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 period (1603–1868) 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-brothel where male patrons were 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.
The Score
The production’s music is composed by Hiroko Tanakawa, SPAC’s long-time resident composer, who integrates traditional Japanese instrumentation into the company’s rhythmically minimalist scores. 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.
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.
The approach also echoes ningyō-buri — an Edo-period kabuki technique in which actors, often in onnagata roles, move as if they were bunraku puppets controlled by an unseen handler. In Miyagi’s hands, the technique becomes a metaphor for women 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.
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, explored in our feature on the Westernisation of Japan and the transformation of 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
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 — and 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 (premiered 1978), 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.
Image Credit: Saraseta Estate Auction
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 as the Coronet Theatre and later home to The Print Room from 2014, the venue blends Victorian grandeur with contemporary international programming. 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.
In June 2025, the Coronet hosted the UK premiere of Medea, continuing its commitment to genre-defying international work.
References
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- Asian Theatre Journal. (2006). Medea (review). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236803328_Medea_review
- The Coronet Theatre. (n.d.). Medea. Retrieved May 20, 2025, from https://www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/medea/
- University of Illinois Library. (2015, June 10). Shozo Sato: Reinventing Kabuki Theater. https://www.library.illinois.edu/slc/2015/06/10/shozo-sato-reinventing-kabuki-theater/
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Lukyantseva, P. (2023). The evolution of feminism in Japan: Issues of gender and the perception of Japanese women. Sexuality and Gender Studies Journal, 1(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.33422/sgsj.v1i1.194
