China National Peking Opera Company’s Performance Tour of Japan

On November 26， 2009， more than 2，000 theatre-goers filled Sun Plaza Theatre in Nakano， Tokyo to full capacity. They were avidly reading the finely printed program or cartoon strip of the play， waiting with great interest for the curtain to rise on the Peking Opera The Water Margin. The story is well-known in Japan where， apart from a great number of readers， there are scholars researching the book and even authors rewriting the story. On that day， the audience was anxiously waiting to see the new production The Water Margin—the Vows of Song Jiang and the Heroes of Mount Liang Shan Po co-produced by the China National Peking Opera Company (CNPOC) and the Min-On Concert Association (Min-On) of Japan. The curtain with 108 life-like hand-painted heroes of Liang Shan Po finally rose.

The Water Margin (shui hu zhuan in Chinese) is one of the four classic novels of Chinese literature， and is also known as All Men Are Brothers， Outlaws of the Marsh， or The Marshes of Mount Liang. This folk story describes the outlaw Song Jiang and his 108 bandits， many of whom suffered as a result of the Song Dynasty’s corruption and decadence at the height of its reign. The bandits gather under the leadership of Song Jiang in the mountain fortresses of Liang Shan Po， surrounded by marshes. They become vigilantes vowing to defy imperial authority and battle against the imperial army to bring about the salvation of the oppressed people. The play script of The Water Margin—the Vows of Song Jiang and the Heroes of Mount Liang Shan Po was newly written for the performance tour by Wu Jiang， President of the CNPOC， who is one of the most renowned Chinese playwrights.

The organizer， Min-On Concert Association， had made meticulous preparations to ensure the success of the performance tour. It had the lines of the actors and actresses translated， polished by Japanese dramatists， and projected on both sides of the stage during the show. It also provided simultaneous English interpretation to 15 ambassadors to Japan and dozens of diplomats watching the show on Nov. 26.

The closely-knit story， the gorgeous costumes， the beautiful singing and the marvelous acrobatics brought waves of prolonged applause. The audience was still intoxicated in the story when the curtain fell for the last time. The performance let them see the richness of the traditional Chinese culture.

On the evening of the same day， all the members of the opera troupe， diplomats from various countries， officials of the Chinese Ministry of Culture， and staff of the Chinese Embassy in Japan attended a reception to celebrate. Many foreign diplomats said that though they could not understand the singing directly， they could still appreciate the emotions and personality of different characters through their acting， and that Peking Opera was profound and easy to understand.

Sent by the CPAFFC， the 60-member CNPOC performance troupe toured 38 cities， staging 63 shows with a total audience of 130，000 in the 73 days following its arrival in Japan on October 4. Their enthusiasm and high artistic attainment received warm acclaim and the show drew a large number of Japanese drama fans， researchers in the field of drama and the Chinese community in Japan. In cities such as Tokyo， Yokohama and Osaka， it was hard to get a ticket. The audience used the words “excellent”， “refreshing” to describe the show.

This was the third performance tour by the CNPOC in cooperation with the CPAFFC and Min-On in the past decade. The Min-On Concert Association introduced the China National Peking Opera Company to the Japanese audience for the first time in 2002 with its performance Peking Opera Omnibus and for the second time in 2006 with the performance Romance of the Three Kingdoms—Zhuge Kongming， both of which achieved huge successes. Since then， Min-On has collaborated with the CNPOC in producing the new work for its third Japan tour.

Peking Opera (or Beijing Opera) has existed for more than two hundred years and has been widely regarded as the highest expression of Chinese culture. It is a form of traditional Chinese theater that combines music， vocal performance， mime， dance and acrobatics.