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Asian Theatre Journal, Volume 23, Number 1, Spring 2006, pp. 1-110(Article)

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Myth and Reality: A Story of Kabukiduring American Censorship,1945–1949James R. Brandon

American censors during the occupation of Japan after World War II unsuccessfullyattempted to eliminate feudal themes and foster new democratic plays in kabuki. Con-trary to popular myths, kabuki flourished under the Occupation, “banned” plays wererapidly released, the infamous “list of banned plays” was not significant, most Ameri-can censors were captivated by kabuki, and credit for Occupation assistance to kabukishould not limited to one man, Faubion Bowers. Using archival records, I show that theShöchiku Company, the major kabuki producer, successfully resisted the democratic aimsof the Occupation. Shöchiku’s “classics-only” policy protected Japanese culture fromAmerican contamination and inadvertently fashioned the fossilized kabuki we knowtoday.

James R. Brandon, professor emeritus of Asian Theatre at the University of Hawai‘iand visiting professor at Harvard University (2005), is founding editor of ATJ. Hehas been writing about kabuki for fifty years. His most recent books are Kabuki PlaysOn Stage, volumes I–IV, and Masterpieces of Kabuki: Eighteen Plays OnStage, co-edited with Samuel L. Leiter.

I would like to examine some of the rampant myths and mis-understandings that have grown up about censorship of kabuki playsduring the American Occupation of Japan following World War II. Inorder to do this, I will briefly describe the system of censorship, con-centrating on the early years, 1945–1947, when major policies were setand crucial decisions made. I will identify important discrepanciesbetween my narrative and previous published accounts.1 In particular,I will show that kabuki was not a helpless victim of vengeful or bum-bling American officials but, to the contrary, that Japanese producers

Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 23, no. 1 (Spring 2006). © 2006 by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.

articles

and managers maintained the initiative in determining postwar kabukipolicy. Japanese accounts consistently call the immediate postwar yearsthe darkest period in kabuki history, but in fact kabuki productionswere more numerous during American censorship than either beforeor after. Nor, as is popularly believed, did one American alone “save”postwar kabuki from destruction. I will show that a half-dozen Ameri-can theatre censors recognized kabuki’s superior artistry and institutedrelaxed policies for that reason. Finally, I will explore the failure ofAmerican demands for plays with contemporary topics and democra-tic themes. I believe that American pressure solidified the policy ofkabuki producers to reduce the repertory into today’s fossilized, “clas-sics-only” configuration.

BackgroundOver a four-year period, from October 1945 until November

1949, American theatre censors in the headquarters of the SupremeCommander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) examined approximately100,000 Japanese play scripts that professional and amateur producersintended to stage. Kabuki scripts made up a small proportion of thetotal but were of particular concern to the Occupation. Kabuki was ahigh art deserving of respect, and yet it was the theatrical form mostdeeply implicated in feudal, militarist, and ultra-nationalist ideologythat the Occupation was mandated to extirpate from Japanese society.Theatre officials in SCAP wrestled with this issue from 1945 to 1949,passing through several stages in the process.

Without exception, Japanese scholars and journalists have con-tinued to say that censorship during the Occupation put kabuki ingreat peril, for example, “The theatre that was most endangered bythe Occupation was kabuki” (Toita 1979: 60), and “SCAP theatre cen-sorship banned the majority of kabuki performances” (Takagi 2000:13). An official history of the Shöchiku Theatrical Corporation (themajor producer of kabuki) states the case succinctly: “Kabuki dramastood in crisis” (Tanaka 1964: 168).

Based on my examination of censored play scripts that have notbeen studied before and original Occupation documents, as well asinterviews with former censors, I believe the effects of American cen-sorship have been greatly exaggerated. Regarding kabuki, the Occupa-tion’s basic aim was to “democratize” (minshüshügi-ka) the repertoryand in this it completely failed.2 I believe that four years of Americancensorship of kabuki produced two minor effects. First, the Occupa-tion blocked the performance of some blatantly militaristic and feu-dalistic plays for a period of time: for example, Genta’s Disinheritancefor a few weeks, The Subscription List for six months, Chronicle of the Bat-

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tle of Ichinotani for a year, and the famous revenge drama The Treasuryof Loyal Retainers for two years.3 (See Plate 1.) Second, a small numberof new kabuki plays were staged at the urging of the Occupation. Otherthan this, kabuki’s managers effectively resisted American attempts tomodernize the kabuki repertory.

The Occupation’s aim was never to put kabuki out of business(as is sometimes implied). Indeed, throughout the Occupation period,Shöchiku producers held the initiative: they proposed kabuki programsthey wished to stage and American authorities reacted to those choices.They proposed plays that were disliked by the Occupation. They pro-posed plays that went against the “democratic” policies of the Occupa-tion. Yet most were approved: out of some 350 kabuki titles that theShöchiku Theatrical Corporation submitted to Occupation censors forapproval, approximately one dozen were rejected for performance,that is “suppressed,” to use the Occupation term.4

By the time World War II was reaching its horrifying end in thesummer of 1945, kabuki was on the brink of extinction, the result ofpolicies and actions of the Japanese government. In March 1944, PrimeMinister Töjö Hideki’s cabinet ordered Japan’s thirteen largest the-atres, including Tokyo’s Kabuki-za, to close (most for the duration ofthe war, as it turned out). Kabuki troupes were forced to downsize, leavethe cities, and tour the provinces. Popular genres of theatre that spe-cialized in comedies and sword fighting dramas (taishü goraku) replacedkabuki in government favor. Elite, luxurious kabuki essentially disap-peared from commercial stages and from public consciousness in thewar’s final convulsive months. No professional kabuki was staged inTokyo during the last two months of the war. Finally, half of the the-atres in the nation were burned down or blown up in massive B-29 sat-uration bombings between March and June 1945. Kabuki was an inchfrom death when the war ended on August 15. It may even be true thatthe peaceful Occupation interlude that followed saved kabuki fromextermination.

When the young demobilized kabuki actor Nakamura MatagoröII first saw the carnage of bombed-out Tokyo in October 1945, herecalls, “I thought that since Japan was utterly defeated, kabuki, too,was finished. Japan would have to recover without the luxury of playgoing” (Ikeda 1977: 132). Matagorö considered becoming a farmer,and Onoe Baikö VII, who would become one of the great stars of post-war kabuki, thought about going into business (Onoe et al. 1993: 135).Their despondence soon passed and both actors plunged into theexcitement of postwar kabuki productions. As we will see, kabuki flour-ished in the immediate postwar years and under the American Occu-pation.

MY TH AND REALITY 3

Occupation Goals: Democracy and an End to FeudalismSoon after the American Occupation army began arriving in

Japan in early September, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Com-mander for the Allied Powers, set up Occupation headquarters (GHQ)in the Dai Ichi Insurance Building opposite the imperial palace. (SeePlate 2.) (One of MacArthur’s military secretaries was Major FaubionBowers, a friend of kabuki who later became a theatre censor.) Withinthree months, the American army of Occupation numbered 430,287(Fukushima 1987: 24).

SCAP was first informed by Washington that theatre was poten-tially censorable in a cable, “Initial Policy for Control of Japanese Infor-mation Services,” forwarded to General MacArthur in Manila, August22, a week before Occupation forces began arriving in Japan. The advi-sory stipulated that among other things, “Libraries, theaters, rallies,periodicals should be controlled by you in light of existing local situa-tion.”5 The immediate concern of Occupation censors on arriving in

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Figure 1. Only rubble is left after B-29 bombers leveled the Zenshin-za(Vanguard Troupe) theatre building, film studio, acting academy, and hous-ing complex in suburban Tokyo in spring 1945. Despite the destruction, thecooperative troupe, primarily kabuki actors, resumed productions in Septem-ber and October. (Photo: Courtesy of Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum,Waseda University)

Japan was preventing jingoist Japanese newspapers and radio from con-tinuing the kind of vitriolic anti-American propaganda they had beenproducing throughout the war. Initially there was no one among thesmall censorship staff to pay attention to theatre. As a consequence,during the first three months of the Occupation, owners and managersopened their theatres when they wished and staged whatever playsthey thought appropriate. SCAP did not order theatres to close norurge actors to take up more useful occupations (as the Japanese gov-ernment had done during the war). Strongly anti-American, pro-mili-taristic playwrights such as Kikuta Kazuo were not punished or forbid-den to write (Kikuta 1968: 261–264). Even Kishida Kunio, the famousmodern drama (shingeki) playwright who was soon “purged” for hisrole in the wartime ultra-rightist Imperial Rule Assistance Association(Taisei Yokusankai), was allowed to write plays and have them per-formed (Memorandum, “Status of Playwright, Kunio Kishida,” Octo-ber 12, 1948, E. M. Kaneshima, Box 5305).

MY TH AND REALITY 5

Figure 2. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), General ofthe Army Douglas MacArthur, leaving SCAP headquarters, Dai Ichi Insur-ance Building, Tokyo, summer 1947. MacArthur traveled without armedguard or security escort, believing he should demonstrate confidence in thepeaceful nature of the American Occupation through his personal actions.(Photo: Courtesy of Sheldon Varney)

It was basic Occupation policy to leave Japanese institutions inplace and to work through them to accomplish Occupation aims. Andso Emperor Hirohito remained emperor and the Diet continued topass laws. Considering that Japan’s military actions in Asia and thePacific had brought about the deaths of twenty million people, this wasa daring policy choice for the American victors. Japanese followed theirusual laws and procedures to accept wartime Prime Minister SuzukiKantarö’s resignation and install Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko as thefirst postwar prime minister. Initially the police and most ministry offi-cials remained in their jobs. In time, top military and political warleaders were placed on trial for war crimes, and over a period of threeyears the most strongly nationalist and militarist supporters of the warwere purged from official positions of influence.6 Nonetheless, unlikein Germany, the essential organization of Japanese society and gov-ernment remained intact in the postwar period.

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Figure 3. Occupation censors carried out their work at the same time theInternational Military Tribunal for the Far East was trying high- and low-rank-ing officers and civilians for crimes against humanity and violations of therules of war. For “condoning abuse and torture of Allied prisoners” at two pris-oner-of-war camps under his command, 1st Lt. Hazama Kosaku was sentencedon March 19, 1947, to fifteen years at hard labor. (U.S. Signal Corps Photo,National Archives)

Similarly, the American Occupation allowed the wartime struc-ture of commercial kabuki to continue without change.7 This isextremely important to recognize. SCAP did not place American“advisers” on Shöchiku’s board of directors in order to control therepertories of the six major kabuki troupes that were under Shöchikucontrol.8 Nor did SCAP attempt to break up the existing monopolyconcentrations of theatrical ownership. The twin brothers Shirai Mat-sujirö and Ötani Takejirö, who were chairman and president of Shö-chiku throughout the war, continued in these positions for the sevenyears of the American Occupation and until their deaths in 1951 and1969, respectively. The Americans did not purge or punish any kabukiactor, director, playwright, or producer for promoting Japan’s “sacredwar” (seisen).

Shöchiku Theatrical Corporation’s Plan for Postwar KabukiNaturally enough, Emperor Hirohito’s sudden announcement

of surrender on August 15, 1945, caught most loyal subjects completelyby surprise. Although peace had come, the next day actor IchikawaEnnosuke II spoke in an interview as if the war was continuing:

I was greatly shocked to hear that our grand Kabuki Theater [Kabuki-za] in Tokyo was burnt [. . .] by the enemy’s indiscriminate bombing.[. . .] In spite of various handicaps which the enemy’s cruel acts haveimposed upon us [. . .] we are prepared to perform at street cornersif such must be done in order to enliven the spirit of our people inconducting the war. (Nippon Times, August 16, 1945)

After a week, more reasoned plans for kabuki’s future wereunveiled. On August 21, a week before the first Americans soldiersarrived in Japan, Shöchiku president Ötani Takejirö laid down thedirection that postwar kabuki should follow. Ötani acknowledged withawe and gratitude the emperor’s instruction to speedily “light thestreets and reconstruct entertainment” for the sake of his majesty’swar-weary citizens. Ötani gratefully accepted the emperor’s will:

The surrender is a brutal fact and many foreigners will soon come toJapan, but it is not necessary that we bow down to them. [. . .] I believewe must preserve our nation’s traditions and maintain the chastity andpurity of our performing arts. Of course we must strengthen morethan ever the traditions of kabuki, the theatre of The Subscription Listand The Treasury of Loyal Retainers that foreign visitors have alwaysenjoyed. The development of our postwar theatre should be based onkabuki. Our theatre was strengthened and refined in the fires of eight

MY TH AND REALITY 7

years of war [and] our performing artists flourished during the war asin no other time in our history. We are doing everything possible toonce again show with pride the glorious traditions of kabuki. (MainichiShinbun, August 21, 1945; reprinted Nippon Times, August 28, 1945)

Japan was a defeated nation and Occupation forces would soon arrive,but Ötani offered his oath to the emperor that kabuki, forged in thefires of war, would continue, pure and unchanged. Perhaps five daysafter the nation’s traumatic surrender is too soon to expect Ötani, astrongly loyal imperial subject, to envision any different future for hisbeloved kabuki. In fact, for the rest of his life, Ötani never deviatedfrom the course of action he laid out here: kabuki must be preservedagainst Western contamination. Even before the Occupation hadbegun Ötani was, to paraphrase John W. Dower, “Taking up the chal-lenge of conquering the conqueror” (1999: 301).

There is a deeper motivation behind Ötani’s insistence thatkabuki not change. In the abyss of human despair and material destruc-tion that characterized Japan in the traumatic summer of 1945, Ötanihad the foresight to see that traditional culture could be the immov-able rock to which Japanese might cling. Ötani was arguing that if thisbold example of local culture was preserved without change, perhapsthe Japanese nation itself could survive its humiliating defeat and standunperturbed against the tide of Americanization that was about toflood over Japan’s sacred soil. A few months later, Ima Hidekai, anofficial in the new Ministry of Education, agreed with Ötani’s position:“Japan was defeated in the war, but in culture we have not beendefeated by the Americans. We ourselves as well as others must recog-nize that we have a splendid cultural tradition that is not equaled byforeign nations” (1995: 109).

The day after Ötani made his pronouncement about kabuki’sfuture, Shöchiku sponsored, to many people’s astonishment, a kabukiprogram at Osaka’s Kabuki-za.9 In September and October, Shöchikumounted full-scale kabuki programs at five theatres in three cities—the Tokyo Gekijö and Shinjuku Daiichi Gekijö in Tokyo, the OsakaKabuki-za in Osaka, and the Kyoto-za and Minami-za in Kyoto.10 Shö-chiku’s chief rival, the Töhö Theatrical Corporation, staged one kabukiprogram, Ginza Reconstructs and Mirror Lion, at the Teikoku Gekijö inTokyo, starring Onoe Kikugorö VI. This was the first play the youngMatagorö saw after returning from service in the navy:

In the midst of utter destruction, it was unimaginable that theatreswere already open. It was like a dream. [. . .] Coming in the front doorsof the Teigeki [Teikoku Gekijö], girls dressed in immaculate kimono

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greeted us from either side of the lobby doors. Others took our tick-ets and ushered us to our seats. I was amazed. The atmosphere of theold Teigeki was completely undisturbed. I felt I’d been taken back toTokyo of prewar times. A first class ticket [. . .] was less than a pack ofblack market cigarettes. (Ikeda 1977: 137)

Traditional, commercial kabuki was indeed making an amazing recov-ery on its own initiative immediately after the war.

Producers and responsible officials in Shöchiku chose whateverkabuki plays they wished to produce in August, September, October,and November 1945, without interference by SCAP. In those months,producers chose some forty kabuki titles from a repertory of 400–500plays. These selections provided the first experiences most AmericanOccupation officials had with kabuki. In line with president Ötani’spublic pledge in August, Shöchiku producers chose almost entirelytraditional plays: humanistic domestic pieces (sewamono) such as Bententhe Thief and Tokijirö of Kutsukake,11 plays forbidden by Japanese cen-sors during the war. Despite loss of costumes and properties, well-loveddance pieces (shosagoto), Wisteria Maiden, The Puppet Sanbasö, and TheMaiden of Döjö Temple were staged in approximations of their usual bril-liance. Shöchiku officials also chose to do ten traditional history plays( jidaimono) that Japanese governments had profusely praised duringthe war for teaching national loyalty and the “Japanese warrior’s spirit”(Yamato damashii). Prominent among the latter were particularly gorydramas featuring the sacrifice (gisei) of a child or a woman for the sakeof feudal loyalty (chügi)—Picture Scroll of the Taikö, The Broken Dish, Mori-tsuna’s Battle Camp, and The Village School scene from Sugawara and theSecrets of Calligraphy. They were plays perfectly suited to send soldiersoff to war. The question was, were they appropriate for a new democ-ratic and peaceable Japan?

American Plans for Kabuki: CCD and CI&EOn August 29, in the “United States Initial Post-Surrender Pol-

icy for Japan,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, DC, set forth twosociopolitical goals for the Occupation of Japan. First, “The authorityof the militarists and the influence of militarism will be totally elimi-nated from [Japan’s] political, economic, and social life. Institutionsexpressive of the spirit of militarism and aggression will be vigorouslysuppressed.” This negative mission to “vigorously suppress” feudalist,militarist, and ultra-nationalist messages in the mass media wasassigned to the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) within SCAP. Sec-ond, “The Japanese people shall be encouraged to develop a desirefor individual liberties and respect for fundamental human rights, par-

MY TH AND REALITY 9

Figure 4. A kabuki scene deemed not suitable for perfor-mance in democratic Japan: General Moritsuna encourages hisyoung nephew, Koshirö, to commit suicide (seppuku) in loyaltyto the child’s father in Moritsuna’s Battle Camp. The photo, auto-graphed by the star, “Kichiemon” (left) and the actor’s grand-son, “Somegorö” (later Matsumoto Köshirö IX, right), is one ofmany kabuki photographs actors gave to American censors astoken gifts, in this case in gratitude for CCD releasing Moritsunafor performance in April 1947. (Photo: Courtesy of AlexanderCalhoun)

ticularly the freedoms of religion, assembly, speech, and the press”(Political Reorientation 1948: 423). The Civil Information and Educa-tion Section (CI&E) was created within SCAP to carry out the positivetask of promoting democracy, freedom, and individual liberty throughpublic education and the media.

In the same document, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ( JCS) directedthe supreme commander, General Douglas MacArthur, to establish“minimum control and censorship” of Japanese civil communicationsand media (Political Reorientation 1948: 432). Censorship was a normalmilitary procedure and now it would be applied to post-surrender,enemy Japan.12 On September 3, General MacArthur placed his CivilCensorship Detachment within the intelligence gathering section ofhis headquarters (he could have put it elsewhere).13 CCD had two oper-ating divisions. The Communications Division examined postal, tele-phone, and telegraph messages, and the Press, Pictorial, and Broad-casting (PPB) Division was responsible for preventing militaristic orultra-nationalistic material from being disseminated by print, radio,and pictorial media. Initially “pictorial” referred to motion pictures,but by late November, a Theatre Sub-Section was formed within thePictorial Section of PPB, staffed, and charged with “censorship andcontrol” of all public theatrical performances.

Several salient features of MacArthur’s decision to organize cen-sorship in this fashion can be mentioned. First, putting CCD within theintelligence section of the military structure—Civil Intelligence Ser-vice (CIS) and General Staff Section for Intelligence (G-2)—correctlysuggests that CCD’s main function was gathering intelligence, not“censorship” as the term is usually understood. This is evident in CCDstaffing numbers. In 1947, CCD employed some seven thousand per-sonnel, of whom more than six thousand were assigned to the Com-munications Division responsible for ferreting out “civil intelligence”by listening to phone conversations and reading domestic cables andmail.14 The information gathered was forwarded to various sections ofSCAP so that Occupation policies could be adjusted to meet changingconditions in Japan.15 On the other hand, the main mission of thePPB Division was censorship pure and simple: stopping feudal andmilitaristic content from appearing in books, magazines, newspapers,radio, film, and theatre productions. PPB’s mission was carried outwith about one thousand employees.16

Second, CCD was authorized to order actions and punish non-compliance. The Theatre Sub-Section of PPB could legally ban a the-atrical production. Being part of the army’s general command struc-ture (i.e., CIS/G-2) enhanced CCD’s punitive authority.17

MY TH AND REALITY 11

Third, PPB censorship, including theatre, was decentralized.Officers were posted in three district offices—District I: Tokyo; DistrictII: Osaka; and District III: Fukuoka—where they were responsible formedia operating in their adjacent areas. General policy was set inTokyo but censors in each district carried out their work separatelyand generally independently.

Fourth, theatre censors were instructed to exercise control overtheatre productions of all types, professional and amateur.18 In prac-tice, censors exempted nö, kyögen, kagura, bugaku, and other ancient orceremonial performance from examination, largely because theiraudiences were small. Kabuki was an important form of theatre to thecensors because it had high visibility, played to large audiences, andwas known to have suspect feudal content.

When a theatre producer wished to present a play, he wasrequired to submit the play script (daihon) to the Theatre Sub-Section,CCD, for approval. A Japanese national examined the script for viola-tion of the brief Pictorial Code (praise of militarism or feudalism, anti-democratic ideas, untruthful history, or criticism of the Allies or theOccupation). The Japanese national’s recommendation was passed toa supervisor, usually a nisei, a second generation Japanese American,who forwarded it to a censor, initially an officer, for action. Within oneto three days, the censor made a decision: pass, pass with deletions, or“suppress” (forbid production). The censor placed a “PC” (passed cen-sorship) stamp on the title page of a passed script.19 Page numbers ofdeletions, if any, were written beside the stamp. Rarely was a deletionmore than a word or phrase—“samurai” or “loyalty to my lord,” forexample. Censors did not delete whole scenes or acts. And, very impor-tant, CCD regulations forbid censors from ordering a scene rewrittenor telling a playwright what content he should include in a play. Thisrestriction contributed to the eventual failure of kabuki censorship.20

Six men directed theatre censorship in PPB, District I, Tokyo:Captain Charles B. Reese (September–October 1945), 1st Lt. VictorEhlers (November 1945), 1st Lt. Earle Ernst (December 1945–May1947), War Department Civilian (WDC) Faubion Bowers (May 1947–May 1948), WDC Stanley Y. Kaizawa (May–December 1948), and WDCJohn Allyn Jr. ( January–November 1949).21 In District II, Osaka, 2ndLt. Royall Zuckerman and 2nd Lt. John Allyn Jr. shared theatre cen-sorship duties in the beginning.22 Between late 1945 and 1947, 2nd Lt.Seymour Palestin, 2nd Lt. Joseph Goldstein, and 2nd Lt. AlexanderCalhoun were theatre censors in Tokyo under Ernst, while WDC Take-shi Teshima and Takeo Tada were authorized to censor plays in Osaka.Theatre Sub-Section staff in Tokyo and Osaka included several niseisupervisors and twenty-to-thirty Japanese national translators and script

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examiners. All Americans assigned to theatre censorship in Japanafter Ehlers were graduates of the Army’s Military Intelligence Service(MIS) Language School at Camp Savage/Fort Snelling, Minnesota,and most knew each other during their several years of Japanese lan-guage instruction (Interviews with Stanley Y. Kaizawa, June 8, 15, and29, 2000; John Allyn Jr., October 25, 2000; and Alexander Calhoun,October 5, 2000).23

In 1946 and 1947, the Theatre Sub-Section sent teams to everyprefecture, where meetings were held with local producers and the-atre owners to explain the censorship system and the CCD Theatrical

MY TH AND REALITY 13

Figure 5. Traveling teams from Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka PPB explainedcensorship procedures to local producers, troupe heads, and theatre ownersin all of Japan’s provinces. Lt. Alexander Calhoun (left) and Sgt. Stanley Y.Kaizawa (right) of Theatre Sub-Section, Tokyo, wait for a train in Akita Pre-fecture, with their baggage and boxes of handouts in front of them, summer1946. (Stanley Y. Kaizawa Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i)

Code. As a result, each month producers around the country submit-ted two thousand to four thousand theatrical scripts to CCD in Tokyo,Osaka, and Fukuoka for censorship. Theatre staff commonly examinedfifty to a hundred scripts per day, and on occasion up to three hundred(Theatre Sub-Section, “Daily Reports” March–May, 1949, Box 8649).

Beginning in 1947, CCD gradually shifted radio, newspapers,magazines, and books to post-censorship (spot checking after publica-tion or broadcast).24 However, the live nature of theatre did not allowpost-censorship.25 In December 1948, Washington drastically reducedSCAP’s budget, with the result that PPB district offices in Osaka andFukuoka were eliminated. From January to November 1949, theatrescripts from all parts of Japan were sent to Tokyo for examination.WDC John Allyn Jr., who had been in Osaka, moved to Tokyo to bechief theatre censor for Japan. WDC Takeshi Teshima and WDC MaxieSakamoto came to Tokyo to handle the scripts from Kansai and Kyu-shu, respectively. It was a slow, burdensome, and inefficient arrange-ment that did not last long. In the face of further SCAP budget cuts in1949, the entire CCD operation was put on the chopping block thatautumn (Interviews with John Allyn Jr., October 25, 2000; and StanleyY. Kaizawa, June 20 and September 15, 2000). Following MacArthur’sexplicit order that “no publicity whatever will accompany the termi-nation of CCD,” censorship was dissolved on November 1, 1949, and allCCD personnel were dismissed without public announcement (Chiefof Staff, “Memorandum for General Willoughby,” October 9, 1949,Box 8540).26 As of November 1949, kabuki was free of formal govern-ment censorship for the first time in its history.

Theatre censorship within CCD was rife with paradoxes andcontradictions. The Americans assigned to theatre censorship—Ernst,Palestin, Goldstein, Calhoun, Zuckerman, Allyn, Bowers, and Kaizawa—were members of an intellectual and educational elite. Militarynecessity required civil censorship in Japan, but the censors were notcrusty regular Army officers, but young, idealistic civilians in uniform.As we will see, the men wielding the censor’s stamp were more inclinedto became kabuki -philes than harsh foes of enemy plays.

The second basic Occupation goal was promoting individualfreedom, democracy, and liberal thought in Japanese society. Mac-Arthur established nine “special staff sections” in SCAP to carry out thisaim within law, public welfare, business, government, and other civiliansectors. One of these special sections was Civil Information and Educa-tion (CI&E), whose mission was, as the Nippon Times so charmingly putit: “Turning Japanese thought into democratic channels” (October 13,1945).27 CI&E within SCAP was modeled on a standard military unitfound in division and higher headquarters called Troop Information

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and Education (TI&E), whose mission is to provide information andeducational programs for members of that military unit.28 Military reg-ulations say such a unit can “advise” and offer “guidance,” but it has nocommand function. That is, unlike CCD, it could not order or forceany action. Here lies another paradox: CI&E theatre officials pushedkabuki hard to change, to become “democratic,” but they lacked theauthority to force change. This fact was crucial to SCAP’s failure toalter the nature of kabuki.

CI&E was organized into a number of divisions.29 One was theMotion Picture and Theatrical Division (MPTD), consisting of twounits, a Motion Picture Unit and a Theatrical Unit, responsible forpromoting democratic themes in films and live theatre.30 Theatre Unitwas led by four men between 1945 and 1950: Naval Lt. Junior GradeJohn Boruff (October 1945–January 1946), 1st Lt. Harold (Hal) Keith( January 1946 –July 1946), WDC Edward (Eddie) Kaneshima (August1946 –June 1947), and WDC Willard Thompson ( July 1947–August1950). With the exception of Kaneshima, the heads of the Theatre

MY TH AND REALITY 15

Figure 6. Staff of Theatre Sub-Section, CCD, Tokyo, visits Töhö Film Stu-dios, winter 1945–1946. From left: Töhö Theatrical Corporation liaison withSCAP, Muramatsu (first name unknown), chief theatre censor Lt. Earle Ernst,theatre censor Lt. Seymour Palestin, Töhö actress Mitani Sachiko, registrarSgt. Stanley Y. Kaizawa, and typist Sgt. James Nakata. (Stanley Y. Kaizawa Col-lection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i)

Unit were not trained in Japanese language, and the unit was smallcompared to the Theatre Sub-Section in CCD, usually staffed by threeor four people.

Boruff often complained that his work was frustrated by “thebottleneck in interpreters and translators” (“CR: 25 October 1945,” Box5255).31 When the Korean War began in June 1950, CI&E’s resourceswere shifted to provide the Japanese press with war information fromthe American point of view. The Theatre Unit was deemed unessentialand, on August 17, 1950, terminated. Willard Thompson, then TheatreUnit head, resigned and his assistants were released (MPTD, August17, 1950, Box 5304).

John Boruff and Harold Keith were theatre professionals, andtheir experience in the New York laissez-faire production system ill pre-pared them to supervise a makeover of hidebound kabuki. When, as wewill see, the managers of kabuki stonewalled CI&E pleas for change,neither Boruff nor Keith were able to imagine SCAP providing tangi-ble financial support to assure democratic kabuki productions. Theirprofessional experience had taught them that government had noplace in theatre art.

CCD and CI&E were intended to complement and strengtheneach other and initially they did. But the differences in mission andtypes of personnel ultimately sent them in different directions andoccasionally at cross purposes, with CCD eventually freeing a world-class art from censorship and CI&E desperately trying to get kabuki tocreate new, democratic plays. In October 1945, at the beginning oftheatre censorship, Charles Reese of CCD and John Boruff of CI&E,“Agreed to coordinate [our] work as closely as possible” (“CR: 11October 1945,” Box 5255). They shared the expectation that whenCCD prevented a certain number of feudal and militarist kabuki playsfrom being staged, new democratic scripts, encouraged by CI&E,would come forth to fill the gap. Therefore, through a natural process,democratic ideas would replace Tokugawa-era feudal ideals in kabuki.The first head of Theatre Sub-Section, CCD, 2nd Lt. Earle Ernst (later1st Lt.), laid out this approach in a report to his superiors on January16, 1946, two months after he arrived in Japan. Here he emphasizedthe positive role of new plays displacing old plays: “We expect to coop-erate closely with CI&E and achieve our purpose through a positiveprogram of getting the right kinds of plays on the stage and thus intime forcing the old ones into oblivion” (Draft, “Answer to Gen. DykeMemo,” January 18, 1946, Box 8618).32 Ernst believed this plan wouldcause minimal disruption or harm to kabuki. In April 1946, HaroldKeith, then head of the Theatre Unit, CI&E, described the same planto American readers of Theatre Arts in the first article about kabuki to

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be published in America after the war: “First, the Samurai tradition ofthe popular Kabuki drama, with its attendant themes of revenge, sex-inequality, warrior worship, blind loyalty to one’s lord and the absenceof individual conscience, had to be discouraged. [. . .] Secondly, thesewere to be replaced with modern plays that carried a constructive mes-sage” (1946: 240).

