first run was from 27 November to 9 December 1956 at the Daiichi Seimei Hall, with Haruko Sugimura playing Asako and Nobuo Nakamura playing Kageyama. The text was published in the December 1956 issue of Bungakukai.
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The play was enormously successful, and toured the country. It has been revived on several occasions; a film version appeared in 1986, and a TV version in 2008. An English translation by Hiroaki Sato was published in 2002.
The play was adapted into an opera by Shin’ichirō Ikebe; it was premiered by the New National Theatre Tokyo in 2010.
Plot introduction
On 3 November 1886, the Emperor's birthday, a ball is to be held at the Rokumeikan, or Deer Cry Hall, in Tokyo. The guests include many foreign dignitaries. However, anti-government extremists are planning to crash the party.