{"id":3386,"date":"2019-05-27T12:33:09","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T03:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/en\/?p=3386"},"modified":"2021-10-29T18:44:12","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T09:44:12","slug":"whey-tiffany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/performance\/whey-tiffany\/","title":{"rendered":"Whey theater “Tiffany”
Komaba Agora Theater, 2019.4.11 – 4.21 <\/small>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo by Urin Miura<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0A portrait of humanity and coldhearted discrimination by fraud and money<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This piece addresses the as-yet unsolved, modern-day issues of foreign residents in Japan that are being excluded from the Japanese society. People from Asian countries are facing a variety of problems related to their nationality. Their struggles are illustrated in the setting of an illegally operating casino in a so-called \u201cgame coffee shop\u201d in a town near Tokyo, on the other side of the Tama River, with a particular emphasis on the uncertain, borderline existence of both the location and the characters appearing in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFraud\u201d and \u201cmoney\u201d are the two keywords around which the play revolves. Masami(Masami Nakamura) and her superior Koichi Kondo (Yuichi Saito) together use all kinds of techniques to coax Masami\u2019sformer boyfriend Shin-chan (Kento Ogura) and his friend Roy(Yo Yoshida) into a pyramid investment scheme. Saito comes across quite funny as he tries in all too suspicious ways to sell his product under the guise of \u201cself-development,\u201d and in the course of the comedy of cheaters and cheated, it becomes clear that Masami, Shin-chan and Royshare the same circumstances of non-Japanese natives. Masamiand Shin-chan are Korean, while Royis the son of Japanese and Filipino parents. Masamidoes her current job because her tentative employment agreement had been withdrawn because of her origins, and it is from this standpoint of a weak person who is used as a partner by a Japanese swindler, that Masaminow tries to betray her countryman. The fraud scheme works as an epitome of the complicated situation these people have to deal with.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo by Urin Miura<\/p>\n

In the second half, things take a rather serious turn. Masami\u2018s Japanese fianc\u00e9 breaks their wedding engagement, before we find out that Masamiwas pregnant with his child. After the child\u2019s birth, the fiance\u2019s brother (Momoji Yamada) appears at the shop and puts a stack of deposit money on the table to \u201ccompensate for Masami\u2019schild\u201d that they would \u201cadopt so it could obtain Japanese citizenship and lead a happy life.\u201d Meiko Yamamoto (Fumi Moriya), a regular customer with Ainu ancestors, protests and places another stack of banknotes on the table. \u201cTake this!\u201d These come from the illegal casino in the back. With two different types of money in front of her \u2013 Japanese money that reflects the old imperialist idea of ethnic discrimination by monetary means, and unlawfully acquired minority money \u2013 Masamiis torn between conflicting emotions. Her double-bound situation, unable to choose either stack, symbolizes the uncertain position of minority people that live in Japan but aren\u2019t treated as Japanese citizens.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo by Urin Miura<\/p>\n

Meiko visits the Korean shop-owner in hospital to give him something she has knitted for him. The meshed fabric with its knitted threads again seems to represent the situation of minority people that are entangled in a mesh of problems. But the fabric can also keep the body warm. Now will we ever see the day when similar \u201ccold protection measures\u201d are implemented in Japan in order to kindly integrate minorities? This play doesn\u2019t try to make a loud ideological statement. It simply illustrates and projects the deep-rooted ethnic problem of people being made fools of by cold \u201cmoney\u201d as a real-life scenery.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Andreas Stuhlmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Urin Miura   \u00a0A portrait of humanity and coldhearted discrimination by fraud and money   Th […]","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":3388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[150],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3386"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3402,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions\/3402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}