2018年4月20日 星期五

World Theatre Festival Shizuoka 2018

Shizuoka stage festival aims to engage its audiences the old-fashioned way

BY NOBUKO TANAKA
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
This hasn’t been a great year for social media. Internet addiction has been a hot topic, as have privacy issues, and there has even been a movement to #DeleteFacebook.
Last month, Satoshi Miyagi, artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, which runs World Theatre Festival Shizuoka, joined that chorus of critics.
“Since SNS (social networking services) are often just used as a one-way monologue, I worry that our world needs to pay more attention to listening to other people’s voices,” he said at a press conference to announce the lineup of his annual festival.
While noting that SNS can be effective in the promotion and dissemination of news, Miyagi, 59, posited that theater could act as a counterbalance to social media’s passive entertainment qualities.
“People involved with theater are eager to share their voices and hear back from live audiences in the moment,” he said. “So in the festival lineup this time, there are many artists who encourage audiences to become actively engaged.”
The roster features six programs from overseas, with two from France (“Dream and Derangement” and “Richard III — Loyalty binds me”) and one each from Germany (“An Enemy of the People”), Australia (“Jack Charles V The Crown”), Mexico (“The only thing a great actress needs, is a great work and the will to succeed”) and Norway (“Simulacrum”).
Two of Miyagi’s own works round out the performance side of the festival, which runs April 28 to May 6. They are a new production of “Hogiuta” (“Ode to Joy”), playwright So Kitamura’s comedic take on life in the aftermath of nuclear war from 1979, and a reprisal of “Mahabharata — Nalacharitam,” the director’s own piece based on an episode from the ancient Sanskrit epic, “The Mahabharata.” The latter delighted festivalgoers in Avignon, France, in 2014 (and in Shizuoka later that year) with its classical Heian Period (794-1185) aesthetic and beautiful live drumming.
The World Theatre Festival Shizuoka has been operating under different names since its inception as the Spring Arts Festival Shizuoka in 2000. It’s also growing; in addition to being staged at SPAC’s three indoor theaters in and around the city, and its outdoor space in the nearby hills, “The only thing a great actress needs, is a great work and the will to succeed” will be presented at a new venue in a former city-center restaurant.
Along with its varied Strange Seed program of free 30-minute performances in the city’s streets and its central Sumpujo Park, open-air talks, a festival bar and stalls of all sorts, the whole event looks sure to bring a real glow to the Golden Week holidays.
As a quintessential example of Miyagi’s 2018 theme of “listening to others’ voices,” it would be hard to top the masterful re-creation of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” by Thomas Ostermeier, the artistic director of Berlin’s cutting-edge Schaubuhne theater since 2000.
Although it is making its Japan debut at the festival after being staged in more than 30 cities worldwide since premiering at Avignon Festival in 2012, the work’s relevance only seems to grow.
In the Norwegian playwright’s 1882 original, the hero, Dr. Stockmann, runs tests that show dangerous levels of contamination in the hot-spring water of his small town whose economy depends on its famed public baths. When he reveals his findings, though, the citizens turn against him and he becomes a pariah.
Ostermeier tells The Japan Times via phone that he read Ibsen’s play as an examination of morality in the face of a high economic cost — and about the way economic power can dominate politics.
