Novelist and playwright Hisashi Inoue’s THE FACE OF JIZO is set in 1947 in Hiroshima. Takezo is the ‘father’ of the young woman Mitsue, a librarian. Mitsue witnessed the horrors of the atomic bomb and the grisly death of her father. The name “Jizo” carries symbolic weight in Japanese Buddhism -Jizo is the guardian of children, a symbol of their respect from harm.
Mitsue conjures up the ghost of her father. Creating an imaginary ‘advisor’ is a classic symptom of people suffering from Survivor’s Syndrome. Mitsue lives alone with her compassionate and playful ghost father. Takezo wants to help his daughter recover from depression, guilt, fear of radiation sickness and self-imposed isolation. Mitsue asks, “Why did I survive when others didn’t?” She believes she doesn’t deserve to be alive, another Survivor’s Syndrome symptom.
But be assured, this is not a dreary play. Rather than dwelling on destruction, the play shows how to learn to love and how to find hope in the future. Mitsue’s eventual hard-won resilience is a powerful statement about the human ability to recover and move on. Shingo Usami plays the fun-loving ghost marvellously, lightening the mood and brightening the tone. Mayu Iwasaki is the daughter, fearful and reclusive, yet on the cusp of blossoming. This pair of actors are perfectly cast and perform their roles well.
There is some distracting confusion in the writing. The continued mention of three years then of twenty years blurs the timeline, but only until you realise that Takezo is Mitsue’s imaginary father.
The play is Hisashi Inoue’s stage adaptation of his own novel. The translator is Roger Pulvers. The co-producers are Sydney’s Omusubi Productions and Jade Fuda. The directors are Shingo Usami and David Lynch. The play was first performed in Sydney at the Old Fitz in November 2023. It was a five-star, sold out production that deserved to return to the stage in Sydney.
Writer Inoue was eleven years old when the bombs dropped. He writes, “When I bring up the subject of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an increasing number of people say, ‘It is wrong to dwell on having been victimised, because the Japanese of those days also victimised Asia.’ The Japanese did victimise all of Asia. However, I believe that the two atomic bombs were not merely dropped on the Japanese; they were dropped on the entire human existence. The modern world who cannot escape from the existence of nuclear weapons.”
THE FACE OF JIZO is playing the Reginald Theatre at the Seymour Centre until September 6 2025.
Production photographer Phil Erbacher
https://www.seymourcentre.com/event/the-face-of-jizo/
