Rokumeikan is a four-act costume drama

Costume drama

A costume drama or period drama is a period piece in which elaborate costumes, sets and properties are featured in order to capture the ambiance of a particular era.The term is usually used in the context of film and television...

 by the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese writer Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima

was the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...

. 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

Haruko Sugimura

was a Japanese stage and film actress, best known for her appearances in the movies of Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse from the late 1940s to the early 1960s...

 playing Asako and Nobuo Nakamura

Nobuo Nakamura

was a Japanese actor, who made notable appearances in the films of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu in the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps his most famous roles were those of the callous deputy mayor in Kurosawa's Ikiru , and the hairdresser's henpecked husband in Ozu's Tokyo Story .Nakamura is famous for...

 playing Kageyama. The text was published in the December 1956 issue of Bungakukai.

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-ichiro Ikebe

Shin-ichiro Ikebe

is a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music. He has written the scores for many films by Akira Kurosawa and other Japanese film directors, including Kagemusha , MacArthur's Children , Kurosawa's Dreams , Rhapsody in August , Madadayo , and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge .He studied...

; 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

Rokumeikan

The was a large two-story building in Tokyo, completed in 1883, which was to become a controversial symbol of Westernisation in the Meiji period. Commissioned for the housing of foreign guests by the Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru, it was designed by Josiah Conder, a prominent Western architect...

, or Deer Cry Hall, in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

. The guests include many foreign dignitaries. However, anti-government extremists are planning to crash the party.

Characters

• Count Kageyama Hisatoshi, a ruthless figure in the government
• Countess Asako, his wife
• Marchioness Daitokuji Sueko, a friend of Asako
  • her daughter Akiko, who is in love with Hisao
• Kiyohara Einosuke, leader of the dissident Liberals
  • his hostile son Hisao
• Tobita Tenkotsu, an assassin
• Kusano, a maid of the Kageyamas
• General Miyamura and his wife Noriko
• Baron Sakazaki and his wife Sadako
• waiters and servants
• numerous guests