Ernst is the chief author of the twenty-page, single-spaced “Spe-cial Report No. 18, Censorship and the Present State of the JapaneseTheatre.” The report, completed in April 1947, just before Ernst wasdemobilized, describes CCD’s early theatre policy in similar terms:“Since the mere prevention of the performance of certain plays in notan end in itself, it was hoped that the suppression of plays would createa certain vacuum so that new plays would be written [and] producersand playwrights would receive a kind of education” (Ernst [with Bow-ers] 1947: 7).33 Japanese accounts tend to present American suppres-sion of kabuki scripts as a kind of irrational brigandage against thefruits of Japanese dramatic genius. The larger Occupation purpose ofencouraging new plays is overlooked (or disparaged). But the broadrationale described above seems quite logical: just as an acorn needs asunny space in the forest to grow, new plays need open space (ma) inthe old repertory to sprout and mature. The monopolists at Shöchikuwere not about to open up the kabuki repertory on their own. If it wasto be done, the Americans would have to do it because they were theoutsiders.

How Do You Censor a Great Art?Kabuki presented an extremely difficult issue for CCD and

CI&E theatre officers. From the earliest months of the Occupation,Ernst in CCD and Boruff and Keith in CI&E wrote that kabuki was agreat art and, although its themes were feudal, it would be terrible ifSCAP banned or harmed it. Boruff, in the second article about kabukito be published in America, in October 1946, rhapsodized: “Pictoriallythe plays are exquisite; the sets are a pageant of simplicity; and the cos-tumes produce an atmosphere of opulence. [Combat scenes] are sostylized in their presentation [they become] in reality a magnificentspectacle [. . .] resembling a dance more than a battle” (Boruff 1946:275–276). Osaka theatre censor 2nd Lt. (later WDC) John Allyn Jr. alsofell under the spell of kabuki, attending theatre performances almostdaily. During four years of theatre and pictorial censorship in Osakaand Tokyo, he came to admire kabuki plays, later publishing The Storyof Forty-Seven Ronin. After earning a doctorate from UCLA in shingeki,he pursued an academic career teaching Japanese theatre and film inLos Angeles (Interview with John Allyn Jr., May 10, 2003). All of the

MY TH AND REALITY 17

censors wrestled with the question, how can the worst plays be dis-couraged without harming kabuki art?

One of the strongest myths concerning kabuki censorship is thatonly one person in SCAP—Faubion Bowers—appreciated kabuki.34

Bowers loved kabuki unconditionally and he used his early positionas one of MacArthur’s military secretaries to advance the idea thatkabuki was an art of international stature that deserved SCAP protec-tion. No American was a more avid fan of kabuki than Bowers. Here isa typical media description of Bowers decades after the Occupationhad receded into hazy history: “One after the other, he freed tradi-tional kabuki plays that MacArthur’s GHQ had forbidden. Bowers is thesavior of post-war kabuki on whose shoulders the prosperity of present-day kabuki stands” (Bowers et al. 1999: 118).35

Bowers was not shy about accepting the title “Savior of kabuki,”saying in one published discussion, “Although I was a censor, I was itssavior” (Bowers et al. 1999: 122). What has not been acknowledged isthat Boruff, Keith, Ernst, and Allyn showed their appreciation of kabukiartistry in 1945 and 1946 independently of Bowers.36 Kaizawa becameso enamored of kabuki he studied kabuki dance (nihon buyö) and koutasinging, something Bowers never did (Interview with Stanley Y. Kai-zawa, February 2, 2002). Forty years after the Occupation ended, Ernstwas incensed that Bowers hogged all credit:

[Bowers] has continued to advertise himself as the person who single-handedly “saved kabuki.” His regard for the truth is so small that I’vehad to threaten him with a lawsuit. [. . .] I am less concerned withBowers’ egoism than I am with distortion of fact and history. He hascreated the apparently accepted opinion that before he became chiefcensor, previous censors were engaged in willful destruction of Kabuki.(Ernst letter to Inose Naoki, February 3, 1987, Stanley Y. Kaizawa Col-lection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i)

Censors forbid many productions, but “willful destruction of kabuki”was not part of SCAP’s plan, as we will see.

CI&E to Kabuki: Do New PlaysIn September and October 1945, CI&E widely publicized the

Occupation’s anti-feudal, pro-democracy positions. On September 22,the third week of the Occupation, WDC David Conde, the dynamicfirst head of the Motion Picture and Theatrical Division of CI&E metwith forty Japanese Bureau of Information officials and film and the-atrical producers to lay out for them CI&E’s “production principles.”It was the first day of CI&E’s existence. Conde read from a two-page“Memorandum to the Japanese Empire” that had been written several

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days before. First, he urged that his listeners, “Have many ways tocooperate” with the Occupation’s goals. They can help eradicate mili-tarism and promote fundamental liberties in Japan by producing films(and, by extension, plays) with positive themes: “Plan to solve Japan’spostwar problems,” “construction of a peaceful nation,” “rehabilitationof Japanese soldiers,” “encourage free discussion,” “foster peacefulconstructive organization of labor unions,” “respect for human rights,”and other commonsense topics.

Conde then diverged from his bland general remarks to singleout kabuki (still reading from the statement) as the one Japanese artform in which feudal ideology presented a special problem. I giveConde’s exact words below because they effectively set initial SCAPtheatre policy:

Kabuki plays that are based on feudalistic loyalty and revenge areunwarrantable in the present world; and so far as deception, murderand faithlessness are justified before the masses, and private revengeis allowed neglecting the laws, the Japanese will not understand thebasis of the acts that control the international relations in the currentworld. (Draft Memorandum to Japanese Empire, Issued by GeneralHeadquarters of Allied Forces, “Indication of Production Principlesof IDS,” September 22, 1945, Box 8563)37

Conde then “advised” Japanese film and theatre producers touse “every means of amusement and information” to inform citizensof democracy, individualism, and self-government. An editorial com-mentary in the first postwar issue of Engekikai (Theatre World), pub-lished in October 1945, presented Conde’s statement as SCAP theatrepolicy. Now everyone in the Japanese theatre world could read it andbe aware of SCAP’s intent. In translation, Conde’s warning—“unwar-rantable”—became a direct prohibition—“are forbidden” (kinjite iru):“The announced policy of Occupation Headquarters toward film andtheatre is that plays justifying sacrifice of life or revenge based on feu-dal age loyalty or show admiration for gangsters or murderers are for-bidden” (“Shüsen chokugo” 1945: 46).

The Conde/SCAP statement contains nuances that we need torecognize. Kabuki is not condemned overall, as is often asserted inJapanese accounts,38 but some plays are unacceptably feudalistic. Aplay that contains a scene of revenge or sacrifice is not automaticallyrejected; what is not acceptable is a play in which feudal ideology isjustified or glorified (seitö or sanbi). CCD theatre censor Earle Ernst inmemos and reports stresses the latter point. He writes, for example, inFebruary 1947, “We have never suppressed a Kabuki play because thewomen in it were not treated democratically or because there was

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some talk of revenge” (“Memorandum To: AKM[ori], RHK[unzman],J JC[ostello],” February 26, 1947, E.E[rnst]., Box 8618).39 Or, as a CCDpictorial censor in Nagoya told regional theatre producers, “It waspointed out that vendetta, sword fights, suicide, and murder wereacceptable if essential to the plot” (PPB District Station IIa, Nagoya,Pictorial Section, “Memorandum for the Record,” December 1, 1947,Box 8656). Most writers on Occupation censorship, however, haveoverlooked this important distinction and mistakenly have written thatOccupation censors wanted to forbid (kinshi) all scenes of revenge, rit-ual suicide, or sacrifice.40

In the first week of October, Conde forcefully brought thesame message to President Matsumoto (first name unknown) of theJapan Producers Association (Nippon Kögyö Kyökai), representing allimportant theatre and film producers in Japan:

Plays and motion pictures depicting Japanese Bushido and the spirit offeudal gamblers and gangsters are not in line with the constructing ofa new and democratic Japan. [. . .] Such plays, kabuki and movies wereone form of promoting Japanese militarism. [. . .] Japan must hereafterdepart from such drama, not permit their performance and insteadencourage drama fostering liberalism and democracy. (Nippon Times,October 6, 1945)41

It is natural that in one of SCAP’s earliest public pronouncements ontheatre Conde would mention both suppressing bad feudal contentand fostering new democratic ideas. In practice the two are linked.But it was an early warning that CI&E film and theatre officers wouldtry to forbid undesirable content, which put them in direct competi-tion with CCD. A newspaper headline picked up on Conde’s suppres-sion remarks: “War Motifs Must Go From Japan’s Stages.”

Conde was known for his progressive beliefs. When Conde wasworking in the Psychological Warfare Branch in the Philippines in1944–1945, he came to intensely dislike the militaristic propaganda hefound in Japanese war films and, it seems, in kabuki as well. EdwardKaneshima, a Hawai‘i-born nisei labor activist and graduate of theArmy MIS language school, met Conde in the Philippines in early 1945,where he interpreted for Conde and was his drinking companion. InTokyo, Kaneshima continued to work under Conde in the TheatreUnit, CI&E. According to Kaneshima, “Conde was considered a leftistor even a communist. He wanted films that weren’t just liberal, but pro-gressive. They say he was eased out for this. He was very opposed tokabuki. I didn’t agree with that. I loved kabuki” (Interview with EdwardKaneshima, September 14, 2000).

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A Counter to Shöchiku Resistance: Require Thirty Percent New PlaysA few days after Conde’s meeting with Matsumoto, Naval Lt.

John Boruff arrived in Tokyo where he was assigned to head the newlyformed Theatre Unit, CI&E. Boruff immediately went to work, explain-ing SCAP’s democratic goals for theatre to producers and troupe lead-ers again and again. Boruff reported the current theatre situation toConde, his superior, on October 30: “[Producers] have been notifiedof the type of play we want to see them do, and told they may continueto do their old plays (subject to control of censorship [CCD]) providedthey also do a reasonable amount of new scripts dealing with democ-ratic subjects and the future of Japan” (“CR: 30 October 1945,” Box

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Figure 7. CI&E officers in Theatrical Unit, Motion Picture and TheatricalDivision, meet leading actors of the Zenshin-za (Vanguard Troupe) backstageat the Teikoku Gekijö after a performance of Narukami the Thundergod, Novem-ber 1945. Front row: Theatre Unit head Naval Lt. John Boruff (left) and The-atre Unit deputy head Lt. Harold Keith. Back row: Motion Picture and The-atrical Unit translator Lt. Clifford Konno (second from left) and Zenshin-zatroupe leader Kawarasaki Chöjürö (right). CI&E strongly supported Zenshin-za’s progressive politics and its frequent productions of Western plays. (U.S.Army, Signal Corps, National Archives)

5255). Boruff ’s original expectation, then, was that as long as produc-ers staged some new plays, SCAP would allow the traditional repertory.

It was a modest tradeoff in Boruff ’s view, not punitive, and easyfor producers to do. Boruff arrived in Tokyo with a strong interest inlearning about Japanese theatre. At Yale, he had been president of theDramatic Club and by the time the war began, he was an establishedprofessional actor and playwright in New York (Boruff 1946: 161; Mayo2001: 276).42 In Tokyo, he immediately set about seeing as many pro-ductions as possible: he describes going to twenty-three plays in his firstmonth on the job—kabuki, nö, kyögen, shingeki, Takarazuka, musicals,and popular comedies—everything that was playing in the city. Almostevery day he met with leading theatre artists alone or in groups—Hiji-kata Yoshi, Itö Michio, Senda Koreya, Sugimura Haruko, Kubota Man-tarö, Kikuta Kazuo, Ötani Takejirö, and scores of others (see dailyreports, “CR,” October through November 1945, Box 5255). In everymeeting, Boruff urged directors, playwrights, and actors to create newplays to help Japan become a new democratic society. Shingeki artistswelcomed Boruff ’s support, especially those who had been jailed dur-ing the war by the Japanese Thought Police or whose plays had beensuppressed. Democratic, progressive, socially constructive plays wereexactly what they wanted to stage. An anonymous observer in NihonEngeki ( Japanese Theatre) enthused that: “Actors at all theatres inOctober made similar curtain speeches calling on their audiences tosupport the restoration of freedom in the theatre and conversion todemocracy” (“Tözai nanboku” 1945: 20). The “god of kabuki acting,”Onoe Kikugorö VI, seemed to be on the side of change as well(although he had been an avid supporter of the war until a few weeksbefore). He is quoted in a September interview: “Hereafter, I believe,it will be our duty to eradicate all indecent morals through the mediumof our traditional stage. [. . .] Kabuki, no doubt, will have to undergodrastic changes, but whatever takes place, we know it will be the begin-ning of a new era in Kabuki drama” (Nippon Times, September 26,1945).

But Boruff sensed, within two weeks of taking up his job, thatcommercial producers of kabuki were a different matter. He suspectedresponsible people were far from sincere when they nodded, “yes,” tohis urgings that they create a new, democratic kabuki. In his daily reportof October 20, Boruff wrote that playwrights feared their careerswould suffer if they made too sudden a political about-face. He notedan article in the Yomiuri Shinbun, saying the Japanese government’s“repressive thought control system has been only seemingly abolishedwhile in actual practice it is still very much in effect” (“CR: 19 October1945,” Box 5255).

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As Christopher Aldous has recently written, Occupation offi-cials encountered a powerful “resilience and durability of social formsand patterns” that stymied change in post-surrender Japan (Aldous1997: 212–213). In kabuki, systems of thought deeply rooted in feudalculture were not easily overturned. Kabuki itself was a feudal social sys-tem, with the stars the feudal lords and bit players their serfs. And Shö-chiku was the shogunal overlord to whom stars and walk-ons alike werelittle more than indentured servants. Boruff realized he would need astrong lever to pry open the tight, conservative world of commercialkabuki theatre and allow liberal impulses to flow in. On October 29,Boruff believed he had found the right lever: he drafted a memo thatordered all producers to stage new plays.

The idea had been planted in Boruff ’s mind on October 16,when he met with six Shöchiku producers and attempted to find outtheir plans for staging new plays. He asked directly but politely, “Whatpercentage of [your] plays will reflect the new ideas we want to see”?This gentle nudge elicited evasive replies and no clear commitment.Discouraged, he reported, “No sign of [Shöchiku] attempting plays ofliberal bent as yet” (“CR: 16 October 1945,” Box 5255) and “scriptsshow no sign of the promised ‘New Japan’” (“CR: 21 October 1945,”Box 5255).

Not only Americans in the Occupation deplored the lack ofchange. Critic Toita Yasuji grumbled in the December 1945 issue ofNihon Engeki, “Truly, 1945 is a year I wish to forget for regretfully wehave not seen the rebirth of Japan this year. The four months sinceAugust 15th has produced almost no progress in self-reflection ordebate [over war responsibility]. The state of the theatre world is notone bit different” (Toita 1945: 64). Boruff decided, after three weeksof fruitless meetings with Shöchiku staff, that these officials had nointention of being swayed by his “advice.” He was being stonewalled.He resolved to act immediately and decisively.

On the morning of October 29, Boruff discussed with Capt.Charles B. Reese, Pictorial Censor in CCD, his intention to require newplays. This was a hectic day for Reese. He had on his desk scripts of sixkabuki plays that were scheduled to open in a few days.43 These werethe same plays in which Boruff had found no signs of a New Japan. Inaddition, another dozen scripts of other genres were stacked onReese’s desk, requiring his censorship decision before the productionsopened in two or three days.44 With his script duties still not resolved,Reese politely listened to Boruff ’s plan. Reese seems to have agreed toput in writing a parallel CCD proposal. Now Boruff and Reese couldshow a united front when they met with theatre producers, as sched-uled, that coming Friday, November 2. Boruff then returned to his

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office and drafted a startling memorandum addressed to all theatricalproducers. It said, among other things:

Beginning 1 December 1945, it is expected that at least thirty percentof the total monthly production of any one theatre owner [. . .] will benew scripts dealing with important problems of modern Japan [. . .]“New scripts” [can] include old scripts banned for political reasons,historical dramas exposing militarism and feudalism, [and] studies of progressive Japanese leaders of the past in their fight for the peo-ple (Draft, “Memorandum for All Theatrical Owners [Producers] ofJapan,” attached to “CR: 29 October 1945,” Box 5255).

He signed the memo, “Lt. J. Boruff USNR, Theatre Policy Section,GHQ,” creating for himself a fictitious position in “Theatre Policy” thatwould, presumably, awe the Japanese. CI&E’s “expectation” of 30 per-cent new plays was considerably softened by the broad definition ofwhat constituted a “new” play. In fact, old plays with the proper con-tent could satisfy the terms of Boruff ’s memo.

The next day, October 30, Boruff conferred with David Conde,head of the Motion Picture and Theatrical Division, and gained hissuperior’s approval for the plan. In his meeting with Conde, hedescribed goals that went considerably beyond the language of thedraft memo:

I have not pressed the producers too hard for changes [. . . but to]put some teeth into [this unit’s] instructions, it is my intention, withapproval of higher authority, to close down or otherwise punish anyproducer who dodges this order [to] show on their boards thirty per-cent new plays dealing with democratic themes. [. . .] On the first rea-sonable excuse I should like to exercise this power to establish a prece-dent and indicate clearly to producers that I have that power. (“CR:31 October 1945,” Box 5255. Sentence order altered.)

In his draft memo, Boruff had threatened that if a play synopsis mis-represented the content of a production, that production “will be sum-marily closed by this office and, if deemed necessary, further measureswill be taken against the owner [or] producer.” But the draft memohad said nothing about punishment if the 30 percent new play policywas ignored. It seems that Boruff ’s attitude was hardening by the day,even by the hour.45

Boruff ’s plan contained a serious flaw: he didn’t have the legalpower to close a theatre. On October 31, Boruff went back to Reesewith his draft and asked him to use CCD muscle to close recalcitranttheatres:

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Japanese theatre is an autocratic, highly centralized organization witha few liberals caught in its weave and helpless against the big produc-ing companies. [. . .] In order to crack this clique open [. . .] I needto have the power to make these producers do a certain amount ofworthy plays which follow our line of thinking. [. . .] I need to have[the power] and have them know I have it. Then I can actually dictatewhat a percentage of their plays shall be about. (“CR: 31 October1945,” Box 5255)

But Reese’s mind was on his own problem: should he approve or sup-press a dozen scripts planned for November openings? Reese had onhis desk English translations of some of the six kabuki scripts (providedby Shöchiku) as well as English plot synopses of all of them. He alsohad the Japanese language kabuki scripts but he could not read themand CCD did not have many Japanese national translators yet. Reesehad no precedent to guide him, for these were the first kabuki scriptsto pass through Occupation censorship.

Reese was an old hand at censorship. He had been part of Mac-Arthur’s CCD operation from its inception in mid 1944. He had donemonths of postal censorship in the Philippines reading mail, yet thisdid not prepare him for the complex task of judging traditional Japa-nese dramatic scripts. Further, Reese’s first censorship decision inTokyo, as head of the Pictorial Section, PPB, three weeks earlier hadturned out badly. At the end of September, he had suppressed the firstpostwar Japanese newsreel, “The Atomic Bomb,” about the effects ofthe atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the arrival of American troops inJapan, only to see this decision overturned. Reese fumed that CCDofficials who were “not even from the Pictorial Section” passed the filmover his objections (“Memorandum to: Chief, PPB, Div,” October 3,1945, Box 8578). Reese also must have had in mind SCAPIN 16, theCivil Liberties directive of September 10, in which General MacArthurhad promised the Japanese people “Minimum restrictions on freedomof speech” (SCAPIN 16, “Civil Liberties” 1948: 460).46 Once burned,Reese would be twice shy about suppressing pictorial media. Heapproved all the kabuki scripts that day, signing each, “Returned byCivil Censorship, 31 Oct 1945, C. B. Reese” (see play scripts in Shö-chiku Ötani Library).

Turning to Boruff ’s proposal that CCD sign on as CI&E’senforcer, Reese diplomatically declined: “Only in a very restrictedsense” could Reese close down a producer who “fails to cooperate sat-isfactorily with Lt. Boruff” (“CR: 31 October 1945,” Box 5255). Reese’sjob was to examine and approve or disapprove scripts for performance,not close theatres on Boruff ’s whim. Indeed, soon the PPB “Policy

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Manual” would state: “Censorship personnel does not have authorityto close a theatre” (“Policy Manual for Press, Pictorial and BroadcastDivision,” May 10, 1946, Box 8604).47

Boruff had one more card to play. On the morning of Novem-ber 2, he jumped two levels of SCAP hierarchy and personallybroached his plan to the commanding officer of CI&E, Colonel Kermit(Ken) Dyke. He urged that CI&E draft a SCAP Instruction (SCAPIN)to the Japanese government “stipulating that a certain number ofliberal plays must be done each month.” Dyke turned Boruff down,pointing out that such a directive exceeded CI&E’s legal authority:“This would not reflect the true policy of the Occupation. [. . .] indi-rect action alone [is] acceptable” (“CR: 2 November 1945,” Box 5255).That is, CI&E can only advise or offer guidance. It cannot command.

So, later that day, when Boruff joined Reese in a major meet-ing with producers from the Shöchiku, Töhö, and Yoshimoto theatri-cal companies, he did not present his threat of theatre closings (twodays earlier he had informally discussed the contents of the draftmemo with producers). Reese was the main speaker. He laid out therequirements of CCD censorship that he had been working on overthe past two weeks. Reese’s instructions, as reported in the January1946 issue of Engekikai, codified the manner in which scripts were tobe submitted:

Two weeks before opening, all producers are required to send toCI&E48 one copy of an English language synopsis of any play theyintend to produce and one week before opening, two copies of theJapanese script and a full English translation. After synopses have beencensored changes are forbidden, but if changes are made they must beapproved by Captain Reese of [CCD].49 In the event there is a changethat has not been approved, production will be stopped. A scriptapproved for Tokyo is valid for other areas as well. (“Shibai-goyomisan” 1946: 25)

Scripts were to conform to a brief CCD Pictorial Code: do not beuntruthful, do not criticize the Occupation, and do not show “anti-democratic, feudalistic, ultra-nationalistic, or militaristic propaganda”(“Pictorial Code for Japan,” undated, Box 8578). After Reese finished,Boruff chastised the producers for failing to stage new, “liberal” scriptsand for doing only “token” modern plays. He asked them to “restatetheir desire to cooperate in building a new liberal theatre.” Naturallythey did so. He provides no other details of the meeting (“CR: 3November 1945,” Box 5255).50 The Engekikai report goes on to say thatproducers met with Reese and Boruff again to resolve matters: “Theseinstructions caused all producing companies considerable hardship.

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The worried producers were brought together and a way to prepareEnglish texts was worked out. At the same time, the instruction thatprograms at every theatre must include more than 30 percent newplays particularly disturbed Shöchiku, which controls kabuki.” Shöchikuofficials complained that it was impossible to stage two premiers on aday’s program of six plays. Toita Yasuji tells us that in response, Boruffimmediately relented and replied that one new play out of six wouldbe enough (Toita 1979: 62–63). It would seem that 15 percent was bet-ter than nothing. Boruff ’s roar had been reduced to a whisper. AndShöchiku had won a significant victory.

Shöchiku Chooses “Viciously” Feudal PlaysPlay choices that Shöchiku producers had made a few weeks

before would now have long-range consequences, far more profoundthan they had imagined at the time. In early October, Shöchiku waspreparing Japanese play scripts and English synopses (and some scripttranslations) for the November program at the Tokyo Gekijö. Amongthe plays being readied for submission to CCD and CI&E was PriestKochiyama an extremely popular bandit play (shiranamimono) by Kawa-take Mokuami. Because wartime police censors had objected to Kochi-yama’s Robin Hood–like story of a thief impersonating a high priest tosave a young woman, the play was expected to have clear sailing withthe Occupation. Producers were trying to decide which play to put onthe Tokyo Gekijö program: the plebian Priest Kochiyama or The VillageSchool, famous for its incident of child-sacrifice in the name of feudalloyalty. Japanese advisers, knowing that SCAP objected to overtly feu-dal themes, warned Shöchiku officials that Village School was not appro-priate. But the producers chose Village School, submitted the script toCCD, obtained approval from Reese (as we have seen), and began per-formances on November 5. Shöchiku producers also picked OkamotoKidö’s The Broken Dish (1916) for the November bill at the Shinjuku DaiIchi Gekijö. The first sentence of the English scenario that CCD andCI&E received from Shöchiku showed great promise from the Amer-ican point of view: “Long, long time ago there was a democratic ‘samu-rai’ named Harima Aoyama, who had an aversion for the strict life ofsamurai circles, although he himself was a samurai.” But the synopsisconcluded on a dangerous note. When Harima’s mistress, Okiku, delib-erately breaks a family heirloom dish to test his love for her, “Harimagot angry with Okiku as he thought that his affection for her was tested[. . .] in such a rude way and killed her by his sword with tears in hiseyes” (Shöchiku Script Collection, Waseda University Theatre MuseumLibrary).

On November 8, Boruff went to a performance of Broken Dish

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and was shocked to discover that in the play Okiku joyfully accepts herdeath at the hands of her samurai lord. Boruff wrote in his daily report,“From social point of view this is a vicious play affirming the inferior-ity of woman and suggesting a samurai has godlike rights over her.”51

Boruff was annoyed by what he believed was Shöchiku’s duplicity:“Shochiku first submitted incomplete synopsis of ‘Broken Dish’ con-cealing its true content and omitting part of plot where Samurai kills.Later submitted second synopsis indicating killing but not makingmotivation clear” (“CR: 8 November 1945,” Box 5255). Reese of CCDeither attended the play with Boruff or he saw an earlier performance,because on that day Reese wrote “Suppressed, 8 Nov 45” in his dis-tinctive handwriting on the cover of the script (Stanley Y. Kaizawa Col-lection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i). Sometime betweenNovember 8 and 11, Reese told the Shöchiku liaison to SCAP, YoshidaMatsuji, that the play was not acceptable but because the production

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Figure 8. During the run of Broken Dish (Banchö sara yashiki) at the Dai IchiGekijö in Tokyo, CCD Pictorial Censor Charles B. Reese wrote, “Suppressed,8 Nov 45,” beneath CCD’s script receipt number 22 on the first page of theplay’s English translation. The suppression applied to future submission, notto the present production. (Script in Stanley Y. Kaizawa Collection, HamiltonLibrary, University of Hawai‘i)

had already opened, it could complete its run. Thereafter, Shöchikushould not propose Broken Dish again.52

On November 10 or 11, Boruff went to see Village School at theTokyo Gekijö. Toita Yasuji describes Shöchiku’s reaction to Boruff ’svisit:

Shöchiku officials had imagined at first they could fool the Americansas they had fooled Japanese officials during the war. In November1945, they tried to hoodwink the CI&E officer who showed up just asVillage School began by escorting him to a reception room. But hewasn’t duped. He opened the door, looked out, and it was obviousthat Village School was being played. Then immediately, from the nextday, performances were stopped. (Andö 1961: 47)

Boruff does not mention such an incident but his daily report conveyshis deep suspicion: “Play believed to be vicious but difficulty of inter-preting ancient dialogue makes further visit necessary.” On November12, Boruff met 1st Lt. Victor Ehlers, who that day replaced Reese aschief censor in the Pictorial Section, CCD. Boruff had to start all over:he gave Ehlers a detailed briefing on “the problem of socially viciousplays like The Broken Dish and The Village School.”53 Boruff advised againstusing the “crude weapon” of censorship “despite vicious content ofthese old plays.” Rather than ban bad plays, it is better to “fight theseplays with new ideas” (“CR: 12 November 1945,” Box 5255). That, ofcourse, was CI&E’s fundamental theatre mission.

Boruff and Ehlers saw intransigence and deliberate oppositionin Shöchiku’s choice of these particular plays out of a large repertory.Shöchiku’s decision to resist Occupation wishes was by no meansunique. Many Japanese leaders believed that the Occupiers could notpenetrate their culture and therefore it was safe to continue the oldways. In October and November SCAP response to Japanese intransi-gence in newspapers, magazines, and education, as well as theatre, wasuniform: censorship controls were imposed that had not been in placebefore (see Spaulding 1988 and Mayo 1984).

Ehlers faced a delicate decision in his first days as chief pictorialcensor. He agreed with Boruff that the child sacrifice in Village Schoolwas not acceptable, but his predecessor had approved the produc-tion.54 On November 13 or 14, Ehlers made his decision. He advisedShöchiku’s liaison Yoshida “not to show this play again, after its pre-sent run is terminated.” In this, Ehlers was following the precedent ofBroken Dish. Also, on November 15, Boruff received a letter critical ofthe play from a Japanese citizen who urged CI&E to “investigate thecontents of this play, realize its influence upon the mind[s] of people,and take proper measures.” We can imagine that Boruff immediately

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showed the letter to Ehlers (“CR: 15 November 1945,” Box 5255).Ehlers undoubtedly shared Boruff ’s stated belief that “Shöchiku mis-represented the actual content” of the plays and “gambled on ourinability to find out what they were really about” (“CR: 16 November1945,” Box 5255). Ehlers decided to take another step: he summonedYoshida and Satö Tokusaburö of Shöchiku’s theatrical department,and firmly told them that Village School must close within five days. “Itshould be removed quietly from boards” not later than November 20(“CR: 18 November 1945,” Box 5255).55

It is commonly said that closing Village School was the “first step”in CCD censorship of kabuki (e.g., Kawatake Shigetoshi 1959: 961). Aswe have seen, Broken Dish was the first step; Village School was the sec-ond step. And both steps were responses to provocative plays, delib-erately chosen by kabuki producers. It is tempting to imagine “whatif” Shöchiku producers had chosen Priest Kochiyama instead of VillageSchool. If Shöchiku had shown some forbearance during the firstmonths of the Occupation, kabuki might well have faded quietly fromthe SCAP radar screen. Instead, Shöchiku’s resistance seized the atten-tion of theatre officers in SCAP and brought about closer scrutiny ofkabuki.

