Ghosts of War : The Sounds of the Uncanny in Kamisato Yudai’s Immigrant Ghost Stories

Juraic, Beri (2023) Ghosts of War : The Sounds of the Uncanny in Kamisato Yudai’s Immigrant Ghost Stories. In: European Association for Japanese Studies 2023, 2023-08-17 - 2023-08-20, University of Ghent.

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Abstract

In Okinawa ghosts and monsters are said to be part of everyday life. At the same time the US military planes with their ghost-like invisibility invade the sonic environments of Okinawan residents daily by breaking sound barriers and reminding them of wars past and present. This is mirrored in the way Robin Hanson (2016) conceptualised the ghosts as something heard more than seen. Conversely, Hiroki Azuma (2017) discussed the ghostly bodies in theatre through the notion of yubinteki (postal) multitude to counteract against the Empire (nation-states and globalism). Yudai Kamisato, Japanese playwright and director born in Peru has been exploring the aurality in theatre ever since winning Kishida Kunio Prize for Drama in 2017. His latest work Immigrant Ghost Stories or Imigre Kaidan (2022) based on ghost stories from Thailand, Laos, Bolivia and Okinawa takes us on an auditive journey of discovery about the origins of famous Japanese alcoholic drinks and the history of migration and wars in the Asia-Pacific. Kamisato's aesthetics focus on the potential of aurality in theatre to enable the spectators to read performative images across borders, time and space. Accordingly, the present/absent voices of the performers uttering Kamisato's polyglossia both on stage and the video screen, transform the theatre experience from "a place of seeing" to "a place of seeing through listening". Combining my notes from the online and offline rehearsals of Immigrant Ghost Stories which I attended in September and October 2022, Kamisato's own writings and the performance analysis of the premiering performances in Okinawa, I will explore the different ways the sound and aurality are used in Kamisato's production to highlight the issues of war and displacement. I will also examine how listening instead of seeing can destabilise the relationship between the performance and the audience in uncanny ways just as wars have destabilising effects on the societies.