A triple-minded Shakespearean in Japan Many-hatted professor reaches audiences through his research, translations, and plays

“Whereas it is the academic’s job to immerse themselves in their research, I approach my work differently by placing priority on the staging of plays, while my translations and research are a means of reaching that objective,” says the professor. “I ground myself in a comprehensive view by examining past performances, previous translations, and the body of research on a particular work, and incorporating that into the stage production. And the knowledge I gain from the stage in turn informs my subsequent research and translations. My method is a constant repetition of this feedback process.”

For the translator and playwright in Kawai, the rhythm of the original language is critical and something that cannot be overlooked. Rhyme is used frequently in Shakespeare’s works, but conventional Japanese translations, which place a heavy emphasis on meaning, have largely failed in conveying Shakespeare’s rhymes. When Kawai was a university student, while working as an interpreter for a theater group putting on a performance in Toga, Toyama Prefecture—a village in central Japan well known for its theater events—he was struck deeply by the performance of renowned Japanese stage actress Kayoko Shiraishi during rehearsal. Ever since that experience, Kawai has watched actors up close breathing life into their lines with their soul, prompting him to consider it his calling not only to place importance on the meaning of the words, but also on how they are expressed. In his recent translations, he has rendered all the rhymes of the original English into Japanese.

“It’s an arduous process. Sometimes, I’ll spend all night trying to think of a good translation and come away empty-handed. However, I consider it my duty—as one who has tackled Shakespeare from the avenues of research, translation, and performance—and I am prepared to carry out my mission” (figure 2).

The culmination of Shakespeare research

Kawai has compiled the fruits of his, as it were, “trinity” of activities into a book for general audiences entitled Shakespeare: Jinsei Gekijo no Tatsujin (Shakespeare: Master of the Theater of Life), published by Chuo-koron Shinsha in 2016. For example, Kawai describes the interesting parallels between the notion of “Shakespeare magic,” which bends time and space, and similar qualities in kyogen traditional Japanese comic theater. Unlike modern drama, which makes heavy use of props and sets, Shakespearean drama doesn’t even use a curtain—all that occupies the stage are the actors. Everything is left to the audience’s imagination.

“The opening chorus of Henry V contains the line, ‘Think when we talk of horses, that you see them.’ This is just like in kyogen when the actor circles the stage and utters, ‘By mere mention of it, whoa, we have landed in the capital,’ and the audience leaps through time and from one place to another with just that one line. The notion that the actors and the audience sharing the same space is the essence of drama is alive and well,” says Kawai.