The “Village School Incident:” Myth and RealityTo the best of my knowledge, Kawatake Shigetoshi coined the

term “Village School Incident” (Terakoya jiken) in 1959, ten years aftercensorship had ended, to describe the five-day period during whichthe play was closed (Kawatake Shigetoshi 1959: 960). It is usuallybelieved that closing Village School was hidden from the public: “Ofcourse, the newspapers did not publish one line about the ‘Village SchoolIncident.’ Or if they tried, SCAP did not allow it” (Kawatake Shige-toshi 1964: 137). But in fact at least three accounts of the closing weresoon published without CCD objection.

CI&E itself moved quickly to make an object lesson of Shöchi-ku’s poor play choice. One day after the closing, CI&E issued a pressrelease that was published in Engekikai:

November 21, 1945: An informal announcement of the CI&E notedits earlier advice that plays based on feudal principles such as loyalty(chügi) and sacrifice (gisei) for a feudal lord were not appropriate inpresent-day Japan. The censorship office [CCD] has warned that thismonth’s production of Village School precisely fits the category ofundesirable play that glorifies sacrifice for a feudal lord. Therefore,the responsible officials withdrew the play beginning today. Martyr ofSakura has replaced Village School 56 until the close of the run onNovember 29. (“Shibai-goyomi san,” 1946: 21)

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On December 2, a few days after the program at the TokyoGekijö ended, the Tokyo Shinbun offered a major article headlined “IsKabuki Feudal? Regarding Suspension of Sugawara at Tokyo Gekijö.”The author, Motoyama Ogifune, referred indirectly to the reason forclosing the play: “In the aftermath of the removal of Sugawara [VillageSchool ] from the program at the Tokyo Gekijö, the issue of whetherkabuki is feudal or not is being hotly debated. This is not a passing mat-ter, but a serious problem that must be fundamentally settled.” Moto-yama then argued that kabuki is not feudal: it is a product of the feu-dal age but did not benefit from feudalism; it is a commoner’s art bornof the people; it camouflaged itself as feudal in order to survive in feu-dal times (which now works against it); a famous line like “to serveone’s lord is painful indeed” in Village School expresses humanisticopposition to feudalism;57 and the great plays, such as Sugawara andLoyal Retainers, are not loved for their content or themes but for theirvisual beauty, concentrated emotion, and skilled acting. Motoyamalays out virtually all the arguments in favor of kabuki that Faubion Bow-ers and other Americans would repeat on kabuki’s behalf in the com-ing months. Motoyama concludes with the hopeful pronouncementthat “As long as Japan’s history continues, kabuki will not die” (Moto-yama 1945: 2).

The third published account, in the journal Taihei, by Yama-moto M., exposed the rumor that SCAP had banned the play: “In theseclamorous days of democracy, I imagined that this play would never bestaged, but it was, at the Tokyo Gekijö by Köshirö and Kichiemon andtheir companies. However, as I had expected, after more than ten daysof performance it was suddenly withdrawn under instruction, I hear,of GHQ [General Headquarters]” (CCD translation, April 11, 1946,Box 8618). The Press Section, CCD, approved these articles for pub-lication.

For one of the most fascinating, and quixotic, stories that clus-ter around the incident, we must turn to the words of the veterankabuki actor Ichikawa Ennosuke II (later Enö). He was stunned whenhe heard Village School was to be closed:

The Occupiers’ ban on lovers’ suicides, sword fighting, harakiri, andrevenge, saying such scenes are undemocratic, seemed to me to spellthe certain extermination of kabuki. [. . .] By some means or other Ifelt I had to get them to relax this measure, so I went to see Keith inSCAP. I told him, “In any case, at least you should go and see kabukion the stage. Kabuki is not what you think it is.” So Keith went to seeVillage School and then told me, “If you just read the story, cutting offa child’s head is truly cruel. But when you hold in mind that this is atheatrical art, you see a beautiful, splendid performance.” Because I

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seized this opportunity, soon the prohibitions were relaxed. (Nimura1964: 400–401)

Perhaps Keith saw Village School in the five days between Ehlers’ orderand the play’s closing. And perhaps he told Ennosuke he thought thescene was beautiful and splendid. But Keith was only Boruff ’s deputyin CI&E, without power to alter a CCD decision. It is too bad Enno-suke did not call on Ehlers in CCD, or even Boruff, where his appealmight have yielded concrete results in November 1945.

Faubion Bowers, the best-known CCD theatre censor, told amarvelously sensational version of the Village School closing on manyoccasions after the Occupation had ended. Bower’s account, althoughfictitious, has been retold as the truth many times in Japan and Amer-ica. In 1970, Bowers publicly charged Ernst and Keith with Nazi-likejackboot behavior. The tone of his writing in The New York Times Mag-azine can only be described as malicious: “Earle Ernst, a drama instruc-tor, and Hal Keith, a one-or-two-time actor [. . .] with some soldiersand Japanese policemen abruptly stopped a performance of The VillageSchool during the climactic head inspection sequence” (Bowers 1970:39). In an earlier Bowers’ telling, the incident produced severe finan-cial consequences: Ernst and Keith not only “stopped the perfor-mance in the middle,” they closed down the theatre, sending the spec-tators home with their money refunded (Bowers 1960: 40). As the yearspassed, his telling became more caustic but just as far from the truth.At a 1984 symposium on Occupation censorship Bowers said:

I am sure you will know that famous time in early September [sic]1945 when American MPs [Military Police] and Japanese policewalked onstage in the middle of a performance at the Imperial The-atre [sic] and stopped the great actors Köshirö VII and Kichiemon II[sic] from doing Terakoya. There was a severed head of a child in thedrama and as soon as the box containing it was opened, the Occupa-tion authorities hiding behind the police stopped the show. This wasa catastrophic blow for kabuki. (1988: 203)

In this brief statement, Bowers manages to garble the facts three times,perhaps owing to fading memory. In any case, for forty years Bowerstook delight in relating this melodramatic “catastrophe,” but he nolonger named Ernst, who threatened to sue Bowers for defamation(Richie 1997: 18; Ernst letter to Inose Naoki, February 3, 1987, StanleyY. Kaizawa Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i).

Bowers offered his baroque tale to Japanese readers for the firsttime forty-eight years after the event (Onoe et al. 1993: 134). OnoeBaikö VII, one of Bowers’ dearest kabuki friends, repeated Bowers’ ver-

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sion as fact a year later (Onoe 1994: 12). Bowers was a superb story-teller, but he had no firsthand knowledge of the event. This is clear ina letter he wrote fifty years later to Stanley Y. Kaizawa, Bowers’ friendand successor as chief theatre censor in CCD: “Were you with Cen-sorship or CI&E when in 1945 Oct? Nov? at the Imperial TheatreKoshiro VII and Kichiemon I were performing Terakoya (Village School)and the Japanese police walked on stage and stopped the performanceas soon as the kubijikken (head inspection) started?” (Bowers’ letter toKaizawa, April 26, 1995, Stanley Y. Kaizawa Collection, HamiltonLibrary, University of Hawai‘i). According to Kawatake Shigetoshi,Bowers learned of the closing a year and a half after the event, in April1947, when Kawatake told him (Kawatake Shigetoshi 1995: 212–213).58

In the letter, Bowers is not certain of the month of performance andhe has the wrong theatre (it was the Tokyo Gekijö). Kaizawa had thelongest tenure (1945–1949) in Theatre Sub-Section in Tokyo, so he

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Figure 9. Major Faubion Bowers hosting a party at the American Embassy,Tokyo, spring–summer, 1946, ostensibly to introduce kabuki actors to EarleErnst and other CCD theatre censors. Center front, Onoe Shöroku II; stand-ing, from left, Onoe Baikö VII, Nakamura Utaemon VI, Shöroku’s youngersister, Bowers, and Shöroku’s brother-in-law. American theatre censors arenot shown in this or other photographs of Bowers’ parties. (Photo: Courtesyof Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University)

was a good person to ask. Unfortunately Kaizawa arrived in Japan onChristmas day 1945, too late to have firsthand information to share(Interview with Stanley Y. Kaizawa, November 14, 2000). As the decadespassed, the story must have seemed true to Bowers.

In Bowers’ tale, SCAP acts precipitously and Ernst and Keithare callous barbarians. One of Bowers’ less appealing traits was a ten-dency to disparage others in order to increase his own importance.59

Ernst, he said, “thought kabuki was bad in every way” (Okamoto 1998:248). Bowers called his SCAP colleagues know-nothings. And at workhe ridiculed Lieutenant Calhoun, calling him “Lieutenant Buffoon”(Interview with Stanley Y. Kaizawa, July 22, 2001). Bowers’ personalremarks matter because in a dozen post-Occupation articles and inter-views about kabuki censorship, Bowers consistently placed himself atthe center of events and excluded the contributions of his colleagues.Over time, his self-serving description of others—“No one in the cen-sor’s office knows anything about theatre”—took on the aura of truth(Bowers et al. 1999: 122). Ernst certainly knew more about theatrethan Bowers (and played the piano better, too, according to some)(Interview with Stanley Y. Kaizawa, July 15, 2001). Ernst held a master’sdegree (1939) and a doctorate (1940) in theatre history from CornellUniversity and he taught theatre at the University of Hawai‘i for threeyears before the war. He then spent one and a half years in intensiveJapanese language training at the University of Michigan and in theMIS Army language school. So Ernst brought a detailed, scholarlyknowledge of theatre to his job, as well as a reasonable ability in Japa-nese language. Ernst went on to write The Kabuki Theatre (1956), stillthe most perceptive appreciation of kabuki in English, and at the Uni-versity of Hawai‘i in the late 1950s he directed English-language trans-lations of Benten the Thief and Sugawara, and taught the first universityclasses in Japanese theatre in America. It also could be argued thatNew York stage professionals Boruff and Keith knew more about the-atre than Bowers, who was primarily a musician. Late in his life,Yoshida Matsuji reminisced about the character of the Americans hehad worked with on a daily basis. He noted they approached kabukidifferently: “My feeling was that Ernst was a scholar, Boruff was a gen-tleman, and Bowers a fan” (Kawaji 1986: 15).

Kawatake Toshio used the notes of his father, Kawatake Shige-toshi, to reconstruct, in 1995, the Village School Incident as remem-bered by Japanese participants and observers. He noted that SCAPnormally worked indirectly and quietly in the background, so it wasagainst the nature of SCAP to have police leap on stage in front of sev-eral thousand spectators. Kawatake argued that it was more reason-

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able to believe that CCD quietly advised Shöchiku to close the play(Kawatake Toshio 1995: 213). This description is confirmed by thememos in the SCAP files that I have been quoting: Ehlers waited sev-eral days before he advised Shöchiku to “quietly remove” from theboards the Village School production.

In searching to verify the truth of the Village School Incident, Ihave found no witness who saw police go on stage. I think it is signifi-cant that when Onoe Baikö tells a Sankei Shinbun interviewer in 1994that “police went on stage,” Bowers is his source of information (Onoe1994: 12). He does not quote fellow actors who had played the scenethat November and therefore knew the truth. Nakamura Kanzaburö,who played Tonami in the production, says nothing about police:“November 21, from an order of the American Occupation, VillageSchool performances were banned” (1999: 255). Finally, Ernst has anunbreakable alibi: he was not in Japan when Ehlers ordered the playclosed. The dramatic story of a Japanese art victimized by unculturedAmericans carries a resonance in Japan, even after half a century. Anew generation in Japan is learning the old fictitious story today.60 Isuggest it is long past time to bury Bowers’ tall tale.61

Boruff had predicted trouble with kabuki four weeks before theVillage School problem arose: “Some producers are going to give us abitter underground fight” despite their smiling agreement (“CR: 19October 1945,” Box 5255). A chance meeting on November 15 con-firmed Boruff ’s suspicion that Shöchiku’s decision to stage two unde-sirable plays was not an aberration or mistake. That day Matsumoto ofthe Japan Producers Association told Boruff that Shöchiku producershad deliberately selected Village School knowing its theme of childsacrifice broke SCAP’s anti-feudal policy. They said it didn’t matterbecause Americans “can’t understand kabuki. They won’t give us anytrouble.” Matsumoto told Boruff that Japanese reporters were laughingat the Americans for being naïve and foolish. He urged Boruff to watchfor unusual casting (a villain playing a hero role) that the audiencecould interpret as making fun of the Occupation (“CR: 15 November1945,” Box 5255).

In a matter of days, Shöchiku provoked its third censorshiprejection when it submitted the classic dance-drama The SubscriptionList to Tokyo CCD for a planned December production. Shöchiku offi-cials must have thought the play would be passed because a productionwas running in Osaka without incident and another production wouldgo forward in Kobe in December. But the censor in Tokyo watched afilm of the play, made in 1943, that proudly acclaimed the play’s hero,Benkei, “ The ideal example of loyalty to his lord” (“CIEWS, period 15

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December–21 December 1945,” Box 5351). CCD told Yoshida thatShöchiku should “voluntarily withdraw” Subscription List from consid-eration, which it did. (See Plate 3.)

CI&E’s Plan to Ban Bad PlaysBoruff ’s campaign to require producers to stage new plays

had been killed a week before. Now, firmly believing that Shöchikuwas actively opposing SCAP policies, he formulated a second plan toachieve democratization of kabuki, a plan that approached the prob-lem from the opposite direction. He would ban the worst traditionalplays by a SCAP directive (SCAPIN). In the meeting with Matsumotoon November 15, which exposed Shöchiku’s disdain for SCAP poli-cies, Boruff “instructed Matsumoto to have all producers prepareshort synopsis [sic] of entire stock pile of plays including kabuki andpresent them to us in the near future accompanied by their own com-ment as to whether the plays are vicious or harmless” (“CR: 15 Novem-ber 1945,” Box 5255). Producers should judge each play’s worth, Boruffsaid, on the basis of the “thirteen points used in the [CI&E] moviecode” (“CR: 16 November 1945,” Box 5255). These were mostly pro-hibitions of feudalist and militarist themes that Conde had preparedfor film writers and directors.62 At this juncture Japanese and Ameri-can views of the list’s genesis shimmer in Rashomon -like subjectivity:Japanese sources say SCAP initiated and ordered the list; Americansources say that CI&E was only responding to Japanese requests forguidance in future play selection (Kawatake Shigetohsi 1964: 167–169;“CR: 31 October 1945,” Box 5255).

Early the next morning, November 16, Boruff went to see hisboss Conde, outlined the problem, and proposed a powerful solution.Boruff stressed to Conde that Shöchiku’s recalcitrance required themto act: “[My] original feeling that these [kabuki ] plays should not bebanned has changed due to experience of past month in which Sho-chiku placed two extremely vicious scripts in production.” Ehlers, too,was greatly displeased with the “uncooperative attitude.” Boruff toldConde the best approach was to prepare a “list of theatre scripts(largely kabuki) to be later banned by directive” (“CR: 16 November1945,” Box 5255). Conde was wholly sympathetic. Two weeks beforethis, on November 2, Conde had sent to Colonel Dyke a list of 236 Jap-anese wartime propaganda films and the draft of a SCAPIN orderingthe Imperial Japanese government to forbid showing the films. Condehad begun to compile the list while working in psychological warfarein the Philippines six months before, and now it was complete. TheSCAPIN naming taboo films was being issued that day, virtually as

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Boruff and Conde were speaking.63 Boruff must have thought, “IfConde can ban bad films, why can’t I ban bad kabuki plays?”

With Conde’s approval in hand, Boruff went upstairs to consultwith Ehlers in CCD, who agreed “to future handling of kabuki, i.e. col-lecting data on all such plays with view to issuing directive banningmost vicious for future production.”64 Boruff repeated his request forthe play list to Satö Tokusaburö of Shöchiku two days later, and the fol-lowing day Yoshida promised Boruff that he would soon have “outlinesynopsis of all kabuki” in hand (“CR: 18 November 1945” and “CR: 19November 1945,” Box 5255).65

Commentary in the January 1946 issue of Engekikai noted thatCI&E’s “advice” to do new kabuki plays especially disturbed Shöchikuthat controls kabuki (p. 25). In early October, Shochiku had changedthe name of its wartime Kabuki Investigation Committee (KabukiKentö Iinkai) to the Performing Arts and Culture Investigation Com-mittee (Geinö Bunka Kentökai). In response to Boruff ’s request forplay synopses, Shöchiku charged the renamed committee with the taskof preparing a list of plays suitable for a democratic society. Memberswere Shöchiku employees Endö Tameharu, Wakiya Mitsunobu, andKawajiri Seitan, plus Waseda University Theatre Museum directorKawatake Shigetoshi, critic Atsumi Seitarö, and playwright KubotaMantarö. (Ironically, until a few months earlier these same kabukiexperts had been choosing plays that supported Japan’s war effort.) Inthe space of one week, the Investigation Committee came up with a listof some five hundred “kabuki plays” (kabuki geki) and “new-history plays”(shin jidaigeki) that were divided, following Boruff ’s request, into “pos-sible” and “not possible” categories.

The Investigation Committee judged 150–170 of the selectedplays to be possible for performance (we do not know the exact num-ber), including scores of domestic plays, such as Love Letter from theLicensed Quarter and Summer Festival: Mirror of Osaka, and eight to tenhistory plays, including Narukami the Thundergod, whose hero, SaintNarukami, is in rebellion against the emperor. The Investigation Com-mittee decided that some fifty famous history plays were not possiblefor performance—Strife in the Date Clan, The Battles of Coxinga, Moritsu-na’s Battle Camp, and Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy, for exam-ple. Committee members were aware that many Americans knew atleast one kabuki play: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers. Since it was arevenge play, they listed it not possible, a status that continued untilNovember 1947. One of the most overtly objectionable kabuki scenesoccurs in The Battle of Ichinotani when general Kumagai Jirö Naozanebeheads his own son, Kojirö, to protect the life of Atsumori, son of the

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emperor.66 Naturally, the Investigation Committee listed it in the notpossible category. The largest group, and the most unusual, consistedof more than three hundred new-history plays, mostly written in the1930s and early 1940s. Most are little known and of minor interest, yetthe Investigation Committee chose them over traditional kabuki playstwo to one.

For example, the Investigation Committee put twenty-nine new-history plays by the prolific and popular playwright Mayama Seika onthe list although not more than four or five can be considered part ofthe repertory. Two-thirds are so little regarded they have never beenrevived and half are not mentioned in Brian Powell’s detailed study ofthe author’s works (1990). With or without censorship, most new-history plays on the list would never be restaged. What motivated theInvestigation Committee to pad the new-history play selection with150–200 unknown and inconsequential titles? Several reasons seemplausible. Committee members may have worried that if they did notput a title on the list, it would be hard to get the play approved later(the list was supposed to contain all plays that Shöchiku might wish tostage in the future). As it turned out, CCD censors paid no attentionto whether a proposed play was on the list or not. Or the Committeemay have felt that an extremely long list that was studded with little-known titles would be hard for the Americans to sort through. Perhapsunnecessary titles would help mask other plays the committee was wor-ried about. That is, some chaff may have been added to hide thewheat.67 Yet another possibility exists: on June 19, 1944, the GreaterJapan Producers Association, of which Ötani Takejirö was an impor-tant member, began to compile a list of the best kabuki plays. If thepostwar Investigation Committee used or adapted that list, it wouldexplain the quickness with which the list was prepared and why manyshin jidaigeki plays, popular during the war, are on the list (Nagayama1995: 324).

Shöchiku, CI&E, and CCD Create a List of Withdrawn PlaysShöchiku gave the Investigation Committee’s list of some five

hundred titles, without the promised synopses, to Boruff on November26. On November 30, Boruff told Shöchiku officials that he wanted tobegin discussions with the Investigation Committee on December 4.Some Japanese accounts imply that the meeting was hastily called, butfour days’ notice seems a reasonable lead time ( Japanese writers arefond of calling SCAP actions “sudden” (totsuzen), suggesting Americanunpredictability and Japanese helplessness).68 Japanese accounts alsoimply that Boruff was wholly unfamiliar with the scripts. But Boruff

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spent the week reviewing plays on the list. After several discussionswith Enko Vaccari, a well-known Japanese language teacher fluent inEnglish who was assisting CI&E, Boruff wrote in his daily report forNovember 27, one week before the first meeting, that his “preliminarysurvey found twelve bad ones which Shöchiku had listed as harmless”(“CR November 27, 1945,” Box 5255). The following day, Boruff wentover details of his plan with Ehlers, who would represent CCD. Boruff’sspirits leaped when Ehlers, “Expressed feeling directive [banning plays]should come from Censorship.” Immediately, Boruff “Heartily agreed,”for this was the heaven-sent solution to CI&E’s powerlessness (“CRNovember 28, 1945,” Box 5255).

On the appointed afternoon, the seven members of the Inves-tigation Committee, including Shöchiku’s English-speaking liaison,Yoshida Matsuji, went to Boruff ’s office in the Radio Tokyo Building(NHK), central Tokyo. Representing CCD was Lt. Earle Ernst, chiefcensor of the newly formed Theatre Sub-Section, Pictorial Section,PPB, who had just taken over theatre censorship from Ehlers.69 Alsopresent were Lt. Joseph Goldstein, another newly arrived theatre cen-sor in CCD, and Vaccari as an extremely knowledgeable interpreter.70

Boruff was the highest-ranking American officer present and he con-ducted the meeting. Ernst, two military ranks lower and just two weeksin Japan, acted as clerk, keeping the scripts in order. Kawatake Shi-getoshi has written the only detailed, firsthand account of the pro-ceedings, based on two meetings he attended (1959: 937–958; 1964:131–156). Kawatake praises Boruff for guiding the discussions in anunexpectedly friendly, open manner. Had the roles been reversed,Kawatake notes, a Japanese occupation official in America would havemade imperious demands (Kawatake Toshio 1995: 215).71 To beginwith, Boruff accepted with little comment the list of plays the Investiga-tion Committee judged possible for performance. Occasionally some-one consulted the reference book Outline of Kabuki Plays (Kabuki sai-ken), by Iizuka Tomoichirö, for plot information. As we know, Boruff ’saim was to identify “vicious” plays that could be banned. Kawatake tellsus that Boruff took up the plays the Investigation Committee believedwere not possible, one by one, in detailed discussions that lasted six-teen hours and were spread over four consecutive days.72 The resultsof the discussions must have surprised Japanese and American partici-pants alike: in the first two days Boruff approved twenty-five plays thatthe Investigation Committee thought not possible and disapprovedonly five that the committee believed were “good,” for a net gain oftwenty acceptable plays (Kawatake Toshio 2005: 247).

Kawatake cites half a dozen classic plays deemed unsuitable bythe Investigation Committee for reason of murder or suicide that

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Boruff ruled “democratically” acceptable. For example, the Investiga-tion Committee had placed the famous comedy Sukeroku: Flower of Edoin the unacceptable category because it concludes with a bloody mur-der scene. When in the course of discussion it came out that the killer,Sukeroku, is a commoner and the man he kills is Ikyü, an evil samu-rai, Boruff said the play could be done. Kawatake notes that the Shö-chiku side did not tell Boruff that Sukeroku’s lover Agemaki is a pros-titute. Nor did they say Sukeroku is “in truth” ( jitsu wa) a famoussamurai, Soga Gorö, nor that Sukeroku kills Ikyü to avenge his father’smurder. Similarly, Boruff judged the history play Just a Minute! accept-able because the hero’s motive in executing evil samurai is protectionof the innocent. Also, Boruff approved several plays showing femalecharacters in a positive light that the committee had thought unac-ceptable: the history play Rokusuke of Keya Village, featuring a modestfemale warrior; Festival Sashichi, whose slain heroine is presented sym-pathetically; and The Tale of Shiraishi, in which two sister-heroines plotto kill the man who murdered their father. Kawatake does not tell uswhich five titles Boruff dropped from the “good” list nor why he did so(Kawatake Shigetoshi 1964: 140–141).

At the conclusion of the discussions on December 7, the num-ber of approved plays stood at 187.73 A Shöchiku scribe duly recordedthe group’s decisions regarding 507 play titles (see Table 1): 187 titleswere “possible for performance” ( jöen kanö)—79 kabuki and 108 new-history plays—whereas 320 titles were “not possible for performance”( jöen fukanö)—70 kabuki and 250 new-history plays (see the list inShöchiku Ötani Library).

Japanese accounts of the meetings say nothing about the Inves-tigation Committee’s original judgments. They state or imply that thepurpose of the three-way meetings was for the Americans to choosewhich plays to ban or allow. The most recent Japanese account, writ-ten in 2005 by the current president of Shöchiku, is typical in its phras-ing: “On the fourth of December, in the offices of the CI&E theatresection on the sixth floor of the Radio Tokyo Building in Uchisaiwai-chö, kabuki plays were questioned in detail, one by one, for content,the nature of the major characters, and plot incidents and were thenjudged possible or not possible for performance” (Nagayama 2005:339).

But judging the plays “possible” or “not possible” for perfor-mance had already been carried out by the Japanese InvestigationCommittee on its own. I believe the most significant aspect of thesemeetings is that the American side accepted virtually all of the Investi-gation Committee’s evaluations. The number of changes Boruff maderepresents a tiny fraction of the total. And the changes Boruff made

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Table 1. Number of play titles “possible” and “not possible” to perform,determined at Shöchiku-CI&E-CCD meetings, December 4–7, 1945.

Possible Not possible Total

Kabuki plays 79 70 149New-history plays 108 250 358

Total 187 320 507

Figures 10 and 11. Front and back cover of the eleven-page list of 507 “pos-sible” and “not possible” play titles decided on in joint meetings of the Japa-nese Performing Arts and Culture Investigation Committee, CI&E, and CCD,December 4–7, 1945. The front cover (left) identifies the text, “A summary listby performance classification of kabuki and new-history plays resulting frominvestigation,” the date and place, “December 1945, sixth floor, Radio TokyoBuilding,” organizations involved, Shöchiku’s “Performing Arts and CultureInvestigation Committee and MacArthur’s General Headquarters, TheatreSection, Naval Lt. Boruff,” and “one participant, Kawajiri Seitan.” The backcover (right) identifies the text, “A summary list by performance classificationof kabuki and new-history plays,” and participants in the meetings, “Mr. Boruffand Mr. Keith of General Headquarters and Kawatake Shigetoshi, KawajiriSeitan, Atsumi Seitarö, Endö Tameharu and Wakiya Mitsunobu of the Inves-tigation Committee.” The identification of Keith appears to be an error. (Textin Shöchiku Ötani Library)

were mostly to approve questionable plays. Still, we gain the impres-sion that Boruff required careful persuasion and explanation. Theplot and character descriptions provided by the Japanese participantswere deliberately fuzzy and leaned toward the positive side. Some ofthe explanations, as with Sukeroku, were misleading. And for the Japa-nese there certainly was a sense of danger and precariousness: What ifBoruff misunderstands? What if Boruff says “no” to this or that play?After all, absolute power lay with Boruff (Kawatake Shigetoshi 1959:964–965).74

When the discussions were concluded, Kawatake was pleased:“I heaved a sigh of relief because the thirteen prohibitions, over whichwe had worried so much, had not been strictly applied” (1959: 965).The anxiety that Investigation Committee members felt was under-standable, but misplaced. Boruff undoubtedly thought a precise anddetailed list of prohibited themes would help focus discussions. Japa-nese feared the long list of thirteen forbidden topics signaled a morepervasive censorship policy, which was not the American intention.Boruff chose the film guide that Conde had drawn up to steer newfilms in the right direction, largely because it was available. A screen-writer could easily avoid the many forbidden topics, but as Kawatakepessimistically observed, “Speaking in the extreme, it would seem thatevery kabuki and bunraku play would be disapproved” (Kawatake Shige-toshi 1964: 138). Fortunately, this worst-case scenario did not play out.The kabuki repertory had been partially trimmed. But the disaster thatthe discussions seemed to portend did not occur: Boruff was moderatein his judgments of what constituted feudal loyalty or undue militarism.

Kawatake Toshio has suggested, correctly I believe, that theInvestigation Committee prepared its list hurriedly because the titlesare not in exact i-ro-ha or A-B-C order. Further, a very popular play islisted twice using alternate titles.75 Did Investigation Committee mem-bers divide up the repertory among them? If each person brought insome plays or if the earlier, wartime list was partially used, that wouldexplain the inconsistencies.

Kawatake reports that during the discussions Boruff wonderedaloud if kabuki could voluntarily shut down for a few years to avoid cen-sorship problems. When Kawatake and other Japanese responded thatthat would be the end of kabuki, Boruff acceded agreeably, “We will sayno more about it” (Kawatake Shigetoshi 1959: 965). After the discus-sions were concluded, it would seem that Investigation Committeemembers suggested additional play titles. On the day the meetingsended, Joseph Goldstein wrote in a CCD memo for the record, “Willreceive definite answer December 8 as to when we can receive theirentire list of plays with their criticism” (Memo, “Meeting with Mr.

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Matsumoto and Assistant of Dai Nippon,” December 7, 1945, Box8580). So CCD expected to receive additional play titles.

In the third week of December, Ernst and his Theatre Sub-Sec-tion staff came up with a final list containing 517 plays titles, written inRoman letters for CCD use. The list contains the plays on the Shö-chiku-CI&E-CCD list, less nine dropped titles and plus nineteenadded titles, for a net increase of ten titles. Most of the additions were“approved” new-history plays.76 The important fact is that almost allof the original list made up by the Investigation Committee survivedAmerican scrutiny both during and following the discussions. Thissuggests that the high drama of the three-way discussions described byKawatake Shigetoshi may be a bit exaggerated.

