Akira Miyoshi: Toi Ho, 22 August 2000

 

Tokyo Bunka Kaikan

 

Michio Tatara (Hasekura Tsunenaga) Eiji Date (Luis Sotelo) Keizo Takahashi (Date Masamune) Kiyotaka Kaga (Tokugawa Ieyasu), Emiko Suga (Shadow)

 

Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, Opera Hasekura Tsunenaga 'Toi Ho' Chorus Group, Sendai Boys-Girls Chorus Group, Yuzo Toyama (conductor), Makoto Sato and Hideo Kanze (directors), Jiro Ariga (stage designer), Kikuko Ogata (costumes) Mutsuo Takahashi (text)

 

 

The full title of this short, powerful work, oratorio-like work is 'Opera Hasekura Tsunenaga "Toi Ho" '. It has also been called 'Faraway Sail', a translation of Toi Ho. It is the story of Hasekura Tsunenaga, a retainer despatched on a mission to the Pope, lasting from 1613 to 1620, by Date Masamune, the powerful feudal lord of Sendai, just before the Christian religion was proscribed in Japan and the country closed to the outside world in almost total isolation.

 

It was a civic commission, as with other recent Japanese operas, in this case for the 400th anniversary of the city of Sendai. Miyoshi started it in 1990. The first performance was in Sendai on 21 March 1999 (there were seven performances in Sendai and Tokyo), and it was revived again four times this year.

 

It is not the only Japanese opera to deal with this period and this particular theme. Teizo Matsumura's opera Chinmoku (Silence), based on a novel by Shusaku Endo also deals with the 17th century Christian persecution. These works stand in contrast to operas by Minoru Miki, Toshiro Mayazumi and others that have Buddhist themes.

 

The performance in Tokyo was staged on a cross-shaped platform extending from the orchestra pit to the back of the stage, with the orchestra divided into four by the cross. Strings in the front sections, wind, brass, percussion and Japanese instruments behind. A large chorus of adults and children moved in lines and blocks both around the auditorium and on the platform.

 

Musically the work might be described as a cross (unintentional!) between Schoenberg's Moses and Aron and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. The soloists and chorus alternately sing, chant, declaim and speak their way through the work, sometimes monotonously, but accompanied throughout by an intense, startlingly inventive, largely atonal score, sustaining a rapid and unremitting series of climaxes. Toi Ho only lasts for an hour.

 

Three mimes in red and black, made up like the villains in Chinese opera with white squares painted in the centre of their faces, contrasted strongly with the largely static soloists, handling most of the stage business, attending (and mocking!) the soloists, waving props and making the Christian references highly ambiguous, so that when Hasekura arrives in Spain and Italy, he is depicting bowing down idolatrously before giant puppets representing the King of Spain (in the form of a monkey) and the Pope.

 

The performers were all strong, assured and moved well - led by Michio Tatara as Hasekura, Emiko Suga as his Shadow - a kind of commentator role - and Eiji Date as the monk Sotelo who went with Hasekura on his journey.

 

 

Simon Holledge