Bridging culture

CULTURAL TRAFFIC between Thailand and Japan is now two-way and busier than ever before thanks mainly to the celebration of the 130th anniversary of Thailand-Japan diplomatic relations. Another factor is the “Wa Project”, by the Japan Foundation’s Asia Centre, which promotes cultural exchange between Japan and Southeast Asian countries and is now in full gear.
Film buffs in Bangkok were the first to profit from the closeness through the Japanese Film Festival (JFF), which kicked off the celebrations and has just finished at SF World. They’re still raving about the festival’s opening film “In This Corner of the World”. Next weekend JFF will travel to Chiang Mai, and next month screens in Khon Kaen and Phuket. 
With the profusion of events organised, co-organised and supported by Japan Foundation Bangkok, Norihiko Yoshioka, its director general, notes: “The accumulation of each project has had a certain impact on the arts scene. Even the weekly film screenings at the Japan Foundation have had an impact on Thai film directors over the past two decades. So it’s not the power of one project but more like the power of continuous projects.”
Yoshioka is more than qualified to talk about the last two decades, thanks to his work here as a cultural officer at JF from 1999 to 2004, when Thai artists and colleagues started calling him “Khun Yo”. Bangkok has become his second home and Thai his third language, as solidly proven in his Japanese translation of Prabda Yoon’s books.
In the field of visual arts, Yoshioka reveals that the “Sindikat Campursari/Mashup Syndicate” exhibition will be at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) from late March. This collaborative art project by curators from Japan and Southeast Asian countries – the Thai representative being graphic designer Vittavin Leelavanachai – focuses on six curatorial points: space/ architecture, performativity, participation, media/technology, education and institutional sustainability, and has just finished its first outing in Jakarta this Tuesday.
Yoshioka adds that from August to October, the “Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics” project will be here. Having been to Rome, Bologna, Brussels and Dublin last year, this globetrotting exhibition introduces some of the similarities and differences between modern Japanese manga and “Hokusai Manga”, a collection of sketches by the “ukiyo-e” artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). 
On the other side of the exchange coin, a special exhibition of Thailand’s national treasures, mostly Buddhism artefacts, will show how Buddhism plays an important part in shaping Thai culture at Kyushu National Museum from April to June, and Tokyo National Museum from July to August.
From July to October the largest-ever exhibition of Southeast Asian contemporary art to be held in Japan namely “Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now”, showing how “multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-faith Southeast Asia has nurtured a truly dynamic and diverse culture”, will be at both the National Art Centre and Mori Art Museum in the Japan capital.
For stage events, last month at BACC, internationally acclaimed playwright and director Oriza Hirata had a talk and workshop to introduce his “Bangkok Notes”, the Thai translation of his renowned play “Tokyo Notes”, which he adapted from Yasujiro Ozu’s seminal film “Tokyo Story” and has already been translated into 15 languages. Last night at TPAM: Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama, the Chinese language adaptation “Taipei Notes” had its world premiere. 
Yoshioka says that this production, in which a Japanese set designer is working with Thai costume and lighting designers, will be the curtain raiser of Bangkok Theatre Festival this November. He also encourages Thai-speaking actors to send in their head shots and resumes to the JF office and get ready for the audition next month to be part of the 20-member cast.
Among those stage thespians who attended the talk and workshop was veteran playwright and director Nut Nualpang, of Sao Soong Theatre, who was a cast member of two major Japan-Thailand theatre collaborations in the past two decades, namely Hideki Noda’s production of “Yak Tua Daeng”, translated from his “Akaoni”, in 1998 and Nikorn Sae Tang’s “Sao Chaona”, translated from Noda’s “Nogyo Shojyo”, in 2009.
“I’m definitely going to audition for ‘Bangkok Notes’,” says Nut, with much enthusiasm. “Maybe they’ll put up a statue of me as an ambassador for Thailand-Japan theatre exchange!
“Joking aside, I’ve been wanting to work with Hirata-sensei for many years after attending his directing and playwriting workshops in his previous trips to Bangkok when he was staging ‘Tokyo Notes’ in 2006 as well as two plays from his robot theatre project, namely ‘Sayonara’ in 2012 and ‘Metamorphosis’ in 2015. I’m also curious how his ‘contemporary colloquial theatre theory’, which reflects the mentality of contemporary Japan and has had much influence for contemporary Japanese theatre, will be applicable to Thailand’s counterpart. I’m curious too as to how the Thai audience will respond to his play, which is filled with quiet and uneventful moments quite opposite to our love of emotional outpouring.” 
But before we get that far in our packed calendar, this weekend at K-Bank Siam Pic-Ganesha Centre of Performing Arts, Japan’s first and foremost dance entertainment crew Wrecking Crew Orchestra, and its spin-off crew El Squad, both headed by Yokoi, an multi-award winning street dancer, will make a long-overdue Thailand debut with “Beat Bumper”. Audiences will witness why their dance moves in signature electro-luminescent costumes became a YouTube sensation with more than 40 million views. Groove Studio will also host their Lock and Hip Hop workshops this Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Next month, Thailand will be the first country in Southeast Asia to witness Toshiki Okada’s comic satire of convenience store culture in “Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich”. With all 48 preludes and fugues that make up JS Bach's “The Well-Tempered Clavier” having been transmuted into cheap background music piped into the store, the light-hearted and physical movement-oriented performance by Chelfitsch Theatre Company has been staged in Berlin, Frankfurt, Lisbon, London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Zurich among other cities.
Thai theatre aficionados might still recall the company’s “Five Days in March” at Patravadi Theatre seven years ago. Okada adapted this Kishida Kunio Drama Award winning play of his into a novel “The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed”, which was also honoured with the Oe Kenzaburo Prize. Japanese language professor Matana Jaturasangpairoj, recently translated the novel into Thai, with the support from the Japan Foundation. Of course, Matana is also translating “Super Premium” script for the Thai surtitles accompanying the play next month. 
And another piece of good news is that after meeting with, and joining a talk organised by the Japan Foundation with, SEA Write laureate Uthis Haemamool last year, Okada and Uthis hit it off and are now working on the play adaptation of Uthis’s latest novel that’s soon to be published. Auditions for this new stage work will be in April, rehearsals begin in August and the production will be staged here and in Japan next year. 
And while Yoshioka is unable to give details of other projects in the pipeline, it’s already evident from the ones mentioned above that exchange, collaboration and cooperation between artists of the two countries in different fields are everywhere in this special year.
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- For more detailed information, visit www.JFBkk.or.th and JFAC.jp/culture