If we want to understand why certain plays were put on the listand others were not, and why plays were judged good or bad, we needto look first at the discussions among members of the InvestigationCommittee when they made up the original list in November. Unfor-tunately, no member of the Investigation Committee has written adescription of the process whereby they selected and evaluated themore than five hundred plays, nor has the original list been found(Kawatake Toshio 1995: 215). It is an intriguing question why Japanesecommentators never discuss the play selections made by the Investiga-tion Committee but only discuss the meetings with SCAP officials.One unflattering explanation is that in this way Japanese participantscan be presented as mere spectators to American censorship actions,rather than being responsible themselves for most of the censorshipdecisions.

Let us look briefly at some of the fourteen new-history titlesthat were added to the CCD’s final list following the joint discussions.They are typically obscure works—The Orange Ship, Sequel to Nezumi theRat, The Death of Toyoshige, The Scroll of Mii Temple—staged for a singleproduction twenty to forty years ago and subsequently forgotten.77 Cer-tainly the Americans were not capable of coming up with these titleson their own, so they must have been suggested by the InvestigationCommittee. What was the point of adding unimportant plays late inthe selection process? Of course, most major plays are on the list. Yet,these strange circumstances confirm Kawatake Toshio’s belief that theInvestigation Committee put the list together in a hurried and some-what arbitrary manner.

Early Demise of the ListA persistent myth about American censorship of kabuki is that

the “list of banned plays” was important to CCD and that censorshipwas guided by the list. There was much pressure within SCAP to pub-

MY TH AND REALITY 43

lish a list of banned plays, but that did not happen. I suggest that theuse of the list has been misunderstood.

From the beginning, Boruff wanted the list so that SCAP couldorder the Japanese government to forbid performances of the disap-proved plays (as Conde had done with wartime propaganda films). Oneweek after CI&E and CCD concluded their meetings with the Investiga-tion Committee, Boruff wrote exultantly, “Censorship and this depart-ment are now in the process of tabulating the results preparatory toissuance of a directive by censorship in which unsatisfactory kabukiplays will be banned” (“CIEWS, period 1 December–14 December,1945,” Box 5351).78

As in his earlier plan, Boruff was dependent on CCD coopera-tion. He had Ehlers’ assurance that CCD would issue a directive to theJapanese government, but Ehlers was no longer in charge of theatrecensorship. In mid December, the new chief theatre censor Earle Ernstannounced Theatre Sub-Section’s policy on publicizing the list: “[Wedo] not wish to issue an official directive banning the Kabuki plays.”Ernst preferred, in Boruff ’s words, to “let Shöchiku take the respon-sibility of getting the word around to other producers on what playsare taboo.” Bitterly disappointed, Boruff argued that publicity was nec-essary to reach the hundreds of small troupes throughout Japan, butto no avail (“CIEWS, period 15 December–21 December 1945,” Box5351).

Ernst drafted a memo containing CCD’s final list of 517 “Kabukiand Neo Classical Plays” for the guidance of District II and District IIItheatre censors.79 Major Alfred L. Dibella, PPB Division head, sent thememo under his signature to Osaka and Fukuoka by “safe hand cour-ier” (to protect the confidentiality of the contents) on December 21.The division of the CCD list into “kabuki” and “neo-classic” groups fol-lows the categories established by Shöchiku’s Investigation Committee.The plays were further divided into those “voluntarily suppressed” byShöchiku “as a result of a conference with Shochiku Theatrical Group”and “approved” plays, provided examination shows “there are no objec-tionable parts or scenes” (“Disapproved List of Kabuki & Neo ClassicalPlays,” December 21, 1945, A.L.D[ibella], Box 8618). But within twomonths, PPB Tokyo revoked the list, instructing Osaka and Fukuokacensors to not use it as a censorship guide. Censors were to judge ascript solely on its merits “even though the exact title appears on thelist.” “The December lists of ‘approved’ and ‘disapproved’ plays werenot intended as records of censorship action [and] to avoid misunder-standing, it is suggested [. . .] their use be discontinued” (Pictorial toChief, PPB, “Plays Submitted from Fukuoka,” April 2, 1946, K C[am-eron], Box 8520).

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It may seem surprising that CCD abandoned the list so quickly,but it was a CI&E project, and by March 1946, Boruff, the list’s insti-gator, was gone. (See Plate 4. )

Boruff made one final attempt to get the disapproved list pub-lished in early January 1946, a few days before he left Japan for demo-bilization. Again he went directly to CI&E head, Kermit Dyke, now abrigadier general, and convinced him to support his plan. On January14, 1946, General Dyke sent a memo to the commanding officer, CCD,asking why SCAP should not issue a “directive to the Imperial Japa-nese government to set up procedures [. . .] to effect the banning andprevent the production of undesirable Kabuki plays” (Memo “Censor-ship of Kabuki Plays,” January 14, 1946, K. R. D[yke], Box 5116). Gen-eral Dyke’s memo was forwarded to Ernst, a lieutenant, for reply. Ernstshrugged off the general’s suggestion, writing on January 19 his con-clusion that the list should not be published. Ernst pointed out that atitle did not determine the content of a play because kabuki titles andcontent constantly changed. Although this was only a few months intothe Occupation, Ernst knew that censorship was temporary and soonwould fade away: “The list [. . .] is based upon an incomplete knowl-edge of the plays and therefore cannot be regarded as final (Draft“Answer to Gen. Dyke memo,” January 18, 1946, Box 8618).80 Andlater, in 1947, Ernst observed:

Since we were aware [in 1946] that our attitudes might well change aswe got a better idea of the Japanese theatre, we deliberately couchedthe regulations in general terms so that we would not find ourselvesembarrassed by an inflexible code. At the same time we have [. . .] notattempted to apply the same censorship criteria to Kabuki that wewould apply to a modern play. If we did, it would be almost impossibleto pass any Kabuki play, since all of them reflect the feudal society inwhich they were created. (“Memorandum to: AKM, RHK, J JC,” Feb-ruary 26, 1947, E.E., Box 8618)

Ernst was looking to the future when the existence of a published listof banned titles would make it difficult to ease theatre censorship. Hewas also looking further ahead, to the end of censorship. Remarkingon Ernst’s attitude at this time, theatre censor Alexander Calhounrecalls: “Earle’s position was that censorship should be ended as soonas possible. Censorship was consistent with the American system, it wasneeded, but it should be done away with quickly” (Interview withAlexander Calhoun, October 5, 2000). (See Plates 5 and 6.)

Kawatake Shigetoshi tells us that during the December play listdiscussions, Boruff suggested to Investigation Committee membersthat if Shöchiku practiced self-restraint in play selection, “Present

MY TH AND REALITY 45

Figure 12. Title page of the script of Battle Camp Debatestaged January 1946 at Osaka’s Kabuki-za. A Japanesenational examiner in Osaka PPB has written in Japanese,“performance forbidden” ( jöen kinshi) to the right of themain title. The prohibition has been crossed out and thescript marked approved with the “PC, C.C.D.—610” stampand the censor’s signature, “Royal C. Zuckerman, 2nd Lt.Inf.” (bottom right). On a second page (not shown), is anote that the play was “banned by MacArthur’s Headquar-ters, December 21, 1945.” Here is clear evidence that Osakacensors, acting on their own initiative, deliberately releaseda “banned” play that they knew was on Tokyo’s “disapproved”list, months before Faubion Bowers was involved in censor-ship. (Script in Shöchiku Kansai Archives)

restrictions will naturally be gone within a few years.”81 In fact, restric-tions were relaxed sooner than Boruff imagined: CCD theatre censorsreleased the first disapproved titles within a month and almost allmajor plays were released inside two years.

Neither CCD nor CI&E announced the existence of the list ofapproved and disapproved plays. But four days after the SCAP–Inves-tigation Committee discussions were completed, an article in the AsahiShinbun, almost certainly planted by Shöchiku, cried out, “The Treasuryof Loyal Retainers and Strife in the Date Clan banned.” Without mention-ing the discussions, the short article attributed these “voluntary deci-sions” to Shöchiku’s Investigation Committee: “Following the guidanceplan of SCAP, the Performing Arts and Culture Investigation Com-mittee has itself reexamined kabuki play scripts, with the result thatplays that distort historical truth, degrade women or children, approveof ritual suicide, or advocate feudalistic thought inspiring militarismwill not be done” (December 12, 1945). The article named a dozensuitable and unsuitable play titles. Soon an English translation of thisarticle was published in the Nippon Times that was headlined “BannedPlays Revealed: Vendetta of 47 Ronin to be Eliminated From Kabuki.” Itopened with the now familiar litany of undesirable dramatic situations:“All dramatic plays replete with feudalistic ideas including those whichglorify militarism, distort historic facts, abuse women or children, orjustify suicides are to be eliminated hereafter from Kabuki perfor-mances” (December 24, 1945). Within a week, the theatre journalEngekikai carried a brief notice that as a result of meetings betweenSCAP and Shöchiku plays like Village School and Loyal Retainers wouldbe “set aside and not performed” while many domestic plays weredeemed appropriate (February 1946: 23). It seems that CI&E andCCD officials did not know that these articles were published.

The list of approved plays was finally made public at a SCAPpress conference held January 20, 1946 (described later). At that timethe SCAP spokesman provided Japanese reporters with titles of the 187“appropriate” plays that had been agreed upon in December: 79 kabukiand 108 new-history plays.82 The Mainichi Shinbun published theseplay titles (save one) January 24, under the headline “Kabuki and New-History Plays Suitable for Performance.”83 The approved plays werenow public knowledge.84 But in line with the policy set by Ernst, the320 disapproved play titles were not publicized then and have notbeen published to this day.85

The Myth of “Two-Thirds” Banned PlaysJohn Boruff left Japan on January 11, 1946, returning to New

York, where he resumed his career as a professional playwright, actor,

MY TH AND REALITY 47

and later television script writer. Policy making in SCAP, as in all adhoc organizations, was strongly colored by personality. When Boruffleft CI&E, his campaigns to force change on kabuki faded quickly. Hissuccessors in the CI&E Theatre Unit—Harold Keith, Edward Kane-shima, and Willard L. Thompson—were far more interested in shingekithan in kabuki. Besides, Boruff ’s two major campaigns to modernizekabuki had been complete failures. Theatre Unit staff turned their fullattention to modern drama, which they, and most Japanese, believedrepresented the future of Japanese theatre.

Both CI&E and CCD put much effort into creating the list, yetneither used it. Then what does the list mean? In the most recent,detailed English-language article on kabuki censorship under the Occu-pation, Marlene J. Mayo expresses the standard view that “Two-thirdsof the existing repertoire of 500 plays [. . .] were designated harmful”and “after these conferences little else was left” to perform (Mayo 2001:279). Writing in 2005, Shöchiku president Nagayama Takeomi putsthe figure even higher: “Three-fourths of the repertory was banned”(338). But is this true? And where does the figure “two-thirds” or“three-fourths” come from?

If we look at Table 1 (p. 41), the figure of 320 “not possible”plays is almost two-thirds (63 percent) of the total of 507 plays on thelist. But that does not mean that two-thirds of the kabuki repertory wasbanned. In the first place, traditional kabuki plays make up only 149,or one-third, of the titles on the list. If the traditional scripts arecounted separately (as the Investigation Committee did), we see thatseventy-nine, or more than one-half, were judged possible for perfor-mance. Further, as others have noted, the list contains almost no danceplays. If we add the one hundred or so traditional kabuki dance pieces,such as Two Lions, The Barrier Gate, Benkei Aboard Ship, and others tothe list, we get some 250 traditional kabuki titles. And since the cen-sors almost always judged dance plays harmless, we can say the Ameri-cans approved approximately 180 traditional kabuki scripts. In short, amore correct statement would be, “as a result of the meetings, three-fourths of the traditional kabuki repertory was judged suitable for per-formance.”

The majority of the “not possible” titles on the list are new-his-tory plays. At least one hundred glorify great warriors from Japan’sbloody past—Taira Kiyomori, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Oda Nobunaga, andothers—or offer twentieth-century, pro-imperial revisions of feudalhistory.86 The Investigation Committee included two war plays set inJapan’s modern period: Universal Military Conscription (1940) and Mapof Loyalty to the Emperor (1942). Needless to say, Shöchiku producerswere unlikely to submit many of these plays for postwar performance.

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It seems strange that the committee put so many unknown, inappro-priate titles on the list, merely to say they should not be done.87 Finally,some of the new-history plays on the list were written for shinpa or shin-kokugeki. From the beginning, Boruff had asked Shöchiku to provide,in his words, “A list of theatre scripts (mostly kabuki).” In sum, the totalnumber of “not possible” titles tells us little about the fate of tradi-tional kabuki plays under CCD censorship.

Even though Ernst refused to publicize CCD’s list of “disap-proved” plays and did not use it as a censorship guide, nonetheless hethought the list useful to Shöchiku. Ernst wrote to his superiors in Jan-uary 1946, one month after the list had been finalized: “The list ofapproved and disapproved plays has been of great value in enablingthose producers and troupes who wish to cooperate with us, to learnwhat CCD is opposed to and what it will approve” (Unsigned draft,“Answer to Gen. Dyke Memo,” January 18, 1946, Box 8618). That is,producers could stick with approved plays, avoid disapproved scripts,and have no problems with CCD censorship. And producers had nearlytwo hundred traditional plays to safely choose from. Did producers dothis? In fact, production chronologies for 1945–1949 show that Shö-chiku producers did not follow this simple path (see Nagayama 1996and Komiya 1989). I will return to this in a moment. But first I want tofinish the narrative of early censorship.

January 10, 1946, was Boruff ’s last working day in CI&E beforereturning home. Unquestionably he is the most significant Americanconcerned with theatre in the early months of the Occupation.88

Because Boruff instigated two major initiatives to reform kabuki (bothfailed), many Japanese believed that he, and CI&E, directed theatrecensorship. Even Okamoto Shirö, the most recent serious Japanesewriter on Occupation censorship of kabuki, misunderstands CI&E’slack of authority: “I have noted all along that CI&E controlled the cen-sorship section. It was CI&E’s responsibility to approve and deny per-mission for kabuki plays, to handle all negotiations, and to make allnotifications” (Okamoto 2001: 90). As we have seen, this is a misunder-standing. CI&E did formulate policy designed to support democraticand liberal thought. But “responsibility to approve or deny” kabukiproductions always rested with CCD: during Boruff ’s tenure in CI&E,Reese, Ehlers, and Ernst of CCD approved or disapproved plays inTokyo, not Boruff. And “notification” of CCD actions necessarily camefrom CCD personnel. In two personal crusades, Boruff tried to carryforward both the positive and negative goals of the Occupation. But hedid not succeed because his efforts overreached CI&E authority. Japa-nese observers at that time did not have access to the inner workings ofSCAP and they can be forgiven for not seeing that while CI&E spoke

MY TH AND REALITY 49

loudly, CCD, working quietly without publicity, carried the big stick ofkabuki censorship. To make it even more confusing, at the start of theOccupation theatre officers of CCD and CI&E occupied offices in thesame building, Radio Tokyo, just one floor apart. As Kabuki-za Cor-poration vice president Miyazaki Kyoichi recently told me, “We couldnot always tell who was giving us orders, CI&E or CCD” (Interview withMiyazaki Kyoichi, September 25, 2003). Today researchers can freelyexamine Occupation documents to gain a clearer understanding ofthe interplay between CCD and CI&E in dealing with theatre.

Kawatake Shigetoshi has written an interesting account of thelavish, and perhaps ill-considered, farewell party Shöchiku hosted forBoruff at a fancy Shinbashi restaurant on the evening of January 10,1946. As the party wound down Boruff asked if Shöchiku would do 50percent modern plays in kabuki as a personal favor after he was gone(Kawatake Shigetoshi 1964: 143). We don’t know why Boruff broachedthis new idea on the eve of his departure. Also, we do not have arecord of his exact words, only Japanese translations of what he said,so it is difficult to know Boruff ’s attitude or intention. My impressionis that this was an offhand remark, a last-minute query about possibil-ities for kabuki’s future. Perhaps the generous cups of sake he had beendrinking that evening loosened his tongue. In any case, even thoughthe next day Boruff would be gone from CI&E, Kawatake noted thatShöchiku officials were greatly disturbed and worried.

The following day, Boruff ’s deputy, Lt. Harold Keith, becamethe second head of Theatre Unit, CI&E. Like Boruff, Keith had beena professional actor in New York and like Boruff he became deeplyinterested in Japanese theatre, attending almost all the major produc-tions while he was in Tokyo from November 1945 to June–July 1946.He was a devotee of ballet, and his wife was a professional ballet dancerin New York. After demobilization, he became a television producerand director in New York (Interviews with Edward Kaneshima, Decem-ber 4, 2001; and Onoe Kuroemon, June 30, 2000). He was especiallycommitted to, and interested in, modern drama in Japan. KawatakeShigetoshi tells us that on Keith’s first day as Theatre Unit head, Jan-uary 11, 1946, he summoned several Shöchiku staff members to hisoffice, where he scolded them for doing only old feudal plays. In thefuture kabuki programs must contain 50 percent new plays, Keith said,warning that if this were not done all kabuki would be forbidden.Boruff was present but, since he was no longer attached to SCAP, hedid not speak. The Japanese sat silent and stony-faced. When Keithfinished, Shöchiku board director Wakiya Mitsunobu, SCAP liaisonYoshida Matsuji, and three minor members of the playwriting staff

50 Brandon

rose and left without saying a word (Kawatake Toshio 1995: 216–217).There was nothing they could say.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to decipher Keith’s inten-tions. As far as I can discover, Keith did not write about the meetingin any report.89 Was he flaunting his new title as head of the TheatreUnit? Was he showing respect for the ideas of his former boss, who waspresent in the room? I cannot believe Keith thought Shöchiku wouldheed his scolding. He had seen Shöchiku producers successfully resistBoruff ’s earlier advice to do 30 percent new plays. He had seen Borufffail to issue the list of banned plays. Keith knew that CI&E had noauthority to stop a performance and certainly he, Keith, could not bankabuki.

Japanese commentators consistently say that Keith’s words her-alded a time of stricter censorship by SCAP and poorer relations withShöchiku. Okamoto writes harshly of Keith, “From now, Keith, theCI&E official responsible for censorship, adopted an aggressive atti-tude toward Shöchiku” (1998: 247). Most recently, Nagayama dubbedhim “hardnosed Keith” who “worsened the situation” (2005: 339). Oras Kawatake Toshio put it: “the Buddha Boruff was replaced by theDevil Keith” (1995: 216).90 Certainly the statement attributed to Keithwas harsh, but the new Theatre Unit head was in no position to carryout a program of kabuki reform. With Boruff gone, Ernst in CCDasserted undisputed control over kabuki: Ernst was “the czar of kabuki.”And, as we will see, Ernst, who had a strong if irascible personality,began to relax censorship of kabuki. Ernst worked for a year with hisassistants, Palestin, Goldstein, Calhoun, and, somewhat later, Bowers,to achieve this aim.

I believe that Keith’s hastily called meeting did not represent anew direction; rather it signaled the end of CI&E’s failed policy toencourage new democratic kabuki plays. We can note, first of all, thatKeith’s pronouncement, although it appears to have been severe andunpleasant, had no consequence within SCAP. Keith attached littleimportance to the meeting: he did not mention it in his weekly activi-ties report and there is no follow-up to his words. I have searched CI&E(and CCD) files and have found no reference anywhere to “50 percentmodern plays.” It is as if Keith’s meeting and his announcement neveroccurred. But Kawatake Shigetoshi’s report cannot be doubted. Fromthis, I believe that Keith made the “50 percent” remark, but he did notexpect anything to come of it.

During the six months that Keith was Theatre Unit head, hedevoted most of his attention to shingeki artists, whom he encouragedto do liberal, democratic plays.91 Keith “advised” appropriate themes

MY TH AND REALITY 51

and “guided” the writing and revision of new play scripts. In short,CI&E was a powerful controlling agency over newly written plays.92

But Keith did not concern himself with kabuki scripts that were alreadywritten. He liked to scribble notes on traditional kabuki scripts thatShöchiku continued submitting, as a formality, to CI&E: “CCD saysOK” and “CCD’s baby.” And he wrote a long comment on the first pageof the script for Ryokan and a Nurse Maid by Tsubouchi Shöyö, per-formed by Kikugorö at the Tokyo Gekijö in May 1946: “What Kikugorocalls ‘modern’ not really such—Also his hara-kiri business is bad (CCDwill get it, though, being an old play)—Keith” (CI&E play scripts, Box5286, 5299). Clearly these are personal reactions ( jotted down anddropped in a file) and not censorship actions. Ernst regretted CI&E’sdisconnect from kabuki affairs, complaining in 1947 about the lack ofnew kabuki scripts since Boruff ’s departure: “For a year there has beenno one in the CIE Theatrical Section who has had any interest or com-petence in this matter [of guiding kabuki]” (“Memorandum to: AKM,RHK, J JC,” February 26, 1947, E.E., Box 8618). Whatever Keith’sintentions were when he demanded 50 percent new plays on January11, his comments left Shöchiku officials shaken to the core and in adeep quandary. CI&E “advice” to do more new scripts struck a blowagainst Shöchiku’s basic policy of preserving the traditional repertory.And from the other side, CCD censors in Tokyo had banned within amonth’s time three traditional favorites: Broken Dish, Village School, andSubscription List. Ernst’s policy of examining each play on its merits,while fair and reasonable, was also profoundly unsettling to Shöchiku.It left the door open to frightening vagaries of foreign opinion thatcould only harm kabuki. Even if Shöchiku proposed only plays takenfrom CCD’s “good” list, Ernst and his assistants might still disapprovea script on the grounds that it was somehow feudal or militaristic(which the censors did on at least three occasions).93 As a cushionagainst possible rejection, Shöchiku commonly submitted for censor-ship more scripts than it intended to produce (Priest Kochiyama hasbeen mentioned).

Shöchiku’s Pique: We Won’t Do Kabuki Plays AnymoreSpooked by these unexpected Occupation moves, Shöchiku

executives seem to have panicked, and they appeared poised to takean unprecedented step that horrified kabuki’s fans. On January 20,1946, ten days after Keith’s warning, headlines in two daily newspapersannounced the demise of kabuki:

“Traditional Kabuki Disappears” “Shöchiku to Stage Only Dance Plays in Future”

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The article in the Mainichi Shinbun explained that an investigation byShöchiku revealed that kabuki history plays, domestic plays, and manyof Kawatake Mokuami’s plays “are tinged with feudal ideology andexert a bad influence on democratization.” Therefore, Shöchiku is vol-untarily withdrawing the repertory and will stage only kabuki dancesand new plays in the future. The second article, in the Tokyo Shinbun,implied that Shöchiku was reexamining the repertory and a plan todrop kabuki was one possible course of action. According to one opin-ion, “Kabuki’s feudalistic plays have no value today except as ‘classics.’”To this day these articles contain elements of mystery. Whose views arebeing quoted? Even if Shöchiku officials were rattled by SCAP actions,they knew that CCD had just approved several hundred plays forkabuki production. It was a strange leap to conclude that kabuki had tobe abandoned.

Takahashi Töshio of Shöchiku’s Theatrical Department elabo-rated in the Tokyo Shinbun article, without exactly offering an explana-tion: “It is true that actors will have difficulty doing modern plays. YetKikugorö specializes in modern plays and Ennosuke and Kichiemonare not unfamiliar with them, so this is not a major worry. The diffi-culty lies in asking veteran playwrights to suddenly change direction.We must encourage young writers to contribute new plays” ( January20, 1946). Two days later, Shöchiku’s deputy chief of the TheatricalDepartment, Satö Tokusaburö, denied that Shöchiku had any plan to“abandon all kabuki plays.” Rather, “We want to stage those kabukiplays that are all right to stage. Even more, we will devote ourselves toenlightening the people through democratic plays.” The Shöchikuemployees’ union was also quoted. The union called for Ötani familymembers and their “puppet officials” to resign for mishandling kabukiand demanded union participation in deciding the appropriate post-war kabuki repertory (Asahi Shinbun, January 22, 1946).

The next day, as the storm of protest and concern reached a cli-max, Shöchiku clarified its position, seeming to accept CI&E’s harsh-est demands: “We will not stop producing kabuki plays. From now on,we will stage kabuki programs consisting of 50 percent existing playsthat are suitable, including recent kabuki plays, and for the remaining50 percent we intend to stage modern dramas that oppose militaristideas and break down feudal ideology” (Asahi Shinbun, January 23,1946). That is, half of the plays will be entertainment taken from thelist of “good” kabuki and new-history titles, and half will be new, seri-ous plays that carry useful messages about contemporary society.Keith’s demand for 50 percent new plays was being acknowledged, atleast rhetorically.

The same day, Kawajiri Seitan, veteran Shöchiku playwright,

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member of the Investigation Committee, and participant in the Decem-ber meetings with CI&E and CCD, discoursed on the plays in the tra-ditional repertory that could still be performed and those that “shouldbe set aside.” Kabuki was a great art and it would be a tragedy if Shö-chiku ceased performing traditional kabuki. The noted communist shin-geki director Hijikata Yoshi expressed a radically different opinion inthe same article: “The responsibility for this situation lies with monop-oly capitalism that has entered even the feudalistic world of kabuki. Gov-ernment authorities are also responsible, for they have left undisturbedthe feudal ideology that has been cultivated for centuries” (MainichiShinbun, January 23, 1946). Or, some wondered, was closing downkabuki a smokescreen for a larger Shöchiku plan to turn its major legit-imate theatres—the Tokyo Gekijö and Högaku-za—into movie housesto increase profits?

Lurking within this jumble of conflicting messages was theimplication that SCAP was pressuring Shöchiku to abandon kabuki. Aninternal CCD memo, almost certainly written by Ernst, dismissed Shö-chiku’s original statement as a hollow threat:

Shochiku’s “Theatrical Art Advisory Board” [Performing Arts andCulture Investigation Committee] consists of some of the foremostJapanese authorities on Kabuki; Shochiku has continued to produceKabuki; in view of these circumstances it is unlikely that Shochikuwould be remotely interested in banning Kabuki.” (Memorandum,“Subject: Statement by Major F. Bowers Concerning Kabuki,” Febru-ary 19, 1946, Box 8618)

Passive-aggressive resistance to SCAP, and more than a little pique, canbe read into Shöchiku’s statements. Shöchiku could easily have con-tinued kabuki within the repertory of several hundred CCD-approvedplays and dance pieces. Why did Shöchiku’s Satö Tokusaburö say, “Wewill focus only on modern dramas appropriate to the age,” when CI&Ehad never asked kabuki to go that far? Perhaps by threatening to closekabuki completely, Shöchiku was raising the stakes and challengingSCAP. Perhaps this was Shöchiku’s attempt to imply to the public thatSCAP was killing kabuki (censorship did not permit direct criticism ofSCAP). Or was Shöchiku using the “democratic trend in theatre” tocamouflage its decision to dissolve kabuki for economic reasons? Asyet, kabuki was barely profitable for Shöchiku. This moment marked alow point for kabuki under the Occupation.94

SCAP officials understood that they were being criticized andimmediately made a public counterattack. On January 22, two daysafter the first Tokyo Shinbun article appeared, a CI&E press spokesman,Captain John Henderson, released a statement (mentioned earlier)

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denying SCAP involvement. This is the complete text that Hendersonread to Japanese reporters that morning:

Kabuki plays have not been banned by CI&E. Few were found objec-tionable by CCD. The Shochiku press release that all Kabuki plays havebeen banned except a few dance Kabukis [sic] is erroneous. The storyis this: Shochiku came to CCD and CI&E originally to ascertain the sta-tus of Kabuki. They were asked to bring in their own opinion of theirKabuki library under two listings—“good” from a democratic point ofview and “undesirable.” There followed a three-way conference, con-suming 16 hours, attended by Shochiku, CCD and CI&E, in which thelistings were revised. The result was an increase of substantial pro-portions in the number considered as good. The final count was: 196good; 322 not.95 Shochiku then voluntarily decided to withhold thelatter. GHQ wishes no art form to be killed, but GHQ is, of course,encouraged when the tendency of the Japanese theater is to presentdemocratic material. (PPB Division, “Memorandum for Record,” Jan-uary 23, 1946, Box 8618)

The SCAP statement was published the following day in the AsahiShinbun and the Mainichi Shinbun. Keith, who took credit for draftingthe announcement, was disingenuous in protesting that “GHQ wishesno art form to be killed,” when he was the person who had threatenedto end kabuki (“Weekly Report, Theatre, Lt. Keith,” January 26, 1946,Box 5116).

In February, Ötani Takejirö ended the debate when he made acomprehensive and authoritative statement of Shöchiku’s intentionstoward kabuki:

From today’s standpoint, I know it is not enough to stage only kabukiclassics. The original meaning of “kabuki” was modern play and arepertory limited to classics cannot be called kabuki. Henceforth, Iwant Shöchiku to stage half traditional kabuki or new works in thebeautiful style of kabuki, and half modern plays or shingeki. [. . .] Justas theatrical culture is useful to construct a new Japan, I want to pre-serve for eternity the good aspects of kabuki that are unique to ournation. [. . .] Elements of great beauty exist in a number of kabukiplays that have unsuitable content. We need to weave kabuki’s beautyof technique into plays that have suitable content. This is one way Ibelieve kabuki can be preserved. Also, some unsuitable plays can begiven splendid new life by deleting or rewriting one part [and] a clas-sic play can be restructured while maintaining just its original spirit.[. . .] It is natural for new forms to appear on the stage [. . .] and so Iswear an oath that while Shöchiku will absolutely not abandon kabuki,it will exert every effort to help kabuki actors create new styles of act-

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ing, unsoiled by old forms (kata), when they set their hands to actingin new, modern plays. (1946: 23)

Keith and Ernst certainly would have been overjoyed to read this mul-tifaceted plan to create new kabuki plays and new kabuki acting kata,“unsoiled by old forms.” (As far as I know, they did not see Ötani’sarticle.)

Writers on kabuki censorship unanimously ridicule the “advice”of Boruff and Keith to do 50 percent new plays. Okamoto says this was“too heavy a burden to carry” and audiences would not be interestedin such modern plays (1998: 220). Ernst wrote, in a memorablephrase, that this was like requiring a concert pianist to “play Chopstickson his program as an antidote to the classicism of Bach” (1956: 267).But concert pianists commonly balance classics and new works in theirprograms and, as Ötani had just written, kabuki without new plays isnot kabuki.

