Conversations with Kenji Miyazawa

CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) will present a short program of works by CRS Contact Improv instructor Kayoko Nakajima, poet Teo Yamamoto and other artists, introducing the beloved Japanese writer, artist, and philosopher Kenji Miyazawa to western audiences. The program will take place at CRS on Saturday, May 12, 2012 at 8 pm. Tickets are $10 and are available online and at CRS.

This program is offered as an unofficial prelude for New York audiences to this summer's tenth TheaterX International Performing Art Festival 2012 in Tokyo, which this year is dedicated to works inspired by Kenji Miyazawa and will include the piece created by Nakajima and her collaborators.

The CRS program will consist of two parts:

In Part one, poet/artist Teo Yamamoto and musician/artistHacci Morihata  will read/perform poems and stories by Miyazawa as well as several poems by Yamamoto, whose work at times strongly parallels Miyazawa's with regard to his love of animals and exploration of animism and the interconnectedness of all things. 

The second half of the program, "Ishikko Kensan" (Kenji's childhood nickname relating to his passion for rock collecting), is a international collaboration between Tokyo and New York City, utilizing modern technologies (Skype, email, youtube, and blogging to to allow the artists to work together at a distance. For the actual performance, Kakiuchi will travel from Tokyo to NYC to perform alongside Nakajima and Czach.  "Ishikko Kensan" reflects on Miyazawa's life and work through dance: Contact Improvisation by Kayoko Nakajima and Carly Czach and Popping by Yukari Kakiuchi. Contact Improvisation is chosen to communicate Kenji's strong interest in astronomy and philosophy of the universe. Popping expresses his brain activity as a person with synesthesia. Projection and music is by Naoya Ninomiya, set design and creation is by Shugo Tsuchida, directed by Masaru Munekata.

For more information about the performance in Japan, visit:
http://www.theaterx.jp/

Blog (with videos documenting the rehearsal/development process):
http://ishikkokensan.wordpress.com/

About Kenji Miyazawa

Kenji Miyazawa has transcended the generations to become one of Japan's most read and best loved authors. Born over a hundred years ago in 1896 in Iwate Prefecture, he was only 37 at the time of his death. Kenji's literary works were mostly published posthumously.

Kenji's stories are set against the whole of the universe----a world replete with people, animals, plants, the wind, clouds, light, the stars and the sun. All hold discourse together. All are in empathy with one another. This free association between the elements and living things that make up our world is one of the distinguishing features that predominates Kenji's works. The interaction he portrays is never nonsensical, but always animated with an authenticity that rings true to the reader. Kenji felt that all living creatures are brothers and that happiness in the true sense is impossible for the individual to attain unless he seeks the happiness of all other living things as well. Readers are able to perceive in Miyazawa Kenji's prolific works his views on the arrogance of modern man toward nature; the interconnection of man, animated nature, the earth, and the universe; and the pathway to a new cosmology.

—  http://www.kenji-world.net/english/who/who.html