Yotsuya Ghost Story

In Japan, everyone knows the story of Iemon, who disowns his wife for another woman and is pursued by her vengeful ghost for the rest of his life. To this day, “Yotsuya Kaidan” (The Ghosts at Yotsuya), first performed in 1825, still features on the summer programmes of the traditional kabuki theatres. But the story has also been repeatedly used in puppet theatre and in splatter movies, a very popular genre in Japan.

At Theatre X in Tokyo, Jossi Wieler devised a radical new version with twelve Japanese performers including Yoshi Oida, who has acted with Peter Brook. This update is motivated by the fact that the piece has a sociocritical background, providing a very realistic account of a society at the threshold of modernity and the decline of moral values resulting from urban rootlessness. Human coexistence is shaped by greed, cruelty and lust for revenge; ghosts appear as a past that has not been come to terms with. “Wieler stages it with a stupendous blend of lightness and horror – everything is uncanny …”
Renate Klett, Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Yotsuya Ghost Story” – a Japanese-German collaborate creative theatre project – is part of the Germany in Japan 2005/2006 cultural programme: the performance at spielzeiteuropa, one of the co-producers, is the first outside Japan. The show will then tour various European cities.