Why was it not possible for kabuki producers to stage one, two,or even three new plays in a program of six plays? When Ötanipledged that Shöchiku would do exactly that, he was speaking fromexperience, having shepherded new scripts onto kabuki stages fordecades. Under Ötani’s direction in 1940, for example, the Kabuki-zahad specifically appealed to authors: “write new kabuki scripts thatare appropriate” to the nation’s wartime needs (Kabuki-za 1940: 31).When Boruff “advised” 30 percent new kabuki plays, Engekikai editori-ally agreed, citing reasons similar to those given by Ötani: “The wordkabuki means new drama. [. . .] Danjürö [IX] and Kikugorö [V] pre-miered new plays one after the other, garnering praise and creatingexcellent productions. Kabuki actors cannot be permitted to ossifykabuki into a classic art. We must exert all our efforts to fostering newdevelopments in the present situation” ( January 1946: 25). And in Feb-ruary, an unsigned editorial in Engekiki expressed dismay at Shöchi-ku’s stubborn reluctance to adapt to Japan’s vastly changed circum-stances: “Since the war ended, producers and acting troupes both haveshown no readiness for the new, but rather they continue with the oldattitudes of the past. [. . .] Even the “new” play, New Year Calendar, aboutTokugawa-period merchants, contains no contemporary roles (Engeki-kai, February, 1946: 1).

American theatre officials in CCD wrote that they knew that “Alarge part of kabuki [. . .] was originally a commentary on the hap-penings of the day.” They knew that Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s lovers’suicide plays in the eighteenth century and Tsuruya Nanboku’s raw-domestic plays (kizewamono) of the nineteenth century about thievesand murderers were dramatizations of current events (Ernst [with

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Bowers] 1947: 10). The Americans did not know that Osanai Kaoru’sfive-act play, Mussolini, had run with great success at the Meiji-za in1928 with kabuki actor Ichikawa Sadanji II playing Il Duce with gustoand swagger (Nagayama 1996: 578; Osanai 1928).

Ötani Takejirö and Shöchiku producers knew it was a common-place for kabuki actors to perform contemporary plays. In 1932, OnoeKikugorö VI, Ichimura Uzaemon XV, and Bandö Hikosaburö VI playedJapanese army privates who, just weeks before the play opened, gavetheir lives fighting in China. Throughout the war, kabuki plays aboutcurrent events, called kiwamono, or “seasonal goods,” fulfilled the func-tion of today’s docudramas on TV. The Last Hours of Commander Kanö(1937), Regimental Flag (1939), Pearl Harbor (1942), and scores of otherkabuki plays dramatized contemporary war scenes between 1931 and1944 (Nagayama 1993: 374–585; Tanaka 1964: 137–163). The entirehistory of kabuki tells us that if postwar playwrights had written kiwa-

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Figure 13. Kabuki stars (from left) Ichimura Uzaemon XV, Onoe KikugoröVI, and Bandö Hikosaburö VI (Kikugorö’s younger brother) play threeenlisted men who died leading a suicide charge on the China front in Feb-ruary 1932. The play, Matsui Shöö’s Three Glorious Human Bombs, opened twoweeks later at the Kabuki-za, as part of the March program. New plays aboutcontemporary events were commonly performed throughout kabuki’s historydown to the end of World War II. (Photo: Courtesy of Tsubouchi MemorialTheatre Museum, Waseda University)

mono plays set in 1946 for kabuki actors, it would have been as unre-markable as drinking a cup of green tea.

What was the result of Ötani’s promise? To begin with, nothinghappened for three months because Shöchiku did not stage any kabukiin Tokyo during February, March, and April 1946. Had Keith madeproducers gun-shy? The next Shöchiku kabuki program in the city wasin May at the Tokyo Gekijö. The two-part program containing one pre-mier, two shin-kabuki, and three traditional plays, including Sukerokuand Benten the Thief, would seem to fulfill CI&E’s expectations. How-ever, none of the scripts confronted contemporary issues, promptingan unnamed editorial writer in Engekikai to chide producers for cre-ating a luxurious, festival-like all-star kabuki program in which “thepledge to stage 50 percent modern plays appears to be forgotten”(Engekikai, March 1946: 1).

One of the stars at the Tokyo Gekijö in May was NakamuraKichiemon I, famous for his grave portrayals of Kumagai, Moritsuna,and Yüranosuke, great historical roles popularly considered “banned”at that time. An article under Kichiemon’s name in the theatre pro-gram addresses problems posed by American censorship more directlythan any other writing of that time. Kichiemon advises a strategy of“moderation” in support of the traditional repertory until, in time, clas-sic plays would be allowed. More conservative than Ötani, he is againstrevising the classics to avoid censorship. The article is exceptionalbecause SCAP strictly forbid public discussion of censorship:

Looking at the present and the future, I believe kabuki drama mustproceed correctly, calmly, peacefully, and with enjoyment. So, weshould not overly cling to the old or force the new. If it seems that aplay will be forbidden (kinshi), let’s say because it openly displays feu-dal ideology (höken shisö) or is militaristic (gunkoku shügiteki), isn’t itbetter to not do the play at this time, rather than shoehorn it onstageusing twisted rationalizations? [. . .]

Since the inner nature of kabuki drama is not easy to fathom,even for us who have lived within kabuki since childhood, [American]control (torishimari) of kabuki play production poses problems. I thinkit will be difficult for producers to gauge immediately if a play will beapproved (kyoka) or banned (kinshi). [. . .] At such times, we should notthink, “I’ll rewrite the play just a little to be acceptable.” I think weshould stage kabuki in a true, honest, and thoughtful manner that willnot cause us shame in retrospect.

If kabuki plays could just be comprehended, everyone [Amer-icans] would understand that none are so bad they must be forbidden(kinshi). Also, the more plays you [Americans] see, the more often youwill say, “Ah, this one is good. That one is good.” In new plays, the-matic content is a major concern. But that is not the case with a tradi-

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tional kabuki play. We do not ask about a play’s ideology. We ask: is itbeautiful? Is it interesting? Is it enjoyable? If kabuki plays are judgedonly on the basis of content, certainly some will pose difficulties.

Kichiemon continues with the well-worn argument that when a kabukiplay is seen onstage, kabuki’s gorgeous conventionalized beautyremains in the mind’s eye, not the play’s ideological content: “Thatbeing the case, I feel opportunities to perform the old kabuki classicswill gradually increase, not this year, but next year and the year after”(Nakamura 1946: 7). Kichiemon did not have to wait two or threeyears: the following month he was able to play in The Subscription List,one of the most treasured plays of feudal loyalty, because of the under-standing of the Americans Ernst, Bowers, and Palestin.

Kichiemon avoided new plays out of personal preference, butÖtani could not afford to be so particular. How sincere was Ötani whenhe promised to promote modern kiwamono in kabuki? The eight-playprogram Shöchiku producers arranged for Kichiemon at the Minami-za in Kyoto in November 1946 is not untypical of Shöchiku’s efforts atthat time (Nagayama 1996: 105). All the plays are traditional; not oneis modern. And five of the plays on the program were judged by Shö-chiku’s own Investigation Committee to be excessively feudal andtherefore “not possible” for performance! A year later, for the Arts Fes-tival at the Tokyo Gekijö, Shöchiku producers chose four disapprovedplays for Kichiemon and Ennosuke to perform—Strife in the Date Clan,The Swordsmith Kokaji, Moritsuna’s Battle Camp, and Twenty-four Paragonsof Filial Piety—on a program of six plays (Nagayama 1996: 679–680).Or let us look two years ahead. On March 15, 1948, Willard Thomp-son, the fourth head of Theatre Unit, CI&E, summoned Ötani Take-jirö and nine members of the Shöchiku Board of Directors to his officein order to criticize the company’s “classics only” policy: “In the pasteight months, Shochiku has, with only one exception, produced noth-ing but Kabuki and classic drama. They have made no contribution tothe democratization of the country. They are not supporting one con-temporary playwright” (Memorandum, March 15, 1948, W. L. Thomp-son, Box 5305).97 Ten days later an exasperated Thompson visited Pres-ident Ötani’s office, sputtering about the “nine Kabuki productions inthe nine Shochiku theatres” that month. Ötani reiterated that “foster-ing and preserving [traditional] Kabuki” was Shöchiku’s unwaveringpolicy, but added as a sop, “The matter will be further studied” (“Pro-duction of American Plays,” March 25, 1948, W. L. Thompson, Box5305).98

A few days following this meeting, eight sons of kabuki starsvisited Thompson to plead for his help. “They desire,” Thompson

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reported, “To perform in Kabuki plays with modern themes” butbecause they lack good modern kabuki scripts, “They have been per-forming in classics instead.”99 And that November, the manager ofShöchiku’s Tokyo Gekijö, Saitö Tetsuo, visited Thompson to complainthat “Mr. Otani, pres. of Shochiku, is contemplating a second produc-tion of Chushingura at the Tokyo theater in February” and requestedthat “CIE recommend that this classic not be produced in the light ofthe amount of criticism leveled at Shochiku Co. and the Tokyo The-ater for its presentation last year.” Thompson wrote of Saitö: “He hasrepeatedly endeavored to supplement Kabuki plays with modern playsbut has been opposed by the president, Mr. Otani” (Memorandum,“Chushingura [The Faithful Retainers],” November 25, 1948, W. L.Thompson, Box 5305).

Shöchiku’s resistance to doing new plays in kabuki was based onsome legitimate concerns. Perhaps most important was presidentÖtani’s unwavering belief that Shöchiku bore a heavy responsibility topreserve kabuki’s traditional repertory without change. The old playswere expensive to stage, but they had a steady, devoted audience. Mostkabuki productions at least broke even at the box office (whereas mod-ern plays invariably lost money). It was easy for the Americans to say,“Do new plays,” but Shöchiku’s executives were concerned with whatwould draw a postwar audience. Orita Köji, chief kabuki producer atthe National Theatre of Japan, looks back on that period from a prac-tical perspective:

Why did kiwamono stop after the war? There are many reasons. Kiku-gorö, Köshirö, Kichiemon, and Baigyoku were too old to try new plays.There wasn’t much financial incentive for playwrights to try some-thing new: payment for a script was small and the magazines that hadpaid writers well for new plays in the 1920s and 1930s were gone. Also,young writers didn’t know kabuki music or acting, so they couldn’twrite appropriate texts. We need a National Training School for kabukiplaywrights, not actors, as we have now. And it wasn’t pleasant for audi-ences to see their miserable lives reflected on stage. (Interview withOrita Köji, December 17, 2003)

Shöchiku and Töhö also complained that the government’s 150–200percent theatre tax might well kill kabuki. They claimed their theatricalproductions lost sixty million yen during the first half of 1948 (Memo,“Theater Admission Tax,” October 12, 1948, E. M. Kaneshima, Box5305).100 All in all, it was sound cultural policy to stick with the oldkabuki repertory, and probably it was more profitable as well. Shöchikuproducers had little motivation, other than SCAP pressure, which in

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the end was not great, to experiment with unknown and probablyunprofitable modern kabuki plays.

Shöchiku’s Repertory of ResistanceWe have looked briefly at the conflicting aims of Japanese pro-

ducers and SCAP theatre officers regarding kabuki. I would now liketo look at what kabuki plays were actually staged early in the Occupa-tion. It is difficult to determine what selection process producers fol-lowed because such information is not made public. As Onoe Kuroe-mon, son of the late Kikugorö VI, told me, “Even I didn’t know whochose the plays. Sometimes my father did. Usually it was Ötani Take-jirö” (Interview with Onoe Kuroemon, June 20, 2000). But overall wecan identify two general directions. First, Shöchiku chose, and askedCCD to approve, as many traditional kabuki plays as possible. All writ-ers on occupation censorship have assumed that if a title was on the dis-approved list, the play was not performed. But when we examine theplay choices make by Shöchiku producers, we find that this assump-tion is wrong. Shöchiku producers staged plays that were on CCD’s dis-approved list almost from the time the list was made. They also stagedplays not on the list at all. This policy was not perverse from Shöchi-ku’s point of view but followed president Ötani’s overall strategy ofmaintaining kabuki as a unique repository of national culture throughthe chaos of the postwar years (Kidö and Wakiya 1951: 322–323). Shö-chiku’s deliberate choice of plays that were disapproved by SCAP is aniconic case of cultural resistance to an occupying army. And, second,Shöchiku staged a number of new kabuki plays, mostly dances per-formed in traditional style, in token compliance with CI&E’s expecta-tions. This is not what SCAP officials expected. Boruff warned Condethat producers were certain to learn CI&E was essentially powerlessand his influence would suffer: “As they begin to untangle the pictureof this department in their own minds, they will give less and less atten-tion to my advice. The producers are inclined to go their own way asfar as it is in their power to do so. Their way is not ours” (“CR: 31 Octo-ber 1945,” Box 5255). And that seems to have happened.

CCD censors had scarcely finished the final list of approvedand disapproved plays when Shöchiku began submitting disapprovedscripts to CCD for approval. In 1946, during the first full year of CCDcensorship, Shöchiku staged approximately 165 kabuki productionsat its major theatres. Some fifty-five productions were of plays on theCCD’s approved list, or about one in three. The largest number ofproductions, about seventy, was of titles not on the list at all.101 Sometwenty premiers of new plays were offered that year, one-eighth, rather

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than the one-third or one-half, ratio that CI&E had “advised.” Five ofthese new works were set in twentieth-century Japan or presented con-temporary interpretations of history, pleasing Americans alert to demo-cratic or liberal themes in kabuki.102 Finally, I was amazed to find thatduring the first year of censorship, Shöchiku submitted fourteen dis-approved titles for twenty-four productions and that CCD passed thesetaboo titles on twenty-one occasions and rejected them only threetimes.103 In other words, from the beginning, Shöchiku resisted Amer-ican cultural policy, challenging it time after time, and almost alwaysprevailed. After all the shouting and gnashing of teeth over “the list ofbanned plays,” Shöchiku was allowed to stage plays on the disapprovedlist nearly two dozen times during in the first year of censorship.(Almost all of this occurred before Faubion Bowers became a theatrecensor.)

This information was so unexpected that I decided to make arough count of the kabuki titles produced at major theatres in Tokyoand Kansai during the full censorship period, November 1945 toNovember 1949 (see Komiya 1989 and Nagayama 1996). Although it isdifficult to certify an exact count,104 the overall situation is clear. Ofapproximately 350 kabuki titles staged in those four years, producerschose seventy plays from the approved list, or merely one play in five.Some fifty plays came from the disapproved list, almost as many as fromthe approved list. And half, more than two hundred, were titles theInvestigation Committee did put on the list.105 These figures show asituation that is very different from conventional descriptions of kabukiunder American censorship:

1. Japanese producers suggested doing plays on the disapproved list asearly as late December 1945, just weeks after Shöchiku’s Investiga-tion Committee, CI&E, and CCD made up the list. And producerssuggested disapproved plays without cease throughout the fouryears of censorship.

2. CCD censors did not strictly apply their “anti-feudal” policies. Theybegan to release virulently feudal and militaristic plays from the dis-approved list almost immediately, beginning in January 1946.

3. The majority of plays that producers chose were not on the list.

Taking these three points together, we can see that the list fades in sig-nificance; it is far less important than we thought.

These figures cast strong doubt on the prevailing myth thatkabuki was oppressed by the Occupation. Certainly the CCD ban onsuch important plays as Loyal Retainers was inconvenient, annoying, andfrustrating. Stars such as Kichiemon would have been able to shine infavorite history roles sooner. Audiences might have been larger if all

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plays had been allowed. But kabuki theatres were often sold out in thepostwar years, so this argument is not very persuasive. When the Occu-pation ended, Japanese actors, critics, and especially Shöchiku man-agement complained, often bitterly, about SCAP restrictions on therepertory. In fact, theatre censors treated Shöchiku’s major kabukiproductions more leniently than they did the plays of smaller produc-ers. Overall, CCD censors suppressed 5–10 percent of all play scriptssubmitted to them.106 The overwhelming majority of suppressed scriptswere history plays submitted by small, provincial touring troupes. Tocite a typical example, in 1948, chief theatre censor Faubion Bowersrecommended that a production of Loyal Retainers by a small troupe innorthern Japan should “not be permitted at this time.” Yet Bowers hadchampioned and approved an all-star Shöchiku production of thesame play at the Tokyo Gekijö the previous November.107

If CCD banned four or five plays in a small troupe’s repertory,as sometimes happened, the troupe’s livelihood could be jeopardized.But it is unlikely that Shöchiku was harmed economically by CCD sup-pressions. Their producers had hundreds of other kabuki plays tochoose from. Through the four years of Occupation censorship, CCDapproved approximately 350 kabuki play titles in Tokyo, Osaka, andother major cities, almost all for Shöchiku.

Contrary to the myth that the Occupation period “was the timeof kabuki’s winter” (Asahi Shinbun, February 22, 1986), production ofkabuki plays flourished as never before. According to Nagata Kayano,an average of eighty-three programs of kabuki plays were staged eachyear from 1946 to 1949. This is 60 percent more kabuki programs thanwere produced in the affluent 1980s (average of fifty-three productionsper year, 1985–1988). And it is more than the number staged in theintensely patriotic 1930s (Nagata 1990: 32–33). In early 1948, Shöchikutheatres were showing six to eight kabuki programs simultaneously, oras many as thirty kabuki plays a month. Thompson had reason to com-plain that Shöchiku produced nothing but kabuki plays (“Productionof American Plays,” March 25, 1948, W. L. Thompson, Box 5305).

Most writers note that audiences were hungry for entertainmentafter years of wartime sacrifice and hardship. Today kabuki must com-pete with television, computer games, professional sports, internationaltravel, and a host of other entertainments for audience attention. Thevast difference between the perception that kabuki was in danger dur-ing the censorship years and the actuality that kabuki was widely per-formed can be reasonably explained. Japanese civilians had sufferedterribly during the war and life in the first postwar years was grim. Ontop of that, a foreign army was occupying the nation, and the require-ments of SCAP were numerous and onerous. Bombed theatres had to

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be repaired at great cost, destroyed costumes and scenery replaced,troupes reorganized, and young artists supported. And then there wasravaging inflation: a first-class ticket at the Tokyo Gekijö cost three yenin late 1945, six yen in early 1946, fifty-five yen in 1947, and 350 yen inlate 1949 (plus 150–200 percent admission tax). It is not strange thatlovers of kabuki would feel that kabuki, too, was oppressed by Japan’sdefeat and the American Occupation. It can be argued that postwarpoverty, near starvation, sundered families, and the loss of self-esteemwere powerful motivations for audience members to relish the nobleimages of Japan’s glorious past that Grand Kabuki served to the publicso well. Perhaps it is paradoxical, but during the Occupation years asuccession of brilliant kabuki productions exploded from the hell ofJapan’s material devastation.

Five Men Who Saved KabukiPerhaps the most persistent myth about Occupation censorship

of kabuki is that one SCAP official, Faubion Bowers, single-handedlysaved kabuki from American oppression by releasing disapprovedscripts for production (Kawatake Shigetoshi 1964; Kawatake Toshio1995; Okamoto 2001; Onoe et al. 1993). The myth contains a gooddeal of truth. Major (later WDC) Bowers was enamored of traditionalkabuki (and more enamored of kabuki actors). He arranged free kabukiperformances to introduce this great art to Occupation troops as partof a propaganda campaign within SCAP on kabuki’s behalf. Despisingcensorship on principle, he urged Ernst and other Tokyo censors toapprove important titles for production. His main motive to join CCDas a theatre censor in late 1946 was to release withheld masterpiecessuch as Loyal Retainers. But Bowers was not the only person amongOccupation personnel to help kabuki, nor was he the first. Here lies anuntold story that solidly rests on fact.

According to Bowers, the first disapproved kabuki title hereleased was Revenge on Öshü Plain, March 1947 (Okamoto 2001: 96).108

Yet before this date, on thirty occasions four other CCD theatre cen-sors—Earle Ernst and Seymour Palestin in Tokyo and Royall Zucker-man and John Allyn Jr. in Osaka—released disapproved kabuki titles.The facts are easily verified by examining production chronologiesand censored scripts in Shöchiku files, yet their efforts are never men-tioned in Japanese articles, interviews, or panel discussions devoted toOccupation censorship. With the rare exception, Bowers receives (andtakes) credit for all SCAP interventions on behalf of kabuki.109

Let us look for a moment at some of the plays censors releasedbefore Bowers, that is, between January 1946 and March 1947. InOsaka, Zuckerman released Genta’s Disinheritance and Love Suicides at

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Mount Toribe for a January 1946 production just weeks after the list hadbeen put together. Together, Zuckerman and Allyn in Osaka passednineteen productions of disapproved scripts prior to March 1947,including Battle at River Island in Shinshü, Mountain Hag with Child,Osaka Spring Rain, Pulling the Carriage Apart, Töfü of Ono, Yoshida Palace,and Echoing Pools in the Hatchö River.

In Tokyo the first disapproved play to be released by censors wasThe Subscription List.110 Credit for the play’s release can be apportionedamong several people. First of all, Seymour Palestin was the censorwho formally released the play for production at the Tokyo Gekijö inJune and a special showing for Occupation personnel in July. His per-sonal three-character seal (hanko) is stamped on the cover of the playscript along with the date, “3 May 46” (see script in Shöchiku ÖtaniLibrary).111 On several occasions, Ernst has assumed responsibility, andcredit, for releasing Subscription List. At the very least, this first releaseof an important feudal play in Tokyo would require the approval ofTheatre Sub-Section’s chief censor, Ernst (Ernst letter to Inose Naoki,February 3, 1987, Stanley Y. Kaizawa Collection, Hamilton Library, Uni-versity of Hawai‘i).

Donald Richie, then a corporal in the Occupation army, beatthe drums for kabuki by writing full-page spreads on current produc-tions for Sunday issues of the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes. Richierecalls Ernst telling him the circumstances in which the play’s releasewas accomplished:

The Subscription List was the play I worked hardest to release. It wasvery hard to get the military to do anything. The Occupation found awhipping boy in kabuki because it was based on feudalism. The mili-tary didn’t want to change. The only way to liberate kabuki was to doit very slowly, play by play. You had to prepare the ground. (Interviewwith Donald Richie, July 7, 2000)

Bowers gives himself credit on the grounds that, over time, he was ableto persuade Ernst to give up his opposition to the play (Okamoto2001: 82). As late as March 1946, Ernst was not ready to approve theplay: “Although censorship realizes the artistic value of the play, wewould, if the script were submitted for censorship, probably disap-prove it on the basis of a previous viewing of motion picture [and] aprevious reading of the script” (Check sheet, Pictorial to Chief, PPB,“Kabuki Plays,” March 23, 1946, KC, Box 8618). By May, Ernst hadchanged his mind. A fourth person, Onoe Baikö, appears to deservecredit as well. Baikö recalls in his autobiography:

At this time there was a GHQ censor named Ernst. Bowers had beenurging the censor, saying he would like plays like Subscription List to be

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performed. One time, Bowers invited us over and, in front of Ernst,asked me to explain that The Subscription List is not at all a feudalisticplay; it is a drama of humanism. I was introduced to Ernst, gave himjust such an explanation, and Subscription List was approved. (Onoe1979: 89)

In the same period, Ernst examined and passed eight disap-proved kabuki scripts that Shöchiku submitted to CCD, including Ichi-notani, Shunkan, Pulling the Carriage Apart, Moritsuna’s Battle Camp, TheGolden Temple, and Confrontation of the Soga Brothers. Ernst and Bowerswrote a joint memo that released Sugawara, including the Village Schoolscene, for a May 1947 performance at the Tokyo Gekijö (Memorandumfor Record, “Approval of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami,” April 15,1947, EE/FB, Box 8618). Regarding the release of Ichinotani, Bowerstells contradictory stories. He believes he persuaded Ernst to releaseIchinotani, and also that his urgings were to no avail: “Ernst would notsay kabuki was OK” (Okamoto 1998: 266, 248).112 Ernst was a confidentperson who held strong opinions. It is simplistic to believe that Bow-ers, a bystander with no standing in censorship, caused Ernst to releasebanned plays. Ernst was unquestionably his own man when deciding acourse of action to be taken.

Others players, too, were involved. Director-critic Tobe Ginsakutells a fascinating story of how kabuki scholar Komiya Toyotaka negoti-ated with Ernst to release Ichinotani in the summer of 1946. The ArtsFestival Committee of the Education Ministry, of which Komiya was amember, selected Nakamura Kichiemon’s October Tokyo Gekijö kabukiprogram for inclusion in Japan’s first postwar Arts Festival (geijutsusai).Komiya was adamant that this important cultural event should show-case Kichiemon in one of his great roles, General Kumagai in Ichino-tani. However, as Tobe says:

At that time, The Battle of Ichinotani was one of GHQ’s disapprovedplays so Shöchiku had no choice but to substitute [. . .] an unsuitablealternate play. Komiya Toyotaka, a great fan of Kichiemon, negotiatedwith GHQ from his position as a committee member. He insisted onIchinotani. Finally, on condition that Ichinotani was “limited to this oneproduction,” this “undesirable kabuki play” was approved for produc-tion. (Tobe 1995: 94)113

And, after a year and a half of a remarkably peaceful Occupa-tion, the general atmosphere within SCAP had changed. As early asmid 1946, Civil Intelligence Section (CIS) commanding officer Brig-adier General Eliot R. Thorpe, to whom CCD reported, agreed thatcensorship could be relaxed: “We found things were going so well we

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could let down the barriers a bit” (Thorpe 1969: 218). Newspapers,magazines, and radio were gradually transferred to post-censorship.When Bowers followed Ernst as chief theatre censor in spring 1947, therelaxed atmosphere allowed Bowers to release a large number of dis-approved plays without upsetting the commanding generals upstairs.In line with Bowers’ dislike of censorship, he approved all kabuki scriptssubmitted by Shöchiku.

Overall, between January 1946 and May 1948, when Bowers leftJapan, the five mentioned censors approved 140 kabuki productions ofplays on the disapproved list: Allyn 71, Bowers 43, Ernst 17, Zuckerman6, and Palestin 3. These figures shatter the myth that Bowers alonereleased forbidden plays, thereby saving kabuki from disaster. OkamotoShirö’s recent biography of Bowers, excellently translated and adaptedby Samuel L. Leiter, is titled The Man Who Saved Kabuki (2001). Withthis new information in mind, we can more accurately say that Allyn,Bowers, Ernst, Palestin, and Zuckerman were “Five Men Who SavedKabuki.”114

American Censorship PhilosophiesThe two main reasons that American censors gave for releasing

disapproved plays are quite revealing. First, when Ernst approved Ichi-notani on September 26, 1946, he wrote that the play was “feudalisticas all get out [but] I don’t think this performance of the play can doany great harm.” He confidently informed his superiors that he wasacting contrary to CCD regulations:

On this day I approved for production, with some deletion [. . .] oneof the most famous of the Kabuki plays. [. . .] Censorship has reallyraised hell with the Kabuki [. . .]. And so, in a way, we are really stiflingone of the two forms of Japanese theatre which have any artistic valid-ity. I don’t think this is good—you can’t stamp out an established artis-tic form just because it was used as an instrument of propaganda.[. . .] If we were to stick rigidly to our regulations, it would mean, lit-erally, the end of Kabuki. I think it’s better to exercise common senseand permit the Kabuki as much leniency as our consciences willallow.115

This reasoning was similar to Boruff ’s back in October 1945. Ernstinformally summarized his position: “And so we have arrived at a deci-sion something like this—if a play isn’t too damnable (e.g. Chushin-gura), if it is to be performed by the great Kabuki actors, if the fre-quency of performance is controlled by us [. . .] we will permit it to beplayed” (“Memorandum to: AKM, RHK,” September 26, 1946, E.E.,Box 8618).

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Ernst put the issue in more formal terms in his monthly reportof October 11, 1946: “Kabuki plays reflect the feudal world [. . .] andsustain this view of life” but kabuki is also “an established art form,respected by students of theatre throughout the world.” Because it isOccupation policy “to protect all forms of Japanese art, it has seemedwise to allow” performance of even undesirable plays on the basis of“artistic merit” (Box 8586).

In late September 1946, Ernst’s superiors, PPB District I headRichard H. Kunzman and PPB Division head John J. Costello, approvedErnst’s new policy of “Special Permission” based on artistic merit andlimited to major actors (CCD, “Inter-Office District Memo, From RK toJ JC,” September 30, 1946, Box 8618). The door was now open for cen-sors to gradually release additional disapproved plays.116 The TheatreSub-Section explicitly described in April 1947 how the new policy wasbeing applied: “Especial consideration” has been given to four “classicmasterpieces [. . .] which run counter to the [. . .] Theatrical Censor-ship regulations [and were], therefore, suppressed” (PPB, PictorialSection, “Monthly Operations Report,” April 20, 1947, Box 8586).117 Insum, feudalistic kabuki was allowed because it was great art.

During Ernst’s tenure, CCD eliminated almost all censorship ofbunraku puppet plays. Ernst conferred with Allyn in Osaka in lateFebruary 1947 and the two censors agreed that in view of bunraku’s“extremely limited audience,” all plays, with the exception of LoyalRetainers, should be allowed. PPB Division head John J. Costelloapproved the new policy ten days later: henceforth, Shöchiku couldproduce any bunraku play, save one, without asking CCD approval(CCD, District II, “Censorship of Puppet Plays, March 3, 1947, JA[llyn]Jr; and PPB Division to PPB District Censor, Osaka, “Censorship ofPuppet Plays,” March 13, 1947, J.J.C., both Box 8580).

