Japanese Romeo x Juliet as Site of Cultural Cross‐Pollination
Japanese Romeo x Juliet as Site of Cultural Cross‐Pollination

Summary/Abstract: When Shakespeare’s plays were introduced to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, the translators knew that, if the performances were to have any significant impact on the audience, the texts had to be rewritten according to the dramatic conventions of traditional Japanese theatre, especially Kabuki and Bunraku. Since then, Shakespeare’s plays have been appropriated across various literary and media forms, more recently as manga and anime, cross-pollinations of Western and Japanese art forms and ideologies. Drawing on Julie Sanders’s concept of appropriation (2006) and Douglas Lanier’s contention that most contemporary foreign language Shakespeare is “post-textual” and rhizomatic (2010, 2014), this paper discusses the 24-episode TV anime Romeo x Juliet (Studio Gonzo, 2007) as a site of interesting interactions between the Japanese and the Western cultural traditions, storytelling conventions, and old and new ideologies. Imbued with Japanese spirituality, transnational politics, and ecophilosophical ideas, this anime series is Japanese and global at the same time, speaking more of the anime fan culture in andoutside Japan than about Shakespeare’s play.

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