Keiichiro Akagi, AGAIN - Ghosts of the Screen Revived in Asakusa, 1977

Keiichiro Akagi, AGAIN - Ghosts of the Screen Revived in Asakusa, 1977

The avant-garde play "Keiichiro Akagi AGAIN," staged at the Asakusa Kibakan in the spring of 1977, attracted much attention as an attempt to revive Keiichiro Akagi, the movie star who died young. The director, Gyoda Tohei, questioned the "young hero image" created in the postwar era, and included a critique of the 70's culture that consumed the past. The stage was set in a space that resembled an abandoned movie theater, and was composed of a mixture of images, sound, and voices. With the electronic music by Tsuyoshi Takago, the boundary between reality and fiction collapses, and the audience wavers between nostalgia and anxiety. The location of Asakusa is also symbolic, as a sacred place for popular theater and movies is being shaken by redevelopment. The "rebirth of the dead" performance itself embodies the irony of the times. Critics were divided in their reaction, with "Teatro" calling it an outrage and "Bijutsu Techo" calling it an experiment. The rebirth of the Akagi my
th also meant the end of postwar youth, and this performance, which questioned the meaning of "standing again," became an event that symbolized the lights and shadows of 1970s culture.