Explaining that he created his version in the wake of 2008’s economic crash and Occupy movement, he says: “The political conflict of the play was interesting for me because so-called democracy doesn’t work in our economy-first societies anymore. So now we don’t know where our political system is leading us.”
Ostermeier doesn’t just confine this work to the stage, though, because in his final scene the actors lead the audience to debate the hero’s decision to go public about the contamination after the town refuses to spend money to eliminate it. Then, finally, the issue is decided there and then by a show of hands.
“It’s interesting to see how audiences in different places react differently, and how they regard the political system where they are living,” Ostermeier says. “I think the world is full of manipulation and propaganda and people are not involved enough in the way they should be.”
Meanwhile, The Japan Times also caught up with Argentinian contemporary dancer and choreographer Daniel Proietto, who is currently a guest artist at the Norwegian National Ballet and was rehearsing his role in “Simulacrum,” the duet he will perform at the Shizuoka festival with renowned 78-year-old Japanese flamenco dancer Shoji Kojima.
Speaking at Kojima’s studio in Tokyo’s Aoyama district, Proietto — who could almost be his partner’s grandson — explained that “Simulacrum” was created for them by Norwegian choreographer Alan Lucien Oyen. Since its premiere at Oslo Opera House in 2016, he says they have taken the show to the United States and France — but performing its fusion of flamenco, contemporary and female-style kabuki dance here will be especially exciting, as it actually delves into Kojima’s family roots.
Although he studied kabuki and noh at a dance school in Argentina, Proietto says it wasn’t until “a fateful trip here in 2012” that he came across nihon buyō, a traditional Japanese genre of dance and pantomime, and was extended the privilege of being taken on as an apprentice by one of its leading exponents, Fujima Kanjuro VIII.
“Nihon buyō changed my way of acting and dancing, but primarily my choreography,” he says. “Its value is quite amazing and it’s entirely different from styles such as Western ballet, which rate an artists’ individuality over and above the history of a piece. In nihon buyō, the tradition is paramount and the style has hardly ever changed.
“However, we are making a special version for Shizuoka with me doing the narration in Japanese,” he adds with a laugh, while insisting he’s practicing hard so he can reach out effectively to the audience.
Besides those two non-Japanese programs, the four others from overseas include “Jack Charles V The Crown,” an autobiographical one-man performance with musical accompaniment by its eponymous indigenous Australian creator.
Then, in what the 94-year-old French dramatist Claude Regy says is his “final work,” the master director will perform in “Dream and Derangement,” based on the short and tragic life of the great Austrian expressionist poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914).
Director, playwright and actor Jean Lambert-wild performs the titular role in “Richard III — Loyalty binds me,” and rising director Damian Cervantes spearheads the empowering “The only thing a great actress needs, is a great work and the will to succeed.”
In fact, when speaking about that Mexican production, Miyagi took the opportunity to once again laud the kind of two-way communication theater provides.
“This piece has been performed in more than 200 places all over the world, as it only needs a small space,” he said. “So I hope many artists will realize they can engage with people anywhere even with just two actors if their idea is really good.”
World Theatre Festival Shizuoka 2018 runs from April 28 to May 6. For information about venues, tickets (¥1,000-¥4,100, plus concessions) and free bus services between venues and other attractions, call 054-202-3399 or visit www.spac.or.jp.