It does not seem to have occurred to anyone, including Ernst,that granting “Special Permission” to kabuki on the basis of art andinfrequency of performance constituted a drastic change in Ernst’soriginal policy, laid out in January 1946, of suppressing the worst playsfor a time so that new, democratic plays would take their place. Ernst’schange in heart was probably influenced by several factors. First, CI&Eand CCD theatre officials had optimistically expected producers to giveup the old feudal plays, and producers had not done so. Looking backon his first year of theatre censorship, Ernst gave his superiors an hon-est and rather discouraging assessment: “The percentage of suppressedplays among professionals remains constant. The fact [is] we are stillsuppressing the same plays we were suppressing a year ago. [. . .] Ifcensorship were abandoned today, tomorrow they would be perform-ing all the plays we have thus far suppressed” (PPBI, December 13,

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1946, Box 8586). Here Ernst is not referring to Grand Kabuki produc-tions in Tokyo or Osaka, but to the hundreds of small, provincial trav-eling troupes that continued to submit “samurai dramas” for approvaland often had them rejected.118

Second, a useful repertory of new, democratic kabuki scriptswas not being created. Most new kabuki scripts (shinsaku) were dancepieces that had new music and new choreography, but used traditionalthemes and settings, or were modern plays written for exceptional jointshinpa-kabuki programs. After attending theatre offerings for a year inTokyo, Ernst complained that so-called “new” plays were “Simply areworking of the most hackneyed formula of the Japanese theatre—that of people meeting after a long separation and discovering whatchanges time has wrought. There is very little in these plays that sug-gests adjustment to a new Japanese society” (PPBI, December 13, 1946,Box 8586). In kabuki there were not even these formulaic “new” plays.And that was the fault of Keith and Kaneshima in the Theatre Unit,CI&E.

And third, Ernst had fallen under the spell of kabuki’s artistry.He had been seeing kabuki productions regularly for nearly a year(perhaps forty or fifty plays), and he was learning about kabuki fromdiscussions with Japanese experts. In the spring and summer of 1946,Bowers hosted several parties at his quarters in the American embassy,where Ernst and other censors mingled informally with kabuki actors.Ernst, Palestin, Calhoun, and Kaizawa began to socialize with Naka-mura Kichiemon, Matsumoto Köshirö, and other actors, occasionallygoing to their homes and more often eating and drinking togetherafter performance. Kaizawa became good friends with Ichikawa Dan-jürö XI, regularly meeting him for drinks and conversation (Interviewswith Stanley Y. Kaizawa, June 20, 2000; and Alexander Calhoun, Octo-ber 5, 2000).

From the start of Ernst’s stay in Tokyo, he was learning toembrace and support the art of kabuki. In January 1946, before he knewBowers, Ernst wrote that kabuki was a great art: “Intellectuals regard itas the most highly developed artistic form of Japanese theatre, whichit undoubtedly is” (Unsigned draft “Answer to Gen. Dyke Memo,” Jan-uary 18, 1946, Box 8618). Stanley Y. Kaizawa observed Ernst’s reactionto kabuki during 1946:

I wouldn’t say that Earle got swayed over by Faub. In a short time, asEarle watched kabuki—he was in control, he was the czar of kabuki—he got intrigued. He and I went to the opening day of each kabuki pro-duction. And he wanted to know more. This is just my conjecture:after Earle saw many kabuki plays, he arrived at the same conclusion as

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Faub, that this was a great theatre, like Shakespeare or Greek drama,with elements of tragedy and of comedy intermixed. (Interview withStanley Y. Kaizawa, June 15, 2000)

By mid 1946, Ernst held a good opinion of kabuki and he knewBowers’ position on kabuki well. When Bowers asked Ernst for a job incensorship in October or November 1946, Ernst hired him as a WarDepartment civilian employee in the Theatre Sub-Section, CCD. Ernstsupervised Bowers’ work for six months, and when Ernst returned tothe University of Hawai‘i in May 1947 he made Bowers his successor aschief theatre censor.

Ernst knew his own mind and he would not have hired Bowersif the two men held different views of kabuki. Alexander Calhounrecalls the time in late 1946 and early 1947 when Bowers first cameinto CCD:

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Figure 14. In mid May 1947, Shöchiku hosted a modest farewell party for1st Lt. Earle Ernst, chief theatre censor, CCD, who was returning to Hawai‘ifor demobilization. Men in the front row, from left: Ernst’s replacement in theTheatre Sub-Section, WDC Faubion Bowers; CCD interpreter Sgt. EdwardWakamiya; 1st Lt. Earle Ernst; and Shöchiku theatre department head Taka-hashi Töshio. Back row, from left: Tokyo Gekijö manager Saitö Tetsuo; personunidentified; and the Shöchiku liaison with SCAP, Yoshida Matsuji. (EarleErnst Papers, University Archives, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i)

Earle and Seymour [Palestin] had gotten deeply interested in GrandKabuki and they were trying to liberalize the presentation of classicslike The Subscription List and The Treasury of Loyal Retainers. I guess Fau-bion was lobbying them, too. But the Occupation was like a great ship:it took a long time to turn it in a new direction. Earle and Faubionwere generally in accord, they were very liberal, and they didn’t seewhy the great plays shouldn’t be done. I remember them talking abouthow to get the plays released. But they couldn’t just go ahead and doit; it contradicted guidelines. They had to lobby their superiors to getapproval on the grounds that the plays were classics, like Macbeth, andkabuki actors were great artists. Earle was an academic, a professor, aspecialist in theatre, so the officers over him would have been inclinedto pay attention to his opinion. (Interview with Alexander Calhoun,October 5, 2000)

Bowers held complex views of censorship. When he releasedShöchiku scripts, he deleted militaristic dialogue and ordered objec-tionable scenes or actions dropped. Even in his favorite play, LoyalRetainers, he required Shöchiku to make extensive script changes: firsthe approved the triumphal vendetta scene, Act XI, and then he sup-pressed it.119 He allowed CI&E to suppress a production of the samu-rai drama Kunisada Chüji as “detrimental to the democratization of theJapanese people” without protest (“Cancellation of the Japanese play‘Kunisada Chüji,’” February 13, 1948, W. L. Thompson, Box 5304).120

And, perhaps to counter his release of feudal materials, he vigorouslyreported to his superiors in CCD violations of the censorship codes,suppressed productions by small provincial troupes, and wrote detailedreports on communist infiltration of theatre.121 But he also believedthat censorship was wrong. On June 26, 1947, shortly after he becamechief theatre censor, he wrote “Censorship of Kabuki: Policy Regula-tions No. 5-408.” If followed literally, kabuki scripts would be free fromany possibility of suppression. The regulation says in part:

To permit preservation and artistic presentation of Kabuki master-pieces [. . .] Performance of kabuki plays [. . .] shall be approved on apre-censorship basis, provided:

a. They are performed in their original and complete form after dele-tion of those passages glorifying the warrior or his code or way oflife.

b. Roles are performed by kabuki artists named in Section II (CCD,“Policy Regulations No. 5-408: Censorship of Kabuki,” June 26,1947, Box 8561).

Bowers had moved only a short step beyond Ernst’s position,and yet this is a remarkable statement of policy. According to it, a

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kabuki play done by the greatest actors could not be suppressed. In theworst case, a censor could delete militaristic passages but then thescript “shall be approved.” The policy reveals Bowers’ strong personallikes and dislikes. Bowers favored full-length plays (töshi) over programsof three or four short scenes (midori), and the new policy gives full-length plays a censorship advantage. He abhorred new kabuki plays—note that the policy applies only to “Kabuki masterpieces.” Bowers hadstrong prejudices regarding kabuki actors, as well. In Section II he listedfive great actors for special treatment: Nakamura Kichiemon, Matsu-moto Köshirö, and Onoe Kikugorö in Tokyo, and Nakamura Baigyokuand Jitsukawa Enjaku in Osaka. Ernst’s “Special Permission” policy ismade formal here: if one of these favored actors appears in any classicplay, it will be approved. Suppression is not an option. However, ifNakamura Ganjirö, Ichikawa Ennosuke, Ichikawa Jukai, or KataokaNizaemon is in the play, to say nothing of younger actors such as Naka-mura Kanzaburö, Nakamura Utaemon, or Morita Kanya, the script willbe “subject to normal theatrical censorship policy.” And of course hun-dreds of small provincial troupes lay totally outside this policy.

Bowers excluded Loyal Retainers from the 1947 policy statementbecause the revenge theme of this play worried the “generals upstairs.”In July, Bowers began a campaign to release the play, his personalfavorite, for one all-star, full-length production at the Tokyo Gekijö inNovember 1947. He laid out his arguments in a carefully reasonedmemo: “A Request for Permission to Authorize a Special Performanceof Chushingura.” Applying some soft-soap, Bowers told his superiorsthe play is safe to do because the Occupation’s “Overall benevolence[. . .] has freed the Japanese [. . .] from any practical desire or reasonfor revenge. [. . .] If we permit Chushingura while censorship is in fullforce, then the performance will be credited to the Occupation’sunderstanding efforts to preserve Japan’s classic arts [and] engenderlasting gratitude toward the Occupation for its understanding censor-ship policies” (PPB District I, Pictorial Section, July 14, 1947, AKM/FB,Box 8618).

The request was approved by PPB District I and PPB Divisionand was passed up the chain of command as far as General Willoughby,assistant chief of staff, G-2, who showed no interest in the matter.122

The production, starring Kikugorö, Kichiemon, Köshirö, and Baigyokufrom Osaka was a tremendous success. As Bowers predicted, it gener-ated much positive publicity in the Japanese press. Santha Rama Rau,who later married Bowers, recalls widespread public elation over theplay: “There was in Japan a deep sense of resentment and humiliationover losing the war and enduring the Occupation. Seeing Chüshingura

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was such a shot in the arm for the Japanese. This was a wonderful thingthat Faubion did” (Interview with Santha Wattles, April 11, 2001).

The hole in the dike led to a flood of other productions. Ignor-ing CCD’s caveat that permission had been granted only for a singleproduction, in 1948 Shöchiku mounted in rapid succession five addi-tional all-day productions of Loyal Retainers: four kabuki versions, withdifferent casts, in Osaka (February), Kyoto (February), Tokyo (May),and Nagoya (September); and the first postwar bunraku production inTokyo in September (Nagayama 1996: index 50–51).

That November, Bowers drafted a policy statement placingTöhö productions on “post-censorship” as a first step in ending the-atre censorship overall. PPB officers rejected the proposal, “Until all[theatre companies] are transferred to post-[censorship]. Otherwiselooks like discrimination” (Draft Memorandum, from PPB district I toPPB Division, November 18, 1947, Box 8618). And so, although sus-pect plays were being released without hindrance, the formal systemwhereby all scripts had to be precensored continued without changefor two more years. In one of Bowers’ last acts as theatre censor, herevised “Policy Regulation 5–408, Censorship of Kabuki” to includeLoyal Retainers: “Performances of the classic Kabuki, Chüshingura [. . .]will be approved in all future submission to censorship, provided itis the version identified as KANADEHON CHUSHINGURA” (CivilCensorship Detachment, “Censorship of Kabuki: Policy RegulationsNo. 5–408,” April 7, 1948, Box 8561).

In 1947, during Bowers’ tenure as head theatre censor, similarlylenient policy regulations were written for amateur productions (May10), bunraku (May 19), solo performance genres (rakugo, ködan, naniwa-bushi, buyö, and chalk talks, or manga, July 1), and nö (December 10).123

All of these forms had been informally exempted, or released, fromcensorship during Ernst’s time as chief theatre censor. Bowers seemsto have decided that formal written policies would perpetuate his visionof noncensorship after he was gone (“Chronological Index of PPBHistory,” probably mid 1948, Box 8561). In mid May 1948, Bowers leftJapan to study theatre in China and India, and eventually marry San-tha Rama Rau.

The next chief theatre censor was WDC Stanley Y. Kaizawa,who continued Bowers’ relaxed policy toward kabuki through 1948.Kaizawa recalls that time:

I had been in the Theatre Sub-Section, CCD, all through Earle’s andFaub’s time and had seen what they approved and disapproved. Faubhad mounted a real campaign with the people upstairs to get Loyal

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Figure 15. Cover of play script with the title, Treasury of LoyalRetainers (Kanadehon chüshingura), in large characters (center)submitted twice to CCD Osaka. This is the “17,327th” script thatCCD, District II, Osaka, “received Jan. 26” and read Jan. 27,1948” by Japanese national examiner “Y. Hayashi” (lower right).Shöchiku submitted script alterations of pages 193, 275, and475 on February 5, 1948 (upper right). Osaka theatre censorTakeo Tada, following the lead of Bowers in Tokyo, approvedthe script: “Special Permission, with deletion. This play is to beperformed at the Minami-za in Kyoto by Jitsukawa Enjaku andhis troupe (Kansai Kabuki), from 1st Feb. to 29th,” signed“T. Tada” and stamped “PC, C.C.D.—610” (center right). Thesame script was resubmitted and reapproved: “This play is tobe performed at the Misono-za, Nagoya, by Bandö Jüzaburöand his troupe (Kansai Daikabuki) from 1st Sept. to 23rd Sept.[1948].” Censorship stamp of approval, “PC, C.C.D. J—2501,”initialed “TT[Tada].” Square stamp, “Approved” (ninka).(Script in Shöchiku Kansai Archives)

Retainers accepted. Faub knew kabuki and I respected that. When Faubleft, I followed his model and did what I thought he would do. I don’tthink I suppressed any script submitted by Shöchiku. (Interview withStanley Y. Kaizawa, February 2, 2002)

Within half a year, Bowers’ strategy of setting down kabuki pol-icy in black-and-white backfired. In January 1949, PPB closed its officesin Osaka and Fukuoka as a budget-reducing measure and centralizedcensorship in Tokyo. The new head of PPB in Tokyo, WDC RobertSpaulding, reviewed policies and operating procedures to see if theywere appropriate to the new situation. Apparently Spaulding had dis-liked Bowers’ policy statement on kabuki at the time it was approved,and now he raised the issue of “bias.” Spaulding circulated drafts of anew policy statement that did away with away special rules and exemp-tions. John Allyn Jr., pictorial censor in Osaka for three years, had justbeen moved to Tokyo to handle theatre censorship for all of Japan.124

In April, he responded to Spaulding’s query about kabuki policy, agree-ing that differential treatment was discriminatory and improper:

The point to granting “Special Permission” to only the “Big Five”troupes was to guarantee a highly artistic performance before reason-ably sophisticated audiences [. . .] Minor and unskilled Kabuki troupesin rural areas were thus prevented from thrilling impressionable audi-ences with blood and thunder antics. But this practice is inherentlyundemocratic, regardless of the basis for or results of the distinction,and would seem therefore incompatible with American occupationpolicy. (Memo to Walter Y. Miyata, Pictorial, April 22, 1949, JAJr, Box8603)

On May 14, 1949, Bowers’ policy regulations covering kabuki,bunraku, nö, kagura, solo performances, and amateur theatre were allrescinded and replaced by a single, master CCD censorship policy thattreated all pictorial media equally. Further, previously approved playscripts were to be reexamined “in detail” in order to “eliminate mate-rial contravening the Pictorial Code for Japan.” This provided a mech-anism to overturn several hundred “Special Permission” approvalsgiven to kabuki scripts from 1946 through 1948 (CCD, “Policy Regula-tions No. 1–15,” “No. 5–400,” “No. 5–402,” and “No. 5–404,” May 14,1949, Box 8656).

Allyn was obliged to tell a dejected Ötani Takejirö that the Ernst-Bowers’ kabuki policy, favoring Shöchiku’s star actors and elaborateurban productions, had been replaced by a new policy of evaluatingall scripts equally. “Mr. Ötani was very upset,” Allyn remembers, “I didnot tell him that despite the policy change I intended to approve all of

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Shöchiku’s kabuki submissions, which I did until censorship ended inNovember” (Interview with John Allyn Jr., October 5, 2000). With someexceptions, Allyn was true to his word.125 In any case, nothing came ofthe changed policy: First, a study was needed to determine the proba-ble effects on the kabuki repertory of stricter censorship. That occu-pied Allyn and his staff through the summer. As the cool days of fallcame to Tokyo, the generals began to consider the termination of cen-sorship and CCD’s dissolution. The treatment of kabuki was put on theback burner, and Allyn and Kaizawa were allowed to continue theirlenient ways.

A second major philosophical issue was whether kabuki’sacknowledged feudal content was “harmful” or innocuous. Bowersstrongly shared the prevailing Japanese view that content is unimpor-tant in kabuki and therefore the plays are harmless. In 1948, halfwaythrough the Occupation period, critic Miyake Shütarö gleefullyexplained, “It’s old-hat to say it, but kabuki is simply beautiful, color-drenched fun. Logically it’s hopeless. Let’s just call it ‘flop-house art’(nagaya geijutsu) or the ‘people’s friend’ (minshü no tomo)” (1951: 12).Occupation officials found an “art for art’s sake” explanation conge-nial to their political beliefs. The Theatre Sub-Section’s 1947 “SpecialReport” made the same point while putting the issue into historicalcontext: “Kabuki plots serve primarily as a springboard for the actor’sart. Ultimately, they carry no practical message. [. . .] Although thetexts may have once had contemporary significance, this has been lostthrough the years” (Ernst [with Bowers] 1947: 11). In this view kabukihas no meaning—it is a classic art without connection to contempo-rary social concerns. Bowers championed this position within SCAP,questioning the sanity of an Occupation policy that censored harmlessplays.

Bowers also held a much more radical philosophic positionregarding kabuki. He sometimes argued that kabuki plays did indeedhave meaning—but the meaning was democratic and anti-feudal. Bow-ers cited well-known evidence for this view: kabuki is a creation of themerchant class; Sukeroku shows a commoner killing an evil samurai; andGenzö’s famous speech in Village School, “To serve your lord is painful,”is an anti-military statement. Bowers also saw anti-militarism in theconclusion of Ichinotani when Kumagai gives up his samurai rank tobecome a monk as atonement for killing his son (Bowers 1960: 41). Ifevidence was tenuous for this view, it was comforting to the Occupiersto see glimpses of democracy in kabuki.

Of course Bowers’ anti-militarist interpretation was not the waymost Japanese saw the play. In 1940, Engei Gahö editors included Ichi-notani in its selection of thirty-two history plays that “Strengthen Japa-

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nese Spirit” in wartime. “A shining hero who served under Yoshitsune,Kumagai Jirö Naozane steeled his heart and struck off Atsumori’s headin the Suma Bay scene, and then he retired from the world. Kumagaicannot be overlooked as an example of a loyal retainer” ( January1940: n.p.).

Was Occupation censorship of kabuki plays then without logicalfoundation, simply an absurdity of the military mind? One section ofthe “Special Report,” unquestionably the words of Ernst, gives luridjustification for suppressing some kabuki plays:

There is a provable relationship between the atrocities committedagainst Allied prisoners of war and identical scenes which appear inJapanese drama. The war criminal who danced about waving hissword, calling it by name as though it were a living being, and thenbeheading several Americans, did not invent this course of action him-self; it was a scene which has hundreds of counterparts in the theatre.[. . .] If such plays are to be prevented from reaching the stage, this canbe done only by Allied censorship. (Ernst [with Bowers] 1947: 18)

That is, there were some plays so imbued with the spirit of Japan’saggressive militarism and so averse to the goals of a democratic societythat it was unthinkable that they should be allowed on stage immedi-ately after the war.

Progressive and leftist shingeki artists tended to support the sup-pression of kabuki. The modern drama director Senda Korya wrotescathingly of kabuki’s feudal nature:

[Kabuki] is totally incompatible with the spirit of the new age. Somepeople defend kabuki saying it is an art of common people of the Toku-gawa period and shows the townsman’s sprit of resistance to feudalsamurai rule [. . .] but such an extremely roundabout form of resis-tance and sentiments from the past have no hope of nourishing oursouls today. Finally, there is absolutely no question that the content ofkabuki drama in its entirety glorifies feudalistic loyalty and the familysystem. [. . .] In kabuki plays human nature does not exist. There is noflow of human feeling. There is no unfolding of the dramatic subject.[. . .] Although kabuki is called feudalistic, in truth it even lacks theability to portray the feudal world. (Senda 1952: 257)126

One did not have to be a leftist like Senda Korya, a communist like Hiji-kata Yoshi, or a righteous American, for that matter, to believe this.Looking back at that time, the contemporary critic Watanabe Tamotsunotes that a “cold wind” in opposition to kabuki was blowing throughpostwar society. Japanese might still have killed Americans, and fearwas high on both sides. In that tense situation, “It was absolutely nat-

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ural to forbid performances of Loyal Retainers” (Kikuchi et al. 2000:98). Even kabuki supporters understood that some restrictions on therepertory were inevitable in the wake of Japan’s defeat.

It required nimble footwork by the censors to move from “Japanas brutal enemy” to a wholesale release of military-feudal kabuki plays.Both Ernst and Bowers adroitly called on a range of arguments andrationalizations, often mutually contradictory, to buttress their deci-sions to treat kabuki more and more leniently. For Bowers especially, itwas part of his tactics of persuasion to shift, chameleon-like, from oneposition to another: anything to get Loyal Retainers and other greatplays on the stage.127

As noted earlier, the task of relaxing kabuki censorship, begunby Allyn and Ernst in 1946, was made easier by major changes in thenational and international situation. When the Cold War began in1947–1948, Bowers and Kaizawa were instructed to look for leftistthemes as well as rightist propaganda. Japan’s economy was improvingand its social fabric mending. As the Occupation entered its fourthyear, the mission of the censors in PPB was significantly redirectedfrom blocking undesirable rightist messages to gathering current infor-mation: “Civil Censorship had shifted emphasis from oversight controlof [theatre and other] communications agencies to the collection ofpolitical, economic and special intelligence” (Headquarters, Civil Cen-sorship Detachment, “Narrative History, Jan 47–Dec 48,” undated butprobably January 1949, Box 8524). There was precious little “informa-tion” to be gleaned from reading traditional kabuki scripts. After Bow-ers approved Loyal Retainers in late 1947, Grand Kabuki essentiallyreceived a free pass until CCD was dissolved November 1, 1949. Onthat day formal censorship of kabuki ended.128

Conclusion: Shöchiku Constructs a Fossil ArtLet us now return to my original question: why did kabuki not

follow Occupation policy and become, even partially, democratic? Itcan be said that kabuki began its slow slide toward classicism a centuryearlier when young Japanese theatre artists created shinpa and thenshingeki, spoken drama genres strongly influenced by Western theatre.The new genres addressed contemporary social issues more effectivelythan kabuki. It wasn’t necessary for kabuki to handle twentieth-centurysubjects any longer. Beyond this, I suggest four proximate causes forkabuki’s managers to hold aloof from Japan’s modern postwar world.

First, as we have seen, SCAP was unable to mount an effectiveprogram of change. SCAP lacked the will to attack the tightly heldworld of monopolistic kabuki. American policies were inconsistent, per-sonalized, and affected by rapid turnover of Occupation personnel.

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SCAP missions were divided: CI&E “advised” producers to stage new,democratic kabuki plays but lacked the authority to impose its will, andCCD suppressed plays but could not tell a playwright what to write.129

In some sense, the bureaucratic structure of the military Occupation,which coupled American reluctance to fund theatre as a propagandamedium together with a discreet form of censorship from behind,made the call for new scripts a pipe dream that the kabuki establish-ment had no outside incentive and little internal inclination to follow.

A second reason is that Loyal Retainers, Ichinotani, and Subscrip-tion List are magnificent theatre pieces that Shöchiku producers weredetermined they would not give up. Producers knew audiences hun-gered to see the old favorites. They didn’t care if SCAP liked these playsor not. Without announcing their intentions, producers proposed dis-approved classics continually until they were approved. An official Shö-chiku history states that in late 1945 and early 1946 Japan embarked onits famous “180-degree turn away from prescribed wartime morality”(Tanaka 1975: 124). For many Japanese this meant a welcome return tothe policies of individual freedom and liberal politics they had enjoyedin the time of so-called Taishö democracy before the war. But democ-racy was not an ideal of the Shöchiku organization. Shöchiku did notexecute a 180-degree turn away from wartime morality. Nor did kabuki.Throughout the Occupation, Shöchiku officials said again and againthat company policy was to preserve kabuki’s traditional form (dentö ohozon).130

In this aim, Shöchiku was singularly successful. As the yearspassed, kabuki came to be Shöchiku’s most profitable business enter-prise, based on the company’s policy of performing the traditional rep-ertory, mostly in spectacular, multi-play programs starring the heredi-tary actors it had under contract. Despite paying lip service to a new,democratic Japan, Shöchiku never wavered from its aim of performingthe traditional, feudal repertory in all its grotesque glory. From themoment in August 1945 when President Ötani ordered the recastingof kabuki into the mold of a classic art, with an unchanging repertoire,he set Shöchiku on a course of resistance against the American over-lords in SCAP.

A third reason is that it was psychologically difficult to createnew kabuki plays about a ruined, poverty-stricken, postwar Japan. Hadthere been no war or had Japan been victorious, it seems very probablethat the long tradition of staging new kiwamono would have continuedin kabuki. But the nation had suffered humiliation and defeat. Therewere no brilliant military conquests or glorious sacrificial deaths to dra-matize. Theatre patrons, jobless and living in the rubble of bombed-out buildings, can hardly be faulted for wanting to be distracted from

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their unpleasant reality. Would audiences come to see idolized kabukistars playing the roles of panpan girls, war criminals, and fat-cat blackmarketers? They wanted entertainment. As the emperor said in thedays immediately following his surrender, “Bring light and brightnessto the people. Reopen entertainments as speedily as possible” (AsahiShinbun, August 22, 1945). Kabuki producers had no confidence thataudiences would pay to see gloomy plays about a miserable present. AsJapan strove to recover from calamitous defeat, representation of aglorified national past through kabuki served as a crucial counterweightto an objective reading of history that spoke of national failure. A fro-zen, familiar repertory represented in itself a useful image of Japanesesingularity and strength at a time when almost everything else in soci-ety was indeterminate, challenged, out of favor, or undependable.

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Figure 16. At dawn, in the summer 1947, a solitary man walks out of an oblit-erated urban landscape that was once Hiroshima City. Was it possible to placethe devastation of atomic explosions on the kabuki stage? Kabuki producersdid not think so. (Photo: Courtesy of Sheldon Varney)

A final reason kabuki did not modernize is that American the-atre officials were quick to embrace traditional kabuki and call it a greattheatre art. They did not, personally, want to be responsible for harm-ing kabuki by banning plays. Alexander Calhoun, the youngest of thetheatre censors in Tokyo, told me, “We all leaned over backwards toapprove kabuki plays; we did not want to hurt kabuki” (Interview withAlexander Calhoun, October 5, 2000). Once the censors were willingto release plays with inappropriately feudalistic themes, this reinforcedthe desire of audiences to see these well-known kabuki pieces. In turnthis strengthened Shöchiku’s decision to resist Occupation entreatiesfor a new repertory. Japan’s American masters in the Occupation com-manded all else, but before an unchanging kabuki they were powerlessand in the end accepted kabuki on Shöchiku’s terms. The adulationthat Bowers, Ernst, and Allyn developed for kabuki found expressionwhen the Occupation was over. Soon there were translations of classicplays, and books, university classes, and television specials that high-lighted traditions of continuity. This reification of the traditional modeof kabuki by highly regarded foreigners strongly contributed to classi-cizing (koten-ka) and aestheticizing (bijutsu-ka) the art in the decadesthat followed the Occupation.

Occupation officials might have followed a different courseregarding kabuki. In a punitive frame of mind they might have closedtheatres or banned performance completely. Or they might have actedcreatively by commissioning kabuki playwrights—Göda Toku, KikutaKazuo, Uno Nobuo—to compose new kiwamono that spoke to contem-porary social concerns. CI&E could have subsidized Shöchiku’s pro-ductions of these new kabuki plays. This would have fit normal CI&Epractices. During the Occupation years, CI&E paid for hundreds ofradio programs and instructional films designed to convey democraticthemes (Interview with Albert Raynor, April 5, 2001). And this wouldnot have gone against Japanese practice: kabuki playwrights and pro-ducers were used to creating new plays to suit Japanese governmentpolicy. For years the Cabinet Bureau of Information commissionedkiwamono plays in support of the war. So it would have been a smallstep for CI&E to take the place of the Bureau and commission playswith postwar, democratic themes. The CCD pictorial censor on Shi-koku Island requested just such new scripts: “Distribution of [. . .] com-plete plays with a democratic theme [is] a constructive way of filling inthe gap resulting from deletions and suppressions in theatrical scripts”(CCD, Pictorial Sub-Section, District II-b, “Theatrical Survey of Shi-koku Island,” April 27, 1948, J. Frank Sheehan, Box 8656). This wasCI&E’s task, and it seems that Boruff and Keith failed to conceive ofthe possibility. Undoubtedly their imaginations were limited by their

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experiences in America, where theatre was a self-supporting enter-tainment and government tended neither to fund nor to unduly cen-sor the art.131

Similarities abound between wartime Japanese censorship ofkabuki and American censorship after the war. But there is at least oneglaring difference: Japanese citizens were motivated by patriotic dutyto accept censorship for the national good. It was a small sacrifice tolose a few decadent kabuki plays in order to achieve victory in war. Butno one suggested in 1946 that Japanese should accept CCD’s ban ontraditional plays as a “small sacrifice” for the sake of democracy. Dur-ing the war, kabuki playwright Kimura Kinka wrote that it was naturalto withhold old plays unsuited to Japan’s wartime needs and “fromnow on, new plays must replace them” (Kimura 1940: 2). But in 1946,no Japanese said it was a playwright’s patriotic duty to replace LoyalRetainers with a democratic play.

The biggest change that occurred in kabuki after the war wasthat kiwamono disappeared and kabuki became a “classic” theatre. Of

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Figure 17. Radio officers in CI&E commissioned and produced dramaticprograms on democratic and liberal themes, such as this Japanese-languageradio broadcast of Macbeth in March 1947. Kabuki-style music and kabuki cos-tumes were used for atmosphere and for publicity photographs. Theatre offi-cers in CI&E never considered commissioning new kabuki plays. (Photo: Cour-tesy of Albert Raynor)

course this was contrary to CI&E’s and CCD’s aim of encouraging newplays to replace the old plays. Boruff and Thompson in CI&E hadbegged kabuki producers for new kabuki plays. But Shöchiku moved inthe opposite direction, toward enshrining tradition, and SCAP’s plansfor a new, democratic kabuki proved fruitless.

