ABSTRACT
“Shakespeare in Japan” has almost always been represented uncritically either by stage productions such as Yukio Ninagawa’s samurai-style Macbeth and Tadashi Suzuki’s The Tale of Lear or by movies like Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran (1985), thus mistakenly, or sometime deliberately, failing to recognize a plethora of Shakespearean adaptations, quotations, and references on various media platforms of Japanese mass/popular culture (see Minami et al. 2001). Actually, Shakespeare has provided many media products with an inexhaustible repertoire of plots and characters to be appropriated or utilized and circulated in variegated forms in Japan. Shakespeare has been featured or mentioned in TV commercials in a parodic manner: AU, a mobile network operator, featured the balcony scene with Juliet addressing Romeo and Brutus in a 2008 TV commercial, and “Shakespeare” appeared in Hitachi’s 2015 commercial for a washing machine. Benesse Corporation featured a school production of Romeo and Juliet in a manga brochure to promote its correspondence courses for junior high school students in 2011. One can easily find Shakespeare-inspired or -related episodes in manga (Japanese-style graphic novels), anime (animation films and TV programs), and video/mobile games (see Minami 2016).