2018年4月19日 星期四

日本將氫能視為下一個液化天然氣產業;2014 Japan aiming to become forerunner in fuel-cell cars


為取代汽柴油交通工具,歐美國家發展電動化,日本卻獨排眾議主張「氫能經濟」,來看看日本的戰略思維是什麼。
如何取代汽柴油交通工具的發展路線上,日本與歐美有相當大的歧異。歐美國家主張「萬物電動化」,也就是過去沒有接電是燒油的汽車要電動化,日本...
TECHNEWS.TW




May 29, 2014 3:41 am JST

Japan aiming to become forerunner in fuel-cell cars


A Honda fuel-cell car at a solar-powered hydrogen station.
TOKYO -- The Japanese government is putting its full weight behind the promotion of fuel-cell vehicles, with Toyota Motor aiming to commercialize a fuel-cell car this fiscal year ahead of any other company.
     In a fuel-cell vehicle, hydrogen stored in the tank reacts with oxygen from the air to generate electricity that powers a motor. Currently, only a few dozen to 100 fuel-cell cars are running in Japan, on an experimental basis. The government has been considering efforts to promote the technology, having positioned the commercialization of such vehicles in 2015 as part of its growth strategy.
     The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to relax regulations on fuel tanks later this month. Under the new rules, hydrogen tanks can be filled to a maximum pressure of 875 atmospheres, up from about 700 now. This will allow vehicles to travel around 20% farther without refueling.
     Toyota's to-be-released fuel-cell car will have a range of 600km, more than a typical gasoline-powered passenger automobile, making possible a trip from Tokyo to Osaka without refueling. The deregulation would put Japan on par with other countries that allow high-pressure hydrogen refueling.
     Japan is also involved in talks with the United Nations, the European Union and others to simplify procedures for importing and exporting fuel-cell cars. The government intends to reflect in domestic laws in 2016 a treaty for recognizing safety inspections of other countries. This would make it easier to export fuel-cell cars built in Japanese factories.
     Toyota is pressing ahead with development towards mass production of fuel-cell cars. It initially planned to bring fuel-cell vehicles to market in 2015, but it now intends to do so during the current fiscal year ending March 2015. Honda Motor plans to release its fuel-cell cars to the public in 2015. The only other company planning to commercialize fuel-cell cars in 2015 is South Korea's Hyundai Motor, so Japanese automakers are seen taking the early lead in this field.
(Nikkei)
目前氫燃料電池車的發展還遠遠落後於全電動車,在美國,第一輛商用氫燃料電池車,現代汽車的 Tucson 到 2014 年才上市,加州政府不得不出手,以政府力量協助推動氫燃料電池,特斯拉 CEO 穆斯克也認為鋰電池技術比燃料電池的理論最優性能還要好,競賽已經結束,不過日本政府不這麼認為,打算積極衝刺氫燃料電池。
據《日本經濟新聞》報導,日本政府打算全力推動國內產業發展氫燃料電池車,並且還把氫燃料電池車商業化,列為 2015 年經濟成長的總體策略之一。在實際的政策上,日本政府首先以放寬法規來幫助氫燃料電池車產業,原本日本政府規定氫燃料電池的氫氣槽儲存壓力不得高於 700 大氣壓,新規定提高到 875 大氣壓,將可增加 20% 的續航力。由於其他國家多半允許高壓氫儲存,日本政府放寬管制有助於日本車廠與其他國家的車廠競爭。
此外,日本政府也正在與歐盟及其他國家做貿易上的談判,希望簡化氫燃料電池車進出口的行政程序,與減少法規上的障礙,日本可能將於 2016 年立法承認其他國家的安全規定,換取能從日本工廠生產出口氫燃料電池車。
不過,目前整個日本,也只有不到 100 輛的氫燃料電池車,多半是實驗車。率先推出氫燃料電池量產車款的日本汽車大廠將會是豐田(Toyota),Toyota 即將推出的氫燃料電池車的續航力為加滿氫燃料可跑 600 公里,超過許多一般汽油車,這個距離可以在日本從東京開到大阪,途中不須加氫,Toyota 計畫在這個財務年度內,也就是 2015 年 3 月以前推出,而本田(Honda)的氫燃料電池車也將於 2015 年上市。
日本認為目前氫燃料電池車量產上市者不多,只有現代汽車是日廠唯一對手,所以日廠還算是有搶占市場先機,不過,氫燃料電池車的發展,不只是車廠推出新車,還仰賴整體大環境,如各國加氫站系統的完善,日本政府一頭熱推動,是否能得遂所願,還是終究計畫趕不上變化,突然重蹈過去許多失敗或不了了之的產業計畫的覆轍?或許日本政府力推氫燃料電池車政策成功與否,還得仰賴加州政府推動加氫站系統的「配合」了。

2018年4月17日 星期二

Unit 731: Japan discloses details of notorious chemical warfare division

Japan has disclosed the names of thousands of members of Unit 731, a notorious branch of the imperial Japanese army that conducted lethal experiments on Chinese civilians.

'According to historical accounts, male and female prisoners, named “logs” by their torturers, were subjected to vivisection without anaesthesia after they had been deliberately infected with diseases such as typhus and cholera. Some had limbs amputated or organs removed.'

National archives lists members of army branch that conducted lethal…
THEGUARDIAN.COM

2018年4月15日 星期日

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