Fukuda Tsuneari's View on Tragedy in Akechi Mitsuhide

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Fukuda Tsuneari (1912-1994), a Japanese critic, tried to achieve his vision of catharsis through his play Akechi Mitsuhide (1957), an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Fukuda translated and directed most of Shakespeare's plays, and adapted some of them. It is curiously enough that Akechi Mitsuhide was staged before Macbeth by his translation.

For him, Macbeth was an ideal hero to regain catharsis, which he thought was lost in the modern times. He came to think narrative possibility of history could be a formula to restore a tragedy, as Shakespeare did. Setting in the Age of Provincial Wars, he transposed Macbeth into a Japanese historical play.

In conclusion, what he wanted to represent was not Macbeth itself but a historical play and tragic catharsis with it. In other words, he had to confirm it before staging Shakespeare.