We need to recall that president Ötani determined Shöchiku’sreactionary course of conserving traditional kabuki before the Occupa-tion began. Those who came to censor and to introduce democraticcontent saw themselves as liberating kabuki from tradition. In the con-test, it was the Occupiers who were liberated from the narrow Occu-pation cause and changed forever by the encounter.132 The Occupierscame to love the harshly feudal repertoire they had come to destroy.But the only way kabuki changed was to withdraw completely from themodern world. Today, more than half a century after America’s exper-iment in social engineering petered out, kabuki still delights audiences.But kabuki in the twentieth-first century is not a living theatre. Thanksin part to its protectors, it is a gloriously flamboyant fossil, an artifactof a past world that has nothing to say about today.

Play Titles (English–Japanese)Appeal for Lord Keiki’s Life (Keiki inochi goi)Barrier Gate, The (Seki no to)Battle at River Island in Shinshü (Shinshü kawanakajima gassen)Battle Camp Debate (Senjin mondö)Bell of Nagasaki (Nagasaki no kane)Benkei Aboard Ship (Funa Benkei)Benten the Thief (Benten kozö)Book Binding Shop (Ningen seihon)Broken Dish, The (Banchö sara yashiki)Chronicle of the Battle of Ichinotani (Ichinotani futaba gunki)Confrontation of the Soga Brothers (Soga no taimen)Cormorant Fisherman’s House, The (Ushö no ie)Daibosatsu Pass (Daibosatsu töge)Death of Toyoshige, The (Toyoshige no shi)Echoing Pools in the Hatchö River (Yamabiko shio no hatchö)Ferry at Yaguchi, The (Yaguchi no watashi)Genta’s Disinheritance (Genta kandö)Ginza Reconstructs (Ginza fukkö)Golden Temple, The (Kinkakuji)Gorozö the Gallant (Gosho no Gorozö)Ground Spider, The (Tsuchigumo)Hell of Snow (Yuki jigoku)Hidden Image of Two Masks, The (Futa omote shinobu sugata-e)

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Kakiemon the Master Artist (Meikö Kakiemon)Kiyomasa at Nijö Castle (Nijöjö no Kiyomasa)Kunisada ChüjiLast Hours of Commander Kanö, The (Kanö butaichö saigo no hi)Lord Sakazaki of Dewa (Sakazaki dewa no kami)Love of Takiguchi Nyüdö, The (Takiguchi Nyüdö no koi)Lovers’ Evening Suicide (Shinjü yoigoshin)Lovers’ Suicides at Mt. Toribe (Toribeyama shinjü)Maiden of Döjö Temple, The (Musume Döjöji)Man From the Mountains (Yama kara kita otoko)Map of Loyalty to the Emperor, A (Kinnö füdoki)Martyr of Sakura, The (Sakura giminden)Mirror Lion (Kagami jishi)Miyamoto MusashiMoritsuna’s Battle Camp (Moritsuna jinya)Mountain Hag with Child (Komochi yamamba)Narukami the Thundergod (Narukami)Ono of Töfü (Ono no Töfü)Orange Ship, The (Mikan bune),Osaka Spring Rain (Naniwa no harusame)Pearl Harbor (Shinju wan)People in a Storm (Arashi no naka no hitobito)Picture Scroll of the Taikö (Ehon taiköki)Pulling the Carriage Apart (Kuruma biki)Puppet Sanbasö, The (Ayatsuri sanbasö)Regimental Flag (Rentaiki)Revenge on Öshü Plain (Öshü adachi ga hara)Rokusuke of Keya Village (Keyamura Rokusuke)Ryokan and a Nurse Maid (Ryokan to Komori)Sadato and Muneto (Sadato Muneto)Scarface Yosaburö (Kirare Yosa)Scroll of Mii Temple, The (Miidera emaki)Sequel to Nezumi the Rat (Nezumi kozö dangi)ShunkanSnow Prostitute (Yuki jorö)Souvenir from Nagasaki: The Tale of a Chinese, A (Nagasaki miyage tojin

banashi)Souvenir of Jöshü: A Valuable Head, A ( Jöshü miyage hyaku ryö kubi)Strife in the Date Clan (Meiboku Sendai hagi)Subscription List, The (Kanjinchö)Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy (Sugawara denju tenarai kagami)Swordsmith Kokaji, The (Kokaji)Tale of Sanemori (Sanemori monogatari)

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Temple Gate and the Paulownia Crest, The (Sanmon gosan no kiri)Tokijirö of Kutsukake (Kutsukake Tokijirö)Three Glorious Human Bombs (Nikudan sanyüshi)Treasury of Loyal Retainers, The (Kanadehon chüshingura)Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety (Honchö nijüshikö)Two Lions (Renjishi),Two Shinbeis (Ninin Shinbei)Universal Military Conscription (Kokumin kaihei)Village School, The (Terakoya)What Shall We Do? (Nani o nasu beki ka)Wisteria Maiden, The (Fuji musume)Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees (Yoshitsune senbon zakura)Yoshida Palace (Yoshida goten)

Initials of CCD CorrespondentsAKM WDC Arthur K. Mori, head, Pictorial Section, PPB District IALD Major Alfred L. Dibella, head, PPB Division, CCDEE Lt. Earle Ernst, head, Theatre Sub-Section, PPB District IFB WDC Faubion Bowers, head, Theatre Sub-Section,

PPB District IJAJr. WDC John Allyn Jr., head, Pictorial Section, PPB District IIJG Lt. Joseph Goldstein, censor, Theatre Sub-Section,

PPB District IJ JC Major John J. Costello, head, PPB Division, CCDKC Lt. Kenneth Cameron, head, Pictorial Section,

PPB District IPJB WDC Patrick J. Malloy, head, PPB District IRHK Capt. Richard H. Kunzman, head, PPB District ITT WDC Takeo Tada, censor, Pictorial Section, PPB District IIWBP Colonel William B. Putnam, commanding officer, CCD

Military AcronymsCCD Civil Censorship Detachment, CIS/G-2, SCAPCI&E Civil Information and Education Section, SCAPCIS Civil Intelligence Section, SCAPG-2 General Staff Section for Intelligence, SCAPGHQ General Headquarters, SCAPIDS Information Dissemination Section (later CI&E), SCAPJCS Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C.MIS Military Intelligence ServiceMP Military PoliceMPTD Motion Picture and Theatrical Division, CI&EPC Passed Censorship, stamp used by CCD

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PPB Press, Pictorial, and Broadcasting Division, CCDSCAP Supreme Commander for the Allied PowersSCAPIN Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Instruction

to the Imperial Japanese GovernmentTI&E Troop Information and Education section, army unitWDC War Department Civilian employee (later Department of

the Army Civilian, DAC)

NOTES

1. Some material in this article was published in 2004 as “Kabuki osukutta no wa dare ka?—America senryögun ni yoru Kabuki ken’etsu nojittai,” Engekigaku Ronshü 42 (November): 145–197, edited by Möri Mitsuyaand translated by Suzuki Masae. I want to thank the staffs of the ShöchikuÖtani Library, Shöchiku Kansai Archives, Waseda University Theatre MuseumLibrary, and Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i, for allowing me to exam-ine Occupation-censored kabuki scripts in their collections. Sakaba Junko andItoh Kazue provided valuable research assistance. Former chief theatre cen-sor Stanley Y. Kaizawa shared his deep personal knowledge of Occupationcensorship in continuing interviews. My research in 2000 and 2003 was sup-ported in part by grants from the Japan Foundation and with the assistanceof the Waseda University Theatre Museum.

2. The question of whether censorship was an appropriate tool to cre-ate a “democratic” society in Japan is important but it lies beyond the scopeof this paper. Etö Jun (1980, 1982) has written eloquently that Occupationcensorship stifled and twisted Japanese democracy. The prevailing view of theoccupiers was that censorship was a short-term, necessary evil: “This may beundemocratic but we are not in a democracy, we are running a school fordemocracy [and] theatre is one of the most important teachers” (“Consoli-dated Report of Civil Information and Education [CI&E] Section Activities[hereafter cited as CR]: 1 November 1945,” National Archives, Record Group313, Box 5255 [hereafter the Box number only will be cited]). In this paperthe extensive archival material, interviews, newspaper, and web sources will becited in the text rather than given full separate citation in the bibliography.Please see glossaries of Abbreviations Used in Citations, at the end of thenotes, and Initials of CCD Correspondents and Military Acronyms, precedingthe notes.

3. Japanese play titles are listed at the end of the text.4. Occupation censors shunted aside kabuki scripts deemed harmful

to Japan’s democratization in two ways. First, as noted, censors rejected (sup-pressed) a handful of scripts that Shöchiku submitted for approval. Second,and more important, Shöchiku created a “list” of several hundred overtly feu-dalistic plays that Shöchiku “voluntarily” withdrew from the repertory for atime. Hence, the American side was able to maintain the position that the lat-ter plays were not banned or suppressed by the Occupation. The “list” will bediscussed in detail.

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5. The cable advised post-censorship of radio and print media, a pol-icy the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) initially followed, and a total banon showing motion pictures, which was not done (Washington to CINCAF-PAC, “Initial Policy for Control of Japanese Information Services,” August 22,1945, Bonner F. Fellers Collection, Box 13).

6. By August 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far Easthad charged 515 high Japanese political and military leaders with committingwar crimes: 485 were convicted (including former prime minister TöjöHideki) and thirty were acquitted (see “Occupied Japan” 1948). In early April1946, General MacArthur reported that 60 percent of the members of thewartime Diet and other high government officials had been removed fromtheir positions by the purge that he announced on January 4, 1946 (NipponTimes, April 4, 1946). By early 1948, a total of 717,415 men and women whohad occupied leadership positions in government, the military, nationalistorganizations, industry, banking, and information media had been screenedand 201,815 were purged, that is, forced to resign from their institutional posi-tions. Among purged officials, twenty-two were from entertainment compa-nies such as Shöchiku (Political Reorientation of Japan 1948: 553, 556).

7. SCAP’s authority superseded that of the Imperial Japanese Gov-ernment and SCAP frequently ordered the Japanese government to carry outspecific structural reforms, often against Japanese wishes. SCAP officialswrote a new constitution (while pretending not to) that the Japanese cabinetfrantically opposed. SCAP ordered abolition of the dreaded Thought Policeand the end of Home Ministry censorship. It ordered equal rights for women,release of political prisoners, creation of new educational materials compati-ble with democracy, and the sale of farm land to tenant farmers. These wereissues SCAP cared about. But I argue that Occupation directives did not addup to “indirect rule” of the nation as is usually said (e.g., Dower 1999: 27). TheImperial Japanese government ruled the nation according to its own laws andprocedures except in those areas where SCAP chose to exert its authority. Inthe case of kabuki, Occupation officials did not attempt to supplant, or evendisturb, Shöchiku’s capitalist ownership and monopolist control of theatresand troupes. As a result, SCAP’s censorship restrictions through CCD anddemocratic exhortations by CI&E were totally inadequate tools to bring aboutsubstantive change.

8. Shöchiku managed the six large kabuki troupes led by Onoe Kiku-gorö VI, Nakamura Kichiemon I, Matsumoto Köshirö VII, Ichikawa EnnosukeII, Ichikawa Jukai III, and Sawamura Söjürö VII (CCD, Theatrical Section,Special Report, “Shochiku Co., Ltd. (Shochiku Kabushiki-gaisha),” December3, 1947, Box 8618).

9. Ichikawa Ennosuke’s production at the Tokyo Gekijö that openedSeptember 1 is usually called the first postwar production (Nagayama 1995:327), but it opened a week after the program in Osaka.

10. I have taken most production information (play title, author, the-atre, cast, and dates) from Nagayama 1996.

11. Numbers written in red pencil in the right margin of English-language synopses of these two plays indicate they were the first and second

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kabuki items that Shöchiku submitted to Occupation censors. Dated October19, 1945, they reached censor Charles B. Reese halfway through their Octo-ber run at the Dai Ichi Gekijö, too late for Reese to take censorship action(Shöchiku Script Collection, Waseda University Theatre Museum Library).

12. See Mayo (1984) for a detailed narrative of how officials in theState, Navy, and War Departments in Washington gradually developed a cen-sorship policy during 1944 and 1945 appropriate to Japan and how SCAPofficials implemented that policy in the field.

13. Originally CCD was placed under the Civil Intelligence Section(CIS), an independent intelligence unit in MacArthur’s headquarters. In May1946, after CIS commanding officer Brigadier General Elliot R. Thorpe leftJapan, CIS (and CCD) were absorbed into the General Staff Section for Intel-ligence (G-2) (Thorpe 1969: 95–96; Operations 1949: preface, n.p.). In prac-tice, as Robert Spaulding, a former CCD division head, succinctly explains:“CCD was part of the vast G-2 empire under Brigadier General Charles A.Willoughby” (Spaulding 1988: 5).

14. “Spot examination of mail [. . .] has been generally recognized asone of the most direct and reliable sources of public information” (Operations1949: 18).

15. CCD grew from around four hundred personnel in late 1945 to ahigh of 8,736 in August 1946. Almost all of the increase was Japanese nationalemployees. The number of Americans in CCD declined from a high of 780in 1946 to 416 in mid 1949 to zero in November 1949 (Operations 1949: insert31).

16. Japanese national translators and examiners made up 90 percentof CCD personnel and Americans around 10 percent (see, for example, CCD,“Monthly Report: 1 August 1949–31 August 1949,” Box 8532).

17. In addition to having censorship authority, CIS was the unitcharged with identifying and arresting war criminals, investigating crime,assuring the emperor’s safety, and releasing political prisoners (Thorpe 1969:192–193).

18. CCD policy toward amateur productions (including kabuki) wasambivalent: groups were encouraged to submit scripts but not required to doso.

19. Each censor was issued his own numbered stamp: Ernst, J-2036;Palestin, J-2038; Calhoun, J-2037; and Kaizawa, J-2034 (PPB District I, “S.O.P.for the Theatrical Department,” September 17, 1946, Box 8580). In practice,a censor used any stamp that was handy.

20. My description of CCD organization and procedures draws heavilyon interviews with former American censors and Japanese national employeesof PPB: Stanley Y. Kaizawa, John Allyn Jr., Alexander Calhoun, Vincent Mer-cola, Albert Seligmann, Robert Spaulding, Ko Sameshima, Takeshi Teshima,Tanamachi Tomoya, Yamachi Kyuzö, Harry and Ethel Uchida, Louise andGeorge Hanamura, Kazuo and Emi Nekota, Misao Sakamoto, and others.

21. At first PPB in Tokyo had few personnel, so Reese and Ehlers wereresponsible for censoring all pictorial media: motion pictures, lantern slides,paper plays for children (kamishibai), and theatre. By December 1945, enough

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personnel were assigned to PPB that Ernst and those following him censoredonly theatre, while other censors in the Pictorial Section were assigned films,kamishibai, or lantern slides.

22. No major kabuki troupes were based in Kyushu, which comprisesmost of District III, and therefore I do not discuss the operation of kabuki cen-sorship in that district. See Tanamachi et al. (1988) for a detailed discussionof theatre censorship in District III.

23. I want to thank Donald Richie, Santha Wattles, Jane Gunther, Dal-las Finn, and Harriet Harvey for sharing their recollections of people whoworked in CCD from 1946 to 1949.

24. For descriptions of CCD censorship of other media not cited inthe bibliography, see Marlene J. Mayo and J. Thomas Rimer, ed., War, Occu-pation, and Creativity: Japan and East Asia 1920–1960 (Honolulu: University ofHawai‘i Press, 2001); Jay Rubin, “From Wholesomeness to Decadence: TheCensorship of Literature under the Allied Occupation,” Journal of JapaneseStudies 11, no. 1 (1985): 71–103; and William J. Coughlin, The Conquered Press(Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1952), among others.

25. A June 1947 draft proposal would have placed all press, pictorial,and broadcast media, including live theatrical performances, on post-censor-ship. The proposal was not approved and was not put into effect (Chief ofStaff to G-2, “Modification of Civil Censorship Controls in the OccupiedArea,” June 6, 1947, Box 8517). And in August, plans to place theatre on post-censorship were so far advanced that letters to producers were written andready to be mailed. But the letters were never sent (“Draft of Letters to AllCensored Agencies,” August 1, 1947, Box 8568).

26. A skeletal staff closed offices and disposed of files through Novem-ber 15, but otherwise the entire CCD operation, employing around five thou-sand American and Japanese personnel, was terminated within two weeks ofGeneral MacArthur’s decision to end censorship.

27. On the day Japan surrendered, Brigadier General Bonner F. Fell-ers, military secretary to the supreme commander and director of the Psy-chological Warfare Branch, presented to MacArthur a written plan to placeSCAP’s censorship and democratization activities in a single organizationstaffed mostly by people from Psychological Warfare. This organizationalstructure was not accepted, and censorship of media and promotion of demo-cratic principles were assigned to CCD and CI&E, respectively. However, intheir internal organization, both CCD and CI&E set up sections to handle thefour media that Fellers had identified for control: publications, radio, movies,and theatre (Memo, “Dissemination of Information in Japan,” August 15,1945, Bonner F. Fellers, in Bonner F. Fellers Collection, Box 13).

28. By coincidence, the author was assigned to the TI&E section ofthe 45th Infantry Division when drafted in 1950 during the Korean War.

29. Other CI&E divisions were Arts and Monuments, Religion, Pressand Publications, Radio, Plans and Operations, and Research and Informa-tion. The Research and Information Division contained its own Motion Pic-ture and Theater Unit that provided research reports and statistical data onJapanese theatre for MPTD’s use.

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30. The Motion Picture and Theatrical Division was earlier called theMotion Picture and Visual Media Section and later the Motion Picture andTheatrical Branch and the Motion Picture and Stage Department. The The-atre Unit was sometimes called the Theatre Branch, the Theatrical Depart-ment, and the Stage Department. Functions and activities were not affectedby name changes.

31. Much of the information about CI&E organization and opera-tions comes from interviews with former CI&E officers and staff, and theirfamilies and friends. I am especially grateful to Eddie Kaneshima, Wilton Dil-lon, Albert Raynor, Edwin Bock, Floyd Matson, Joan Cleveland, and BarbaraBoruff.

32. From Theatre Sub-Section, PPB, and presumably written by Ernst.33. Kaizawa says that Ernst’s superiors asked him to write the report:

“I remember Earle sitting at his desk in the Kantö Electric Building day afterday, back to the window, licking a pencil tip and writing the report on a ruledyellow tablet. As he finished each page he tore it off and handed it to Sgt.Harry Uchida to type” (Interview with Stanley Y. Kaizawa, June 20, 2000). Ernstsubmitted the report on April 25 and returned to the United States in May.When Bowers lent a copy of the report, classified “Secret,” to Kawatake Shige-toshi in September 1947, Kawatake assumed Bowers was the author (KawatakeShigetoshi 1964: 154; Kawatake Toshio 1995: 218). Okamoto, too, presentsBowers as its author (1998: 293). A PPB District I monthly report, perhapswritten by Bowers, includes a copy, described as “the result of collaboration”between Ernst and Bowers (PPBI, May 20, 1947, Box 8586). Some sectionsreflect Bowers’ interests and may have been written by him, but there can beno doubt that Ernst was the special report’s main author.

34. Bowers himself actively promoted the myth, it seems to increase hisown importance. He denigrated theatre colleagues in CCD and CI&E, call-ing them “little men,” “those kids,” and “youngsters who know nothing aboutJapan, who know nothing about theatre” (Bowers 1960: 42–44; interview withStanley Y. Kaizawa, June 15, 2000).

35. Bowers was a Julliard-trained pianist who became enamored ofkabuki when he happened to stop in Tokyo, fell under the spell of kabuki, andremained for a year in Japan (1940–1941). At the beginning of the Occupa-tion he was one of four officers attached to the Office of the Military Secretaryto the Commander-in-Chief headed by Brigadier General Bonner F. Fellers(September 1945–February 1946). Bowers, in a small anteroom on the sixthfloor of the Dai Ichi Building, greeted MacArthur’s nonmilitary visitors andcoordinated appointments. Bowers told everyone he was the personal aide-de-camp (fukkan) to General MacArthur (e.g., Bowers 1960: 41; Sanuki 1975:27), a minor fudging of the truth that raised his status a notch. When Fellersreturned from a speaking trip in the United States during which, it is said, hisname appeared in American newspapers more often than MacArthur’s, Fell-ers was demoted to colonel and banished from MacArthur’s inner circle inthe Dai Ichi Building. In January 1946, Fellers and his staff, including Bow-ers, were transferred to the Meiji Building and reorganized into the Secretar-iat of the Allied Council for Japan (ACJ), a watchdog organization that Mac-

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Arthur despised and ignored. Bowers’ was council documents officer, a kindof glorified file clerk ( January–October 1946). Thoroughly bored with hiswork, through the summer Bowers campaigned to rehabilitate kabuki’s goodname. He wrote magazine and newspaper articles praising kabuki and he lob-bied CCD censors to release “banned” plays for production. In October 1946,Bowers’ service time in the Army was completed, kabuki actor friends gavehim a farewell party, and his departure for the United States for demobiliza-tion was imminent. In what appears to have been a sudden change of heart,he asked Ernst for a civilian position in Theatre Sub-Section, CCD, and Ernsthired him. Loquacious about most events in his life, Bowers spoke selectivelyabout this transitional period (his most candid remarks are in his early oralhistory [1960]). He seems to have kept even his closest friends in the darkabout his assignment with the ACJ, his exile to the Meiji Building, his planneddeparture for the United States, the fact that Ernst was the person whobrought him into CCD, and his six-month apprenticeship in CCD underErnst’s direction. For Bowers’ own narrative of this period, as remembered inlater years, see Bowers 1960, 1970; Okamoto 1998, 2001; and Sanuki 1975.

36. In 1961, the critic Toita Yasuji credited Boruff, Keith, and Thomp-son of CI&E for helping theatre recover in postwar Japan. He thought thatBowers, who deserved much praise, should not be made into a god (Andö etal. 1961: 46). Recently, Bowers’ contributions have been placed in a largerperspective by younger critics and scholars Kikuchi Akira, Fujita Hiroshi, andWatanabe Tamotsu (2000: 97).

37. On September 22, SCAP’s information section, the InformationDissemination Section (IDS), was renamed the Civil Information and Edu-cation Service (CI&E). Conde intended the memorandum to be sent to theJapanese government, but it was never issued. CI&E and CCD guided andcensored Japanese theatre for four years without any SCAP directive to theJapanese government regarding theatre. Nor did theatre officers send writtendirections to Shöchiku, except in one or two instances. They operated infor-mally, mostly in face-to-face meetings, as Conde did here. Kawatake Shige-toshi preserved a copy of the Japanese translation of Conde’s statement thatCI&E provided that day. I thank Kawatake Toshio for sending me a copy fromhis father’s files (Letter from Kawatake Toshio to the author, July 11, 2000).

38. For example, in Okamoto (1998: 151), Conde’s comment meansthat all kabuki plays are feudal and hence should be banned: “Kabuki drama,with its feudalistic code of loyalty and its treatment of revenge, is not suitablefor the modern world” (retranslated into English by Samuel L. Leiter, in Oka-moto 2001: 48). But it was never SCAP policy to ban kabuki.

39. A list of initials of CCD correspondents follows the text. 40. Broad-brush comments that speakers offered on a recent panel

discussion are typical: “Revenge plays were out,” “You couldn’t do swordfights,” “Everything was forbidden,” “Bit by bit kabuki became impossible toperform” (Bowers et al. 1999: 121).

41. Conde’s published remarks are often quoted in Japanese sourcesand it may be that his bald condemnation of gangster and gambler heroesdiscouraged producers from suggesting certain plays. Nonetheless, CCD cen-

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sors approved submitted scripts of bandit plays (shiranamimono) scores oftimes: Benten the Thief was staged twelve times and Scarface Yosaburö eight timesbetween 1945 and 1949 (Nagayama 1996: index 174, 204).

42. After his CI&E assignment, he returned to New York. His bestknown play, The Loud Red Patrick, opened in New York in 1956 with DavidWayne and Elizabeth Montgomery playing leads. In the 1960s and 1970s, hewrote daytime television dramas in New York and Chicago (Telephone con-versation with Barbara Boruff, March 20, 2002).

43. At the Tokyo Gekijö, The Village School, The Martyr of Sakura, thedance scene from Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees, and The Hidden Imageof Two Masks; and at the Dai Ichi Gekijö, Scarface Yosaburö and The Broken Dish(Nagayama 1996: 656, 677).

44. The Martyr of Sakura was the twenty-fifth play script logged intoCCD in October, so Reese had at least that many scripts of various genres toevaluate before the plays opened in November (Shöchiku Ötani Library). Hepostponed to the last minute acting on the six kabuki scripts, so it is reason-able to assume the other scripts were waiting his decision as well.

45. As late as 1993, Faubion Bowers incorrectly laid the onus for the30 percent request on Earle Ernst, saying, “It was Ernst’s idea” to require onemodern play in three. Onoe Baikö also blamed Ernst for the idea (Onoe et al.1993: 135). However, Ernst had not arrived in Japan when Boruff conceivedand broached his plan.

46. SCAPIN 16 also established Occupation censorship of publicationsand radio: “The Supreme Commander will suspend any publication or radiostation which publishes information that fails to adhere to the truth or disturbspublic tranquility.” CCD wielded the same power over theatre: it could closea production.

47. A major exception was when CCD closed Tokyo’s largest varietytheatre, Töhö’s Nihon Gekijö (Nichigeki), for two weeks in May 1946 fordeliberately failing to submit for censorship “material that was highly criticalof the conduct of the Occupation Forces.” CCD called this “the most seriouscensorship violation yet discovered” (PPB1, May 21, 1946, Box 8586).

48. In fact, producers were required to send scripts to both CI&E andCCD. CI&E did not censor the kabuki scripts it received; only CCD had thatauthority. Mentioning only CI&E here is probably the result of poor transla-tion from English to Japanese.

49. The notice in Engekikai incorrectly says “Reese of CI&E.” Japaneseobservers constantly confused CCD with CI&E.

50. An article in the Tokyo Shinbun, November 9, 1945, gives a slightlydifferent account of the meeting.

51. Articles “a” and “the” are often dropped in military writing toachieve brevity.

52. Sugai calls the order to not stage the play again “a rumor” (1975:40). Occupation records show it was a fact.

53. Shöchiku’s translation of the scene title, Repayment of Debt at GreatSacrifice, is used in the report. I have substituted the more common title, TheVillage School.

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54. Some hypothesize that Reese was working from a brief English syn-opsis that did not make clear the significance of Kotarö’s beheading (Kawa-take 1964: 136). However, I think Reese received a full translation of the playscript. Shöchiku’s two-page synopsis, dated October 15, 1945, and fifteen-pagetranslation are bound together with string, and rust marks from a paper clipshow through all seventeen pages, showing that the synopsis and translationexisted together. Lines in the translation make the child sacrifice obvious: “Ihave just decapitated Kanshusai,” “I have sent in my son, Kotarö, to have himsacrificed as our little Lord’s substitute,” and “a noble sacrifice to have thusrequited our Lord’s favour” (Shöchiku Script Collection, Waseda UniversityTheatre Museum Library). It seems probable that Reese was unable to visual-ize the grotesque head inspection (kubijikken) scene from the written word andonly in performance was its impact realized.

55. The Japanese script shows Reese’s signature, approving the pro-duction, dated October 31, 1945. The script does not contain CCD’s suppres-sion of the play on November 20, 1945, because it had been returned to Shö-chiku at the beginnng of the run. This same script was resubmitted to CCDin April 1947 and was stamped approved for May production at the TokyoGekijö (Script in Shöchiku Ötani Library).

56. Boruff liked Martyr of Sakura, “a work of art and a worthwhile playshowing a man’s individual effort to better the conditions of the poor aroundhim,” when he saw it November 21, the day Village School was withdrawn. Mar-tyr is the type of “good kabuki” that Shöchiku should choose in the future, hetold Yoshida a few days later, because it directly criticized the feudal system(“CR: 21 November, 1945” and “CR: 23 November 1945,” Box 5255). Unfor-tunately, there were no other kabuki plays like Martyr for Shöchiku to stage.

57. The line is “semajiki mono wa miyazukai,” spoken by Genzö beforehe kills the innocent child, Kotarö. in order to preserve the life of Sugawara’sson, Kanshüsai. In the Meiji period and the1930s, the line appeared weak andwas “nervously” changed to the more patriotic “this is truly the way to serveone’s lord” (omiyazukai wa koko ja wai na) (Motoyama 1944: 25).

58. As early as 1959, Kawatake Shigetoshi published a description ofthe play’s closing essentially the same as the CCD/CI&E account relatedhere: around November 15 CCD ordered the play closed within five days andShöchiku complied on November 21 (1959: 960–961). Presumably Kawatakerelated this correct account to Bowers. As noted, the “police on stage” storyappears for the first time in Bowers’ 1960 Columbia University oral history.

59. Bowers’ character is elusive and enigmatic: friends say he was wittyand cruel, charming and arrogantly self-centered. In CCD, he treated with ill-disguised contempt Shöchiku liaison Yoshida Matsuji, who later became thefirst director of the National Theatre of Japan (Interview with Stanley Y. Kai-zawa, December 12, 2001). Bowers’ published comment that General Mac-Arthur was a “cultural barbarian” is well known (Okamoto 1999: 1). Bowerswas also warm and generous with his kabuki friends. He provided constantgifts of food and medicine that literally saved some of their lives in the tryingpostwar years. Albert Seligmann, PPB censor in District III, remembers thatBowers asked him to provide milk and bread for the elderly, toothless Matsu-

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moto Köshirö when the latter toured Kyushu, “Which I gladly did” (Letterfrom Albert Seligman, December 1, 2003). In the office, Bowers was consid-erate toward Japanese employees of CCD (Okamoto 1998: 281–282).

60. Bowers’ “police on stage” story was most recently retold in a Yomi-uri Shinbun article (Takagi 2000) and in a kabuki television special (“Nippono Shirö” 2004).

