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Long before Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, long before Barthes explicated his empire of signs, even before Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado presented its own distinctive version of Japan. Set in a fictional town called Titipu and populated by characters named Yum-Yum, Nanki-Poo, and Pooh-Bah, the opera has remained popular since its premiere in 1885. Tracing the history of The Mikado’s performances from Victorian times to the present, this book reveals the continuing viability of the play’s surprisingly complex racial dynamics as they have been adapted to different times and settings. The book connects yellowface performance to blackface minstrelsy, showing how productions of the 1938–39 Swing Mikado and Hot Mikado, among others, were used to promote African American racial uplift. It also looks at a host of contemporary productions and adaptations, including Mike Leigh’s film Topsy-Turvyand performances of The Mikado in Japan, to reflect on anxieties about race as they are articulated through new visions of the town of Titipu. The Mikado creates racial fantasies, draws audience members into them, and deftly weaves them into cultural memory. For countless people who had never been to Japan, The Mikado served as the basis for imagining what “Japanese” was.

Terayama Shūji (1935–1983) was an avant-garde Japanese poet, dramatist, film director, and photographer known for his highly provocative art. This book examines Terayama’s life and art to show that a conventional notion of him does not do full justice to the meaning and importance of his wide-ranging, often playful body of work. The book places Terayama at the center of Japanese and global counterculture and finds in his work a larger story about the history of postwar Japanese art and culture. It sees Terayama as reflecting the most significant events of his day: young poets seizing control of haiku and tanka in the 1950s, radio drama experimenting with form and content after the cultural shift to television around 1960, young assistant directors given free rein in the New Wave as cinema combated television, underground theater in the politicized late 1960s, and experimental short film through the 1970s after both the studio system and art house cinema had collapsed. Featuring close readings of Terayama’s art, the book demonstrates how across his oeuvre there are patterns that sidestep existing power structures, never offering direct opposition but nevertheless making the opposition plain. And, it claims, there is always in Terayama’s work a broad call for seeking out or creating pockets of fiction—where we are made aware that things are not what they seem—and to use otherness in those spaces to take a clearer view of reality.

This book looks at aspects of Penumbra Theatre Company’s history as a case study of African American theatrical practice. It reveals the history of African American theatre to be vibrant, diverse, and vital. The book is unique because it is the first work focused entirely on Penumbra Theatre, a theatre of national importance. It is also unique because it situates black theatre practice in conversation with a variety of concurrent political and social movements. It also outlines both the achievements and challenges of African American theatre production for those interested in participating or producing similar work. As such, it has both theoretical and practical application.