🔖 5 min read

In an era increasingly attuned to questions of gender, colonial memory, and cultural identity, few classical texts remain as hauntingly relevant as Medea. In Satoshi Miyagi’s acclaimed adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, the ancient Greek narrative is filtered through the historical and philosophical textures of Meiji era Japan, forging a radical cross-cultural conversation about women’s agency, bodily autonomy, and systemic oppression.

Rooted in Japanese theatrical tradition and global feminist critique, Miyagi’s Medea challenges not only how we read Greek tragedy but also how we understand the inheritance of silence—across empires, genders, and generations.

 

Medea in Meiji Japan: Patriarchy in the Guise of Progress

The Setting

Satoshi Miyagi – Artistic Director of Japan’s Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) – sets Medea not in Corinth but in Meiji era Japan (1868–1912). This was a period marked by a dramatic transition from the rigid, hierarchical values of the Tokugawa era to a rapidly modernising society, as Japan embraced Westernisation and pursued imperial ambitions. The speed and scale of these changes demanded swift adaptation from Japanese society as a whole, often at the expense of traditional identities and gender autonomy, particularly for women.

The Location

By relocating the drama to a traditional ryōtei (a Japanese restaurant where male patrons are entertained by women), the production foregrounds how patriarchal structures commodify the female body. Medea, in this context, is not simply a tragic heroine betrayed by love, but a metaphor for women exploited by both colonial modernity and native misogyny.

A woman and a man standing out with the three men behind them

The Score

The production’s music is composed by Hiroko Tanakawa, who is credited for the original score in Miyagi’s Medea and is recognised for integrating traditional Japanese instrumentation into the performance’s rhythm, contributing to its meditative and minimalist atmosphere. Together with Miyagi’s minimalist stage design, the result is not spectacle, but spiritual compression—a performance environment where the weight of time, empire, and emotion converge.

Miyagi resists the temptation to universalise the narrative. Instead, he allows Japanese form and history to guide the emotional logic of the piece. The effect is transformative, unsettling, and deeply moving—a work that makes the familiar unfamiliar, and vice versa.

 

Dual Bodies and Split Selves

At the core of Miyagi’s theatrical language is a striking formal device in which each character is portrayed by two performers: a male speaker and a female mover. Drawing inspiration from kabuki traditions and the structure of bunraku puppet theatre – where a narrator delivers lines as puppeteers animate the figures – this technique separates voice from body to powerful effect.

Bunraku Puppet Theatre (with two men holding the puppet)

Image Credit:Britannica

The speaker delivers dialogue with stylised intensity, echoing gidayū narration found in classical Japanese performance, while the mover channels emotion through highly expressive, kabuki-rooted movement and carefully composed visual poses. The result is a compelling split-screen theatricality: as if the character’s public voice and private self are playing out simultaneously onstage.

This approach also draws from ningyō-buri, a kabuki art where actors move like puppets, reinforcing the sense of characters being manipulated by societal forces. In Medea, this duality becomes a potent metaphor for the fragmentation of female subjectivity—the idea that women are often forced to exist as disjointed selves, performing roles written for them by patriarchal systems.

  • The male narrator recites dialogue, symbolising the dominant voice of culture, law, and patriarchal logic.
  • The female dancer moves in silence, embodying repressed desire, pain, and rage.

Photos of women who were victimized by men

Meiji Bodies, Disciplined and Defiant

Miyagi’s expressive choreography also draws power from a deeper historical current: how the Meiji state regulated physical expression, especially for women. As Japan sought to modernise, the female body became an ideological battleground—transformed by Western norms of posture, fashion, and decorum, as explored in Japan Nakama’s feature on Meiji bodily practices.

Women were expected to perform national femininity—polite, reserved, physically constrained. Against this backdrop, the Medea dancer’s restrained but expressive movements serve as a visual revolt against the disciplined Meiji body. In her silent choreography, we witness the reclaiming of agency through physicality.

The performance becomes an act of embodied resistance – echoing the rage of countless women who were shaped, silenced, and sacrificed in the name of cultural progress.

Explore further: The Westernisation of Japan and the Transformation of Bodily Practices

 

Reclaiming the Tragic Form: Postcolonial Feminism in Motion

A woman and a girl doing calligraphy with other women during the Meiji period

This production of Medea does more than reinterpret a classical text—it decolonises the canon. By relocating the narrative to Meiji era Japan and framing it through Japanese theatrical forms, Miyagi challenges the presumed universality of Greek tragedy and asks: who gets to inherit these stories, and on whose terms?

Medea has often been filtered through a Western feminist lens, but here, she is recast within Japan’s own complex gender history—one shaped by imperial ambitions and the suppression of women’s voices. The decision to have her words spoken by a male actor, while a silent female performer enacts her suffering, becomes a potent symbol: not just of patriarchal control, but of how colonised and marginalised women have historically been spoken for, spoken over, or silenced entirely.

In this reimagining, Medea is both an individual in pain and an archetype of resistance—a woman made monstrous by betrayal, yet fully aware of the system that condemned her. Her rage is no longer madness; it is a historical memory. Her vengeance, a lucid reckoning.

 

Western Classics Adapted in Japanese Theatre

Miyagi’s Medea belongs to a vibrant tradition of Japanese theatre adapting Western classics into a distinctly local framework. Since the late 19th century, Japanese directors have reimagined European dramas using indigenous styles. Renowned director Yukio Ninagawa, for instance, famously blended Shakespearean and Greek tragedies with kabuki and bunraku, as in his acclaimed all-male Medea (1984), featuring an onnagata—a male kabuki actor specialising in female roles.

Similarly, Shozo Sato’s pioneering Kabuki Shakespeare productions in the 1970s and ’80s, including Kabuki Macbeth and Kabuki Medea, fused Elizabethan drama with kabuki’s elaborate aesthetics, achieving critical acclaim. These adaptations transform familiar Western narratives through Japanese theatrical traditions, uncovering fresh emotional and cultural resonances.

 

The UK Premiere at The Coronet Theatre

The Coronet Theatre in Notting Hill is a historic London venue known for its bold international programming across theatre, dance, film, and music. Originally opened in 1898 and later revived by The Print Room in 2014, it blends Victorian grandeur with contemporary creativity. Under Artistic Director Anda Winters, The Coronet has become a key stage for innovative global works—including a number of acclaimed Japanese productions—cementing its role as a vital bridge between cultures.

This summer, it will host the UK premiere of Medea, continuing its commitment to genre-defying, world-class performance.

Performance Details

  • 📅 Dates: June 18–21, 2025
  • 🕢 Time: 7:30 PM
  • 🏛 Venue: The Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill, London
  • 🎭 Language: Japanese with English subtitles
  • ⏱ Duration: ~80 minutes (no interval)
  • 🔞 Age Guidance: 12+ (themes of infanticide)
  • 🎟️ Tickets: £20–£60

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A woman crying with two men behind her

 

References

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Written by Giulia Wilzewski

Giulia is a German journalist with a sharp eye for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle. Her writing brings a stylish, international perspective to Japan’s latest trends—with a little help from her sidekick, Cookie the Maltipoo.

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