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An East Asian Paradigm of Interculturalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

Chengzhou He
Chengzhou He*
Affiliation:
The Hopkins-Nanjing Center and School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University, 162 Shanghai Road, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China. E-mail: chengzhou@nju.edu.cn
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Abstract

Based on a close study of the Sino-Japanese collaboration in Kunqu Opera The Peony Pavilion (2008), this article proposes a different conception of interculturalism onstage in East Asia in comparison with the prevailing East–West paradigm of intercultural performance and theatre. Some of the interesting questions that are raised and discussed in this paper are: How does the Japanese actor Bando Tamasaburo impersonate a young lady Du Liniang in the Chinese classical play without speaking the Chinese language? In what ways does the Sino-Japanese co-production connect and interweave Kunqu Opera and Kabuki? How has the intercultural performance been mediatized, received as well as perceived in China, Japan and elsewhere? The Sino-Japanese co-production features such important notions of interculturalism as connecting instead of othering, sharing instead of influencing, and complementing instead of exploiting.

Type
Tsinghua–Academia Europaea Symposium on Humanities and Social Sciences, Globalization and China
Information
European Review , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 210 - 220
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2016 

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