Category Archives: japan

Japan Chapter 6.2: Finale…

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Wakeful, during my second night in Hiroshima, I recall more poignant details I learned in the last couple of days from Toshiko Tanaka, atomic-bomb survivor.  When she gave birth to her first daughter, Reiko, Toshiko’s husband arrived at the hospital looking pale and worried.  He counted Reiko’s fingers and toes and when he found that she was born without physical defects he said, ‘Thank you!’  Toshiko realised that, out of love, her husband had never said anything, but had always been secretly concerned about the possible after-effects of the atomic bombing.  In my play, Shigeko, suffering from radiation sickness, seriously contemplates whether she should have children, in case they too, like her, will have been ‘contaminated’ by the bomb.  The atomic bomb not only wreaked havoc on this two fateful days, August 6th and 9th, but spread its sinister tentacles down the generations. 

Eventually, day breaks and I realise it’s October 1st – a new month.  We now have only three more days in Japan.

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Japan Chapter 6.1: Hiroshima… Meetings with Atomic-Bomb Survivors

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Saturday afternoon, October 4th, we take off from Hiroshima Airport to begin the long journey home.  What a week it’s been – this final week of our Japanese tour.

In Tottori City on Monday morning, after our two performances at Bird Theatre Festival, we are undecided how to get to Hiroshima with all of our baggage.  Six large suitcases, a number of smaller cases, and not forgetting the tatami mat used in the play as well.  

There’s a cheap bus all the way to Hiroshima, which is a very tempting option – until we discover that the bus-stop is fifty miles away.  The bullet-train beckons, but that would involve a change of trains and then hunting down at least two taxis at Hiroshima Station.  So the best option seems to be a minibus and driver – taking us from hotel door to hotel door – but this will cost a cool £500.  

I don’t even hesitate.  ‘Let’s do it – it will relieve us of so much stress.’  There have been savings in other parts of the budget so I feeI I can justify this expense.

From hotel door to hotel door; from cramped submarine-sized ‘cabin’ to stylish spacious apartment with all mod-cons – located right on Hiroshima’s Peace Boulevard.  After five nights cooped up like a budgerigar in my birdcage of a room in Tottori, at last – enough room in which to stretch out, walk about, dance around, open up my suitcases, spread all my clothes and papers about.  Room in which to think and reflect.

I feel many emotions coursing through me as the minibus draws ever nearer to the city which has taken up so much of my thinking, my feeling, my creativity, these last few years.  

Shortly after arriving, we meet up with Junko, our second wonderful Japanese collaborator for this tour, then head to the home of Toshiko Tanaka.  She is the gently inspiring 86-year-old atomic bomb survivor who I met and befriended in London last year – and who at that time invited Riko and myself to her home in Hiroshima should we ever get here. 

She’s waiting on the doorstep and when she recognizes me her face cracks open into a huge grin, a heart-melting beaming smile, as she takes my hand and says, ‘This is like a dream – a dream come true!’ 

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Japan Chapter 5: A Japanese Boy’s Response to The Mistake …

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Before we reach Hiroshima – the city that I feel I’ve lived in for much of the last decade, but a city that I’ve never actually visited – we have two other destinations.  In my case, Nara and Tottori.

It was hard to fill every week of this month-long tour with performances, so we now have two spare days before travelling to Tottori City in western Japan where we have been invited to perform at the Bird Theatre Festival. Riko spends the two days visiting her family in Osaka; Maria stays with family in Tokyo, whereas I have been thinking of revisiting Kyoto – which I last saw twenty five years ago on my only previous visit to Japan, with the Young Vic Theatre Company when we were performing Hamlet.

But Maria nudges me towards Nara, the ancient capital of Japan.  ‘If you like temples and shrines, you’ll find some beautiful ones there.’  So that’s what I do – head south on the Shinkansen bullet-train to Nara for two days.

‘On your way to the temples, watch out for the deer,’ Riko advises me.  ‘They’re everywhere and if you’re not careful they’ll eat your food.’

