Noda Manabu    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Arts and Letters    Position   Professor
Date	2016/09/28
Presentation Theme	The 70th Anniversary of WW2: What is Forgotten, and How?
Conference	Newness and Global Theatre: Between Commodification and Artistic Necessity
Promoters	BITEF (Belgrade), International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC), Critical Stages/Scènes critiques
Conference Type	International
Presentation Type	Speech (General)
Contribution Type	Individual
Venue	Belgrade, Serbia
Details	The year 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2. In Japan, a new military legislation was passed on 19 September 2015, allowing the Self-Defence Forces to exercise "collective self-defence" overseas. This was a radical reinterpretation of the Japanese constitution, especially of Article 9 which had been understood to restrict the country's national security measures to "individual self-defence". Running up to and following the passing of the bill, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators thronged in front of the Japanese Diet to denounce the Abe administration's remilitarisation agenda and the unconstitutionality of the legislation. The wave of protests spread across Japan. These developments were taken up by many theatre productions, drawing wide attention and appreciation from theatre critics. In response to this, "Traces of Oblivion" was chosen as the theme of the 60th issue of the Theatre Arts, IATC Japan's now annual journal of which I am editor in chief. Behind the choice of this theme was the understanding of this distinction: While scrutinizing traces of memory puts the focus on what is forgotten, considering traces of oblivion asks how they are forgotten. The theme looked suitable because many theatre pieces that drew wide acclaim were concerned about how the Japanese public had put the Liberal Democratic Party, the dominant party of the ruling coalition, into power, forgetting that the party had long been touting for the amendment of Article 9. Newness implicates oblivion by definition. Any newness in this globalized capitalism presupposes oblivion in the act of renewed consumption. My intervention will aim at reexamining theatrical newness by looking back on some shows in 2015 Japan