{"id":8879,"date":"2025-02-04T10:50:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T01:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/?p=8879"},"modified":"2025-02-04T16:32:53","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T07:32:53","slug":"the-buddha-pond-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/out-and-about\/the-buddha-pond-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Jun Tsutsui \u201cThe Buddha Pond \u2013 Revisited”
FFT D\u00fcsseldorf<\/small>
2024.11.21, 23<\/small>"},"content":{"rendered":"

photo: Susanne Diesner<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is it a rabbit or a duck? Is that the question? The image of the rabbit-duck, discussed by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations<\/i>, is an example of how there can be multiple but mutually exclusive ways of looking at something. A rabbit or a duck can be seen in the image, but both cannot be seen at the same time.<\/p>\n

At first glance, \u201cThe Buddha Pond \u2013 Revisited,\u201d written and directed by Jun Tsutsui, appears to be dealing with that very theme. Inspired by the Shakagaike Incident of 1880, the work is structured as a dialogue between two completely different accounts of the event: the children\u2019s book Kamo to hara-kiri jiisan<\/i> (The Duck and the Belly-Cutting Old Man<\/i>), written in Japanese, and the German-language Prinz Heinrichs Weltumsegelung<\/i> (Prince Heinrich\u2019s Journey Around the World<\/i>). For example (although this is a minor detail with little bearing on the whole), the children\u2019s book has Heinrich hunting for ducks, while the travelogue mentions rabbits. Given this, arguing that the work is about the rabbit-duck problem would appear to make sense.<\/p>\n

Such an explanation, however, would fail to capture important parts of the work. Like the line \u201cThe travelogue is a travelogue; the children\u2019s book is a children\u2019s book\u201d succinctly states, the performance of \u201cThe Buddha Pond \u2013 Revisited\u201d is conducted so as to avoid, to the extent possible, reaching the almost obvious conclusion that the two accounts are referring to the same incident.<\/p>\n

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photo: Susanne Diesner<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The following is a brief summary of the Shakagaike Incident. During a stay in Japan in 1880, Prince Heinrich of Prussia went duck hunting at the Shakagaike pond in Osaka. Hunting, however, was not allowed in the area, and the prince got into trouble with local residents, with police called to the scene. The German consul lodged a protest with the Osaka prefectural government the next day. Fearing a serious diplomatic incident, the Japanese government decided to punish the local party and issue an apology to the Germans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The two performers in \u201cThe Buddha Pond \u2013 Revisited\u201d\u2014Jun Tsutsui, a playwright and director from Osaka who does not understand German, and Oleg Zhukov, an Odessa-born actor who lives in Germany and does not understand Japanese\u2014each read the children\u2019s book and the travelogue, and communicate their contents to each other while commenting on the texts. The Shakagaike Incident was exacerbated by the parties\u2019 inability to communicate with each other, but the performance is subtitled in Japanese and German, so the two men on stage can understand what the other is saying. Anyone in the audience with a command of either Japanese or German will (should) have no problem understanding the content either. In a sense, the subtitles provided throughout the performance make for a visual and auditory demonstration of how subject matter can be expressed in multiple ways.<\/p>\n

Some way into the performance, Zhukov tries to suggest that the two books might be referring to the same event, but Tsutsui cuts him off. The connotation is that such a pronouncement would kill the dialogue as effectively as a \u201cYou\u2019re being serious?!\u201d\u2014a well-known punchline in Japanese comedy, popularized by Osaka comedians\u2014kills a gag. While Tsutsui\u2019s insistence that \u201cbeing serious\u201d equates to declaring the end of the act fails to convince Zhukov, the latter agrees to avoid this and continue the dialogue, letting the performance go on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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photo: Susanne Diesner<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You could call this development farcical, but the fact that continuing the dialogue is prioritized here is interesting. There are certainly cases in which meaning is found in the continuation of dialogue, or in the process of dialogue that leads to a conclusion, rather than in reaching the conclusion itself. For this reason, we also need to recognize that the playing field of dialogue is not always a fair one. Avoiding \u201cYou\u2019re being serious?!\u201d is no more than a rule introduced unilaterally by Tsutsui. To illustrate this argument further, the script itself was written by Tsutsui, with Zhukov merely speaking the lines written for him. An immense imbalance of power underlies this dialogue between two testimonies about a single event.<\/p>\n

When seen from the outside, however, the tables turn. That\u2019s because the work was performed at the FFT D\u00fcsseldorf theater in Germany as part of a program called Nippon Performance Nights. Tsutsui\u2019s work was likely judged by a largely German-speaking audience under German standards for performing art. This tricky state of affairs can certainly be appreciated in light of the Shakagaike Incident\u2014the conclusion of which was influenced by the unbalanced relationship between the two countries at the time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

photo: Susanne Diesner<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To be sure, these are only my observations as a Japanese speaker who does not understand German. In the extreme, it is possible that a German speaker may perceive \u201cThe Buddha Pond \u2013 Revisited\u201d as a completely different work. I hear Tsutsui chiming in with \u201cYou\u2019re being serious?!\u201d\u2026but would like to conclude this review by observing that the charm of this work is not only in its clever composition, but equally\u2014or even primarily\u2014in the interaction between the carefree and shady Tsutsui and the earnest and charming Zhukov.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Ilmari Saarinen<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"photo: Susanne Diesner   Is it a rabbit or a duck? Is that the question? The image of the rabbit-duck, di […]","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":8882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[150],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8879"}],"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\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8879"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8914,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8879\/revisions\/8914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}