Tatsuya Fujiwara is no stranger to London’s Barbican theatre. It was here nearly 30 years ago that one of Japan’s biggest film stars, now 44, made his stage debut. He was just 15, plucked out of an audition of more than 5,000 hopeful youngsters by the revered theatre director Yukio Ninagawa for his play Shintoku-Maru.
It kickstarted Fujiwara’s career, and three years later he landed a role in the cult dystopian film Battle Royale, going on to star in hit TV dramas and blockbuster films, all the while continuing to perform in Ninagawa’s acclaimed productions. Now, Fujiwara returns to where it all began, to perform in a stage adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s science fiction novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The story alternates between two seemingly unrelated narratives: a cyberpunk thriller set in Tokyo, and a surreal fantasy that unfolds within a mysterious walled town.
Directed by the French choreographer Philippe Decouflé, the play premiered in Tokyo in January, toured Japan until March, then Singapore in April. After the Barbican run this autumn, the tour will wrap up in Paris. The moment you cross a border, that certainty disappears.” We meet in April, backstage at the Esplanade theatre in Singapore just a few hours before the production’s first performance to an English-speaking audience. (The play is performed in Japanese, with English surtitles.) The response was rapturous, the audience more animated than with any performance during the Japan run, according to the director and cast.
The Singapore house laughed freely, while in Japan the comic moments did not land with such warmth. Whether that’s due to cultural differences in self-expression or humour is up for debate, but backstage during intermission the cast are giddy. This play arrives at a time when Japanese culture is experiencing a global boom, particularly in London.
The last five years alone have seen a cluster of UK exhibitions about Japan. The British Museum has curated shows on manga, Hokusai and the samurai; the V&A did the history of kimonos; Oxford’s Ashmolean explored art and photography from Tokyo; and Somerset House celebrated 50 years of Hello Kitty. However, productions that have broken through to a mainstream audience overseas have largely been based on anime and manga.
This summer saw a musical adaptation of Death Note at the Barbican, as well as Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon at the West End’s Here at Outernet and Koko in Camden Town, and Spirited Away, which enjoyed a six-month run at the London Coliseum in 2024. As one of Japan’s largest entertainment companies, HoriPro has been exporting Japanese theatre to the UK for many decades. Today, there is a far broader curiosity about Japanese storytelling and aesthetics, and I feel audiences approach our work with a greater sense of familiarity.” Perhaps now is the time for homegrown theatre to shine.
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