61. The story may be an amalgamation of similar tales from that time.Boruff describes a performance of Ginza Reconstructs at the Teikoku Gekijöwhen he saw a demobilized soldier and a student jump onstage and haranguethe audience for twenty minutes. The interruption ended only after policecame to the stage and conferred with them (“CR: 22 October 1945,” Box5255). And Ichikawa Jukai writes that American military police stopped a per-formance of Broken Dish at the Dai Ichi Gekijö in November 1945 (Ichikawa1960: 102). Perhaps Bowers heard these stories and conflated them, con-sciously or unconsciously, with the Village School Incident.

62. The thirteen prohibited film topics were advocacy of vengeance,nationalism, untruthful history, racial or religious discrimination, feudal loy-alty, militarism, suicide, subjugation of women, cruelty or evil, anti-democ-racy, illegal treatment of children, personal loyalty to the state or emperor,and opposition to the Potsdam Declaration or orders of the supreme com-mander.

63. Conde devoted the morning of the following day, November 17,to a meeting with film producers in which he explained that all copies ofthese films must be turned over to SCAP and must not shown in public again(“CR: 17 November 1945,” Box 5255). Later Conde denied having createdthe list, saying he was given a list of wartime films by the Japanese Film Cor-poration to which he made only a few additions and deletions (Hirano 1992:40–43), a process uncannily parallel to the way Boruff made up his list ofplays.

64. It happened that CI&E offices were on the fourth floor of theRadio Tokyo Building and CCD offices on the fifth floor, a coincidence thatfacilitated informal consultation in the early months of the Occupation. Inmid 1946, Theatre Sub-Section, CCD, moved to the Kantö Electric Companybuilding nearby.

65. All Japanese writers say Boruff ’s words constituted a direct com-mand (shirei) (Kawatake Shigetoshi 1964: 137; Kawatake Toshio 1995: 213) of“extraordinary strictness” (Okamoto 1998: 165). Had producers known thatBoruff intended to summarily ban all the plays that they would judge “vicious,”they would have been infinitely more distressed. But Boruff kept his inten-tions secret and no one on the Japanese side caught wind of his plan to ban.

66. Ironically, these cruel and bloody scenes of sacrifice (gisei) and rit-ual suicide (seppuku) are not kabuki creations. They were written for bunrakupuppets.

67. However, when the Investigation Committee discussed the listwith CI&E and CCD in December, it is quite clear that horse trading did notoccur.

68. Here is one such comment by Shöchiku president Nagayama Take-

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omi, written in 2005: “On the 14th [of November, 1945], CI&E theatre headNaval Lt. Boruff and censorship head Ernst, suddenly (totsuzen) appeared toinspect” the production of Village School (Nagayama 2005: 338). By this date,Boruff had seen perhaps twenty-five theatre performances in Tokyo and hisappearance at the Tokyo Gekijö was routine. It is also sobering to realize thatthe current president of the Shöchiku Company still incorrectly places Ernstat the scene, just as Bowers did forty-five years before (Ernst arrived in Japanthree days after the event).

69. Ernst became the first head of Theatre Sub-Section shortly afterhe arrived in Tokyo, November 17, 1945. Ehlers continued as a film censor inthe Pictorial Section, PPB, until he was demobilized in January or February1946 (PPBD, “period 21 January–20 February 1946,” Box 8586).

70. The name “Keith” on the back cover of the kanji list of 507 playtitles was written by a Shöchiku scribe (Shöchiku Ötani Library). When actorOnoe Kuroemon met Keith in New York in 1961, Keith told him he had notbeen involved in making the list (Interview with Onoe Kuroemon, June 19,2000). SCAP reports of the meetings do not mention Keith. Probably theShöchiku scribe mistook Goldstein of CCD for Keith.

71. Boruff ’s affable demeanor appears to have been deliberate,because his intention was extremely harsh: to expunge all “vicious” plays fromthe kabuki repertory.

72. We can understand now why Boruff and Ernst say three hundredplays were discussed, even though the list contained five hundred titles:Boruff accepted the list of nearly two hundred “possible” plays without dis-cussion (“CIEWS, period 1 December–15 December, 1945,” Box 5351; Ernst1956: 266). When Ernst says the meetings were spread over several weeks, heis probably including follow-up meetings within CCD and CI&E and perhapsfurther meetings with Shöchiku officials (Ernst letter to Inose Naoki, Febru-ary 3, 1987, Stanley Y. Kaizawa Collection, Hamilton Library, University ofHawai‘i).

73. Several sources suggest the three-way discussions produced a listof 174 “possible” titles (Kawatake Toshio 1995: 215; Okamoto 1998: 170;Tanaka 1964: 168). However, the definitive kanji list, written by Shöchiku onor around December 7, 1945, contains 187 “possible” titles. One explanationis that 174 is the number of “possible” titles on the Investigation Committee’soriginal list.

74. Toita Yasuji, who attended one or more meetings, says plays wereplaced in three categories: allowed, forbidden, and not good but not forbid-den (1979: 61). Perhaps he is recalling discussions of borderline cases but inthe end all plays were placed in one of the two categories.

75. Benten musume meoto shiranami and Benten kozö are alternate titlesfor the same play and both are listed.

76. The changes were: approved kabuki, two titles dropped and twoadded; disapproved kabuki, no change; approved new-history, five droppedand fourteen added; and disapproved new-history, two dropped and threeadded.

77. During the Occupation years, only one of the added plays was

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staged, Yamamoto Yüzö’s Lord Sakazaki of Dewa. It is a popular “new kabuki”(shin kabuki) play, often performed since its premier in 1921, so its exclusionfrom the original list seems to have been an oversight.

78. Kawatake Shigetoshi, in his 1959 account of the play list meetings,says that Boruff told the Investigation Committee he intended to publicizethe list of approved plays “throughout the length and breadth of Japan” (965).In his 1964 account, Kawatake quotes Boruff saying he intends to publicizethe list of both approved and disapproved plays (141–142).

79. Because a number of errors were made in copying the titles fromkanji into Roman letters, CCD thought it was issuing a list of 518 plays. SummerFestival: Mirror of Osaka is listed as two plays. A Souvenir from Nagasaki: The Taleof a Chinese is listed as two plays. A Souvenir of Jöshü: A Valuable Head is listedas A Souvenir of Jöshü on the approved list and A Valuable Head on the disap-proved list. Lovers’ Evening Suicide and The Temple Gate and the Paulownia Crest,which follow each other on the list, are run on as one play title. Hell of Snowand The Cormorant Fisherman’s House, which follow each other on the list, arerun on as one play title. Lord Sakazaki of Dewa is on both the approved and dis-approved list. Ernst was dead right when he insisted it would be folly toapprove or disapprove plays based on a list of titles (“Memorandum to: AKM,RHK, J JC,” February 26, 1947, E.E., Box 8618).

80. Ernst’s draft, unchanged, was approved by PPB District I head,Dibella, January 19 (Box 8618) and was sent to CI&E on January 22 underthe signature of General Eliot Thorpe, commanding officer, CIC (CIS) (Box8520).

81. Kawatake Shigetoshi quotes Boruff saying either “three years”(1959: 964) or “four or five years” (1964: 142).

82. The play titles that SCAP provided reporters are those on the kanjilist produced by the SCAP–Investigation Committee meetings. Although thatlist had been superceded for a month by CCD’s final list, Keith, who preparedthe public statement, did not use CCD’s Romanized list. Keith may havethought it more efficient to give Japanese reporters a list written in kanji. Orperhaps he did not have a copy of the CCD list, which was intended only forCCD censors in Osaka and Fukuoka. According to Ernst, there was no formalexchange of information between the theatre sections of CCD and CI&E(Ernst 1956: 258).

83. Miyake Daisuke’s Snow Prostitute was inadvertently left out, so thepublished new-history play list contained 107 titles.

84. In later years, Sugai reprinted the list of “possible” plays, dividedby author (1975: 40–42), and Kawatake Toshio, using his father’s notes, pub-lished the titles of forty-three “possible” and eighteen “not possible” plays,kabuki and new-history titles intermixed (1995: 215).

85. In July 1946, a Japanese news agency obtained the list of seventy“disapproved” kabuki titles from the Osaka CCD office and wrote a story list-ing sixty-nine titles (Two Shinbeis on the CCD list was dropped, apparently byaccident). The article was suppressed by the Press Section, PPB, Tokyo, forrevealing censorship practices and was never published (Pictorial to PPB DistI, “Publicity of Theatrical Censorship,” July 29, 1946, A.K.M., Box 8618).

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86. Forty-seven playwrights are represented. There are plays by theauthor of popular literature (taishü bungaku) Hasegawa Shin (eight possible,seventeen not possible), novelist-playwright Tanizaki Junichirö (five possible,one not possible), and, the most prolific kabuki author of the era, OkamotoKidö (eighteen possible, thirty-seven not possible), to cite three well-knownauthors in addition to Mayama Seika previously mentioned.

87. To cite a not unusual case, the Investigation Committee put on thelist ten new-history plays by kabuki playwright Yoshida Kenjirö writtenbetween 1925 and 1939. Only one, Kiyomasa at Nijö Castle, was well known toaudiences; it was revived every two or three years by Nakamura Kichiemon(Komiya 1989: 140; Nagayama 1996: index 145). Nine scripts are inconse-quential and were never restaged after their premiers. The InvestigationCommittee judged all ten plays “not possible” for performance. Nonetheless,the Committee included the titles among those that Shöchiku said it waslikely to produce.

88. Unfortunately Boruff’s “Final Report on Japanese Theater,” whichwould tell us more about his actions, cannot be found (it is quoted in “The-ater and Motion Pictures” 1952[?]: 16, fn.).

89. We will never know exactly what Keith said in the meeting becausenone of the participants, Japanese or American, wrote about it. KawatakeShigetoshi’s reconstruction of Keith’s statement (four sentences) is based onconversations he had with Shöchiku staff members who were present (1964:144).

90. Colleagues say Keith was moderate, artistic, and morally decent,which is at variance with the Japanese view. Kaneshima remembers pleasanttimes interpreting for Keith at kabuki performances. Keith enjoyed The Sub-scription List and did not object to its feudal theme. Keith would not acceptblandishments of free liquor and women offered by some theatre petitioners(Interview with Edward Kaneshima, December 4, 2001). And Keith servedmodestly in the background under Boruff, playing no part in Boruff ’s grandplans to reform kabuki. In short, Keith’s 50 percent remarks seem to be anaberration.

91. Rumors floated that because Keith overstepped his authority “hisname disappeared” from CI&E rolls (Okamoto 1998: 248). Keith was notremoved or demoted; he continued to head the theatre section of CI&E untilhis demobilization in June or July 1946 (see Keith’s “Weekly Report of theTheatrical Department of the Motion Picture and Theatrical Division,” Feb-ruary–May, 1946, Box 5304).

92. CI&E had no authority to practice censorship. Nonetheless, tosome extent new plays and film scenarios were subject to “double censorship,”first by CI&E and then by CCD. In early 1946, CCD screamed that when DavidConde’s Motion Picture and Theatrical Division personnel “checked” eachnew play script and film scenario for “compliance” with CI&E suggestions,this was de facto censorship. We can read the twenty-two-page transcript ofthe CCD-CI&E brouhaha that followed: “Relations With CI&E in CensoringMotion Pictures.” The conference resulted in CI&E abjectly promising to“withdraw from its former close supervision and control” of new films (“Notes

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on Conference,” March 11, 1946; and CCD, Memorandum for Record: “Pic-torial Censorship,” May 15, 1946, W. B. P[utnam], Box 8520).

93. I have found Japanese and/or English scripts of three plays onCCD’s approved list that were suppressed in 1946 by Goldstein or Ernst: Gorozöthe Gallant (March) for “justification of feudal system; glorification of samu-rai”; The Ferry at Yaguchi (May) for “clan warfare, is highly feudalistic, no valueplaced on human life”; and Rokusuke of Keya Village ( July) for “revenge moti-vation” (Shöchiku Ötani Library; Stanley Y. Kaizawa Collection, HamiltonLibrary, University of Hawai‘i).

94. Bowers knew nothing firsthand about the events leading to the arti-cles. Nonetheless he spread an explanation that cruelly maligned two SCAPcolleagues: “I was appalled. CIE—Hal Keith, I think—and CCD—Earle Ernst—summoned Shochiku together and said, ‘Kabuki is feudal, bloodthirsty,vengeful, and we forbid it. You cannot do anything except harmless kabukidances’” (1988: 203). As we have seen, this is not the course of action Keithor Ernst followed and Bowers presents no evidence. One can only concludethat Bowers was engaged in deliberate character assassination when he deliv-ered these remarks in a public forum. (See also Bowers 1970: 39.)

95. The count of plays varies slightly in different sources. This is aresult of miscounting, conflation of titles, and other clerical errors.

96. Bowers floated the idea that the reason SCAP went public wasbecause he vigorously defended kabuki in an interview published in the TokyoShinbun (Sanuki 1975: 29). However, SCAP released its denial a month beforeBower’s remarks were published (see Tokyo Shinbun, February 23, 1946).

97. The president of Töhö and six board members were also present.Because “Töhö has cooperated with this Unit 100% in the past,” Thompsondirected his remarks especially to Shöchiku’s conservative agenda.

98. In fact, six Shöchiku theatres featured kabuki programs in March1948: the Tokyo Gekijö, Shinbashi Enbujö, and Mitsukoshi Gekijö in Tokyo,the Osaka Kabuki-za and Naka-za in Osaka, and the Minami-za in Kyoto. Ötanidid not suggest to Thompson that he had miscounted, perhaps because Shö-chiku was planning to open kabuki productions in seven of its theatres the nextmonth (Memorandum, “Policy of Shochiku and Toho Companies,” March15, 1948, W. L. Thompson, Box 5305).

99. Thompson fumbled an opportunity to bring contemporary themesinto kabuki. He encouraged the young kabuki actors to perform modern plays(shingeki) or translations of American plays, such as Of Mice and Men (1950),but he saw no place for modern plays in kabuki because kabuki was a “classictheatre” to be preserved (Memorandum, “Production of modern plays per-formed by young Kabuki stars,” March 31, 1948, W. Thompson, Box 5305).

100. For two years, CIE had supported efforts to roll back the admis-sion tax, without success (MPTD, February 9, 1946). The income generatedby the tax was too large for the government to give up.

101. Among them were Narukami (originally on the “possible” list butdropped from the final CCD list), several new-history plays, and famous danceclassics such as Benkei Aboard Ship and The Ground Spider.

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102. Namely Kakiemon the Master Artist, a revival of a 1912 dramatiza-tion of Samuel Smiles’ Self Help (1859); Mayama Seika’s Fukuzawa Yukichi,about an enlightened, democratic Meiji-era reformer; People in a Storm, whichconcerns the misdeeds of Japanese secret police during the war; What Shall WeDo? about demobilized soldiers; and The Love of Takiguchi Nyüdö, in which thehigh-ranking hero “comes to loathe his samurai world” (Nagayama 1996: 360).The latter three, however, were written for performance by joint shinpa-kabukicasts and are not true kabuki plays. Even these kinds of new plays disappearedby the end of 1946.

103. Disapproved titles that CCD censors passed were The SubscriptionList, Battle at River Island in Shinshü, and Shunkan (three productions each);Battle Camp Debate, Lovers Suicides at Mt. Toribe, Pulling the Carriage Apart, andOno of Töfü (two productions each); The Battle of Ichinotani, Mountain Hag withChild, and Osaka Spring Rain (one production each); and Strife in the Date Clan(approved but not staged) (see Nagayama 1996).

104. For example, Village School and Pulling the Carriage Apart are twoscenes from Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy. When they are stagedtogether, do you count them as one or two plays? I have counted each scriptthat was separately submitted to CCD, whether it is a scene or a full play.Kabuki troupes toured extensively after the war when big city playhouses werenot available, but data on these performances is too fragmentary to include(i.e., Nagayama 1996: 892).

105. This figure includes traditional kabuki and new-history plays noton the list, as well as new plays. As a further analysis, it would be useful to sep-arate the three types of plays. It is interesting to speculate why Shöchikuchose so many off-the-list plays for production. Perhaps producers looked tolesser-known plays to replace the classics that were forbidden. Or perhapsthey believed unknown plays would not raise warning signals and so pass cen-sorship more easily. One certain reason is that the Investigation Committeehad not put some excellent plays on the list.

106. For example, see PPBI between 1947 and 1948, Box 8591. 107. Superiors in PPB District I, PPB Division, and CCD overruled

Bowers and approved the production: “If the production was unobjection-able for metropolitan Tokyo, it should likewise be unobjectionable for theprovinces” (Memo “From PPB District I, To PPB Division,” PJM[alloy], withattached endorsements, undated but after February 1948, Box 8618).

108. According to the critic Toita Yasuji, who was friendly with Bow-ers, on this occasion Bowers was more than censor: he appropriated the roleof producer and theatre manager. He telephoned president Ötani and toldhim, “Next month, I want to see Kichiemon do Revenge on Öshü Plain” (Toita1979: 68).

109. An exception in Japanese writings is Yoshida Matsuji’s statementthat “Bowers was not the only benefactor of kabuki. Boruff and Ernst were twomen who shielded kabuki through thick and thin” (Kawaji 1986: 15). Also, seeMayo for a balanced description of how Ernst and Bowers worked together inCCD to release disapproved plays (2001: 288–290).

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110. Earle Ernst passed the disapproved new-history play, Sasaki Taka-tsuna, for a December 4, 1945, opening at the Tokyo Gekijö, writing on thetitle page of the Japanese script, “Reviewed, 2 Dec, Lt. Ernst” (script in Shö-chiku Ötani Library). This action occurred several days before the list wascreated, but Goldstein and Ernst knew the play had been disapproved whenthey wrote on the title page of the English play translation “JG, Approved, 7Dec 45” followed by “Lt. Ernst.” I do not count this the first “released” play,although one could reasonably do so (see script in Stanley Y. Kaizawa Col-lection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i).

111. In November 1946, Palestin also released Strife in the Date Clan,although Shöchiku chose not to stage the play (see script in Stanley Y. Kai-zawa Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i).

112. Both versions of events, moreover, support Bowers’ claim that healone saved kabuki.

113. Even if we set aside Subscription List and Ichinotani, Ernst releasedsix plays on his own initiative in 1946 and early 1947. Previous writers havegenerally accepted Bowers’ narrative of censorship events. It is necessary touse other sources of information as well. The October 1946 program at theTokyo Gekijö illustrates this. Ernst released three disapproved plays for thatprogram—Pulling the Carriage Apart and Shunkan as well as Ichinotani—but inBowers’ telling, only Ichinotani is mentioned (Okamoto 1998: 266). Did Bow-ers not know that Ernst released the other two plays? Or did he deliberatelyomit Ernst’s actions from his narrative in order to enhance his own impor-tance? In either case, Bowers’ story is incomplete and misleading if takenalone.

114. In fact, more censors were involved than these five. WDC TakeoTada, Takeshi Teshima, and Kiyoko Hamamura in Osaka and Stanley Y. Kai-zawa in Tokyo approved theatre scripts in 1947–1948 under the supervision ofchief censors. In Tokyo, Joseph Goldstein and Alexander Calhoun may havereleased disapproved plays but we cannot be certain. A number of scripts lacka censor’s name or initials; I credit their release to the respective chief cen-sor at that time, John Allyn Jr. in Osaka and Earle Ernst or Faubion Bowersin Tokyo.

115. It was good strategy for Ernst to lay it on thick to his superiors,painting a dark picture of kabuki’s sad state, to encourage the higher militaryofficers to feel they were acting magnanimously. Certainly Ernst believed thatstrict CCD censorship was no longer necessary or useful.

116. In 1946 and 1947 the approving censor often wrote “Special” onthe script next to the PC stamp of approval.

117. The four plays mentioned are Subscription List, Ichinotani, Revengeon Öshü Plain, and Omori Hikoshiki, all plays that Bowers was interested in. Thetitles of four other plays that Ernst had released and in which Bowers wasuninterested are not mentioned. I surmise that Bowers was the author of thismonthly report.

118. Censor Alexander Calhoun recalls special efforts that they tookto help small, provincial troupes survive: “All the censors tried to be reason-able and helpful. The many small troupes had only old samurai scripts filled

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with loyalty, sword worship, and sacrifice. That’s all they had. We threw upour hands: how could we help them? We didn’t want to put the poor troupesout of business—there weren’t many films then and lots of theatre troupes—so we tried to salvage scripts as much as we could. We’d ask them to deletesomething and let them go. Only the worst examples were suppressed” (Tele-phone conversation with Alexander Calhoun, July 14, 2000).

119. When Bowers released Loyal Retainers in November 1947, hestamped the script of the vendetta scene, Act XI, approved (stamp number:PC, C.C.D. J-2039), but in the end he did not allow the act to be performed.Going far beyond CCD’s mandate, he required Shöchiku to submit lengthyrevisions of Act III, when Hangan is taunted by and strikes Moronao, and ActIV, Hangan’s ritual suicide. Bowers wrote “good” on the inserted revision ofAct IV. Scripts of Act I and III are marked with the CCD receipt number14,406 (August) and Acts IV, V, VI, and XI with number 15,721 (October),indicating the process of revision extended over at least three months (seescripts in Shöchiku Ötani Library).

120. This is one of a dozen times between 1947 and 1949 that CI&Etheatre officers usurped CCD’s censorship authority and illegally told pro-ducers not to stage a play that CI&E staff found objectionable.

121. For examples, see: PPBI, July 1947, Box 8585; PPBI, August 1947,Box 8561; and “Further Clarification of ‘Report on Communist TheatricalTroupes,’ date 29 Sept 47,” October 21, 1947, Box 8581.

122. To cover themselves in the event of criticism, Bowers and hisimmediate superiors in PPB drafted an informational memo under GeneralWilloughby’s name to Chief of Staff Lt. General Richard Sutherland, layingout the reasons they had approved Loyal Retainers, slyly noting that the onlycriticism of the play came from the communist party press. Willoughbyreturned the draft without sending it to Sutherland (G-2 to Chief of Staff,“Performance of Chushingura,” September 28, 1947, Box 8578).

123. The first written policy regulation, exempting Shinto shrinedances (kagura) from censorship, was adopted January 17, 1947, when Ernstwas chief theatre censor.

124. Allyn told me, “Although Stanley [Kaizawa] had more experi-ence in Tokyo and should have been kept on as chief censor, they made mechief theatre censor. It was a case of racial prejudice” (Interview with JohnAllyn Jr., October 5, 2000).

125. Allyn suppressed at least two of Shöchiku’s new-history play sub-missions in 1949: Appeal for Lord Keiki’s Life, intended for Tokyo production,and Okamoto Kidö’s Sadato and Muneto, planned for Osaka production (The-atre Sub-Section, “Daily Report,” April 19 and May 16, 1949, Box 8649).

126. Two outspoken critics were Senda Korya and Hijikata Yoshi. Theydespised the abhorrently feudal nature of kabuki art, believing the reactionarycontent of kabuki drama was extremely harmful to the development of democ-racy in Japan. They wanted SCAP to suppress kabuki plays, not approve them,and reduce Shöchiku’s monopoly control of kabuki production. See Oka-moto for further details (2001: 103–105).

127. It seems that Bowers did not believe kabuki was as innocent as he

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claimed when he worked in SCAP. Within months of leaving Japan, in a star-tling volte-face, Bowers trashed Japanese theatre for being grotesque, feudal,and military in spirit. Writing in Theatre Arts, he railed, “Not since Elizabethandrama has the world known a major art form which is as blood curdling, hor-rifying and grotesquely cruel as Japan’s theatre. It abounds in harakiri, torturescenes, murders, beatings, violence, dissevered arms and heads. [. . .] Japanis today involved in a mass of theatrical claptrap unparalleled in the world;[. . .] despite her postwar individual thought and collective social changes,she remains emotionally caught in the feudalism of her history and the mili-taristic spirit of her ancestors fostered since Meiji” (1948: 45–46).

128. Even after CCD’s dissolution, censorship in SCAP was not whollydead. With CCD out of the picture, kabuki producers turned to CI&E. InNovember 1949, Shöchiku officials asked Willard Thompson, head of theTheatre Unit, CI&E, if he would approve three kabuki plays not previouslystaged. Professing that “we do not censor,” Thompson noted the plays were“the ultimate in feudalism, revenge, and sword play.” Thompson recom-mended dropping one play and rewriting a second, which Shöchiku agreedto do (November 14, 1949, Box 5305). In February 1950, Shöchiku officialsasked Thompson to provide them with a list of desirable and undesirablekabuki plays, apparently in response to criticism that they were staging previ-ously disapproved plays now that CCD was closed (MPTD, February 16, 1950,Box 5304). That May, Thompson complained to Shöchiku that Kikugorö’s Julyprogram of Village School, Subscription List, and Tale of Sanemori was crammedwith beheadings and war propaganda. Shöchiku producers dropped all threeplays and came up with a substitute program (MPTD, May 11, 1950, Box 5304;Nagayama 1996: 798). CI&E was involved even more deeply in shingeki cen-sorship. Thompson constantly gave shingeki authors advice and guidance to“improve the content” of the scripts they were writing. This constituted a kindof censorship. He “advised” cancellation of an atom bomb drama Bell of Naga-saki (April 28, 1949), he “required” rewriting Daibosatsu Pass (May 14, 1949),he “required” revision of a play containing an “offensive” medical procedure(May 17, 1949) and one containing “extremely salacious scenes” (May 24,1949), and he “recommended” that “feudalistic sentiments not be glorified” inMiyamoto Musashi ( June 4, 1949, all Box 5305). Japanese considered Thomp-son’s suggestions to be SCAP commands that had to be obeyed. When direc-tors of the Experimental Theatre approved communist playwright M. Suzu-ki’s Book Binding Shop, Thompson forced them to withdraw the approval “inadherence to this Unit’s recommendation” ( July 21, 1949, Box 5127). Andwhen the Zenshin-za troupe members joined the communist party en masse,CI&E Theatre Unit supported an Eighth Army initiative to prosecute thegroup for tax evasion as “the most logical procedure to take to prevent toursby Zenshin-za” (Memo, “Road Tours by Zenshin-za Theatrical Company,”June 30, 1949, E. Kaneshima, Box 5305). SCAP censorship of kabuki trulyended only when Theatre Unit, CI&E, was dissolved in August 1950 (MPTD,August 17, 1950, Box 5304).

129. It is not possible in a short space to discuss the vagaries of CI&E

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legal authority. In practice, CI&E’s influence depended on the situation.Sometimes Japanese officials welcomed CI&E suggestions, as for example,CI&E’s initiative to register national treasures and protect cultural sites. Othertimes Japanese were afraid to reject CI&E advice, fearing unknown conse-quences. In publishing and filmmaking, CI&E had some control over alloca-tion of paper and film stock, which lent considerable clout to CI&E advice.Despite the letter of the law, CI&E wrote SCAPINs that ordered the Japanesegovernment to abolish the secret police, to eliminate Japanese theatre cen-sorship, and to forbid 236 wartime propaganda films, among other things. Inthe case of kabuki, CI&E’s advice that Shöchiku should do some plays withsocially relevant themes was strongly opposed by those who controlled kabukiproduction, and consequently the advice was avoided and evaded as much aspossible.

130. Precedents for Shöchiku’s policy of “preserving kabuki” can befound in the war years. In 1941, Shöchiku’s in-house Kabuki InvestigationCommittee selected certain kabuki classics to be “Citizens’ Drama” worthy ofgovernment support. Full houses were assured by “concentrating on famousplays performed by all-star casts” (Tanaka 1964: 156). In 1943, When Japan’swar situation worsened, Kawatake Shigetoshi proposed that troupes shouldbe placed under “state control” (kokka kanri) to assure kabuki’s protection andpreservation (Kawatake 1943).

131. CI&E commissioned shingeki plays on current social topics (theelections, the constitution, labor, economic goals, and so forth) for produc-tion by the League of Touring Theatres (Idö Geinö Renmei), but never kabukiplays.

132. Following their stint in the Occupation, Earle Ernst, FaubionBowers, and John Allyn Jr. continued their study of kabuki, becoming in theprocess articulate spokesmen for the art in the United States. Takeshi Teshimalives in Japan and Stanley Y. Kaizawa worked there for thirty years; both menretain close ties to kabuki actor friends. Alexander Calhoun, born in Shang-hai and raised in Asia, came back to Tokyo to practice law for a number ofyears. John Boruff and Hal Keith returned to professional careers in theatreand television in the United States. Joseph Goldstein studied at the LondonSchool of Economics and later taught law at Yale University. After earning adegree in literature at Columbia University, Seymour Palestin was a teacherin New York City. The twin brothers Shirai Matsujirö and Ötani Takejirö con-tinued to run kabuki as their private fief until their deaths in 1951 and 1969.

REFERENCES

Abbreviations Used in CitationsCIEWS Civil Information and Education Section, “Weekly summary”

reportCR “Consolidated Report of CI&E Section Activities” or “Consoli-

dated report for activities of this unit,” Civil Information and Education Section, daily report

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MPTD Motion Picture and Theatrical Division (Branch or Department), Civil Information and Education Section, “Weekly Report”

PPBD Press, Pictorial, and Broadcasting Division, Civil Censorship Detachment, monthly operating report

PPBI Press, Pictorial, and Broadcasting, District I, Civil Censorship Detachment, monthly operating report

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Shöchiku Ötani Library, Tokyo, and Shöchiku Kansai Archives, Osaka, eachretain several hundred Japanese-language kabuki production scriptssubmitted to CCD in Tokyo and Osaka, respectively, marked with CCDcensorship action and returned to Shöchiku.

Shöchiku Script Collection, Waseda University Theatre Museum Library, con-tains Shöchiku’s file copies of 220 English-language translations ofkabuki plays intended for CCD censorship. Red marginal numbersindicate the order in which they were prepared.

Stanley Y. Kaizawa Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i, con-tains photographs, censorship documents, and 119 English-languagetranslations of kabuki plays submitted to CCD, marked with censor-ship action, and kept as CCD file copies. Sergeant Kaizawa, later a WarDepartment civilian, was the longest-tenured member of CCD, The-atre Sub-Section, Tokyo, and a former chief theatre censor.

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