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Japan Chapter 4: An English Tea Party…

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‘I think it would have been good if you’d written something in the play about Okinawa and explored that…’. ‘I think it would have improved the play if there had been more history about the Japanese incursions into China…’

These comments from history students at Rugby School in Tokyo, who came to the theatre on Wednesday 17th September to see The Mistake. 

Yes, but… had I done the above, the play would be much longer and far less dramatic. The drama students from the school, however, were greatly taken with the staging, the simple props used in numerous ways, the character transitions, the swift switches in time and place – and all the students agreed that just two people telling such a powerful story in this way was, as one student kept reiterating: 

‘Admirable.  Really admirable.’

We were excited to have performed to two international schools but, as someone from the British Council in Japan said, after watching the play, ‘This really ought to be seen in Japanese schools.’  Yes, we’d love the opportunity to do that, but how? 

I need to find someone in Japan who could set up such performances…

We’d now worked seven days non-stop and so all needed a day off.  

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Japan Chapter 3: An American In Tokyo

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So, it’s been an eventful few days – but all in a good way.  Well, apart from the ‘stuck up a cul-de-sac for half an hour in a huge taxi’ incident.  (Did that not make the World Service news?) 

On Sunday afternoon we had our second performance of The Mistake for a much quieter and more solemn audience than the previous day.

This was followed by our first Japanese Q and A with the help of an interpreter. Some really interesting and absorbing questions, one person wondering why we hadn’t given Shigeko, the 1945 atomic-bomb survivor, a Hiroshima accent?  Good point!  In fact, the highly skilled translator of our bilingual script, Yojiro Ichikawa, had asked me initially, ‘Shall I use Hiroshima dialect for Shigeko?’ and I’d said, no – thinking that that might be one extra challenge too many for Riko to take on.  But the audience member now went on to say, that having Shigeko played in Japanese without a dialect made her somehow more universal, someone we could all identify with. Interesting.  

As in many other Q and A’s, I am asked what gave me the idea for the play – and so I recount my story of reading two interviews in the Guardian newspaper twenty three years ago (the yellowing copy of which I still have and show to the audience), an interview with the pilot and an interview with a survivor – and how I began to wonder whether that might work dramatically…if the descendant of a survivor sought out the pilot in his old age to ask him some tough questions… and thus the seeds of The Mistake were sown.

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Japan Chapter 2: The Real Devil Is War

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‘I’m So Grateful…’ ‘We’re So Grateful…’

Those words are ringing in my ears as I walk back to my tiny apartment in the balmy Tokyo evening, after our first ever bilingual performance of The Mistake – indeed, our first ever performance of the play in Japan.  ‘This play – so important.’  ‘Very important, this play you have written.’ 

‘In Japan we feel that only Japanese can understand all the feelings around the atomic bomb.  But your play shows that a western person has understood those feelings and understands what the people in Hiroshima suffered.’  

This is all incredibly humbling, as you can imagine, but also a real affirmation of what I hoped for in bringing this play to Japan. 

Hang on, I’ve skipped a few days.  

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Japan Chapter 1: I Bought These Cream-Puffs from the Neighbourhood Bakery

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Ohaiyo gozaimas!  Monday morning, September 8th.  My alarm goes off at 4.55 a.m.  This was the first night in quite a while that I didn’t drop straight off to sleep.  I lay awake, trying to relax, counting sheep, doing deep breathing exercises, you name it,  but to no avail.  Well, this was the eve of a long-planned trip to Japan with my play about Hiroshima, ‘The Mistake’.  Who could be calm with that prospect ahead?  

I’ve been trying to learn some basic Japanese for the last six weeks – not easy – but it’s been really useful – and actually a lot of fun.  I can now say ‘of course’, ‘good idea’ and ‘if it’s alright with you’, along with many other useful phrases and words.  But will I be able to have a conversation in Japanese? – not a cat in hell’s chance.  However, I am very much looking forward to using one of the most pointless phrases given to me on the online course I’ve been following – yes, you guessed… ‘I bought these cream puffs at the neighbourhood bakery.’  

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