Old Japanese musical being revived in China with tour

Chiyoki Yoshida, the president of the Shiki Theatre Company, came to Beijing recently to collaborate on the new performance.

"When those young Chinese students came to Japan in 1996, I was there. I watched their performance and was impressed by their passion," he recalls.

The Shiki Theatre Company, which was founded in 1953 by Japanese dramatist Asari Keita, 84, has eight theaters in Japan and stages more than 3,000 shows every year.

The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man is one of the most popular and most performed musicals of the company. So far, it has been staged more than 2,000 times in Japan.

The friendship between the dramatist Keita, his company and China, according to Yoshida, goes back to 1972, when China and Japan normalized relations.

In 1972, Keita participated in the project when the Shanghai Ballet Company performed the classic ballet work The White Haired Girl in Japan.

Then, in 1988, he led the Shiki Theatre Company to visit China to perform four shows of the musical Hans Christian Andersen in Beijing.

In 2002, the Shiki Theatre Company staged three shows of Giacomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly in Beijing, conducted by the world-renowned Seiji Ozawa.

An important bridge between the Shiki Theatre Company and China is Wang Xiangqian, who interviewed Keita in 2004 in Japan.

Wang, who gained her master's degree in theater from the University of Tokyo in 1996, says of Keita: "He told me that he had two dreams - to work with the Beijing People's Art Theater, and to stage the Chinese version of the company's musicals in China."

In 2006, Keita worked with the Beijing Peoples Art Theater and directed William Shakespeare's classic Hamlet.

In 2014, Wang became the CEO of Seasons of Songs Culture & Art Co Ltd, a Beijing-based company, which brings theater productions of the Shiki Theatre Company to China.

The latest Chinese version of The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man is one of the projects her company undertook.

Speaking about her links with Keita's company, she says: "It may have taken decades to fulfill his dreams. But the friendship of Keita and his company with China will continue, with more such theater productions being staged in China."