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A filial toad warrior’s battle, a drunkard’s triumphant redemption swig, a witty urchin girl’s monkey, the stories on the monochrome screen jump out at the audience through the booming of the benshi’s voice. The Art of the Benshi 2024 World Tour made its last stop at Okuma Auditorium on April 26th for an audience of around 1000 people, and in that historical building the benshi breathed new life into an age-old art form, silent movies. After an illuminating and humorous introduction by the Yanai Initiative’s Director, Dr. Michael Emmerich, the 3 benshi Ichiro Kataoka, Hideyuki Yamashiro, and Nanako Yamauchi (filling in for Kumiko Omori) emerged on stage, clad in either traditional Japanese costume or western style dress with suspenders.

Doctor Michael Emmerich giving the opening address.

The benshi serves as the whole film cast’s voices rolled into one. Popularised in the early 1900s, they performed narration for silent films, typically voicing all of the characters. Accompanied by live music, the benshi’s work evolved into an art form in its own right as they exercised creative freedoms, adding their own jokes and interpretations of the stories and characters. In their heyday, there were thousands, but that number has dwindled to a precious few who carry with them living art. The Art of the Benshi 2024 World Tour sought to bring that art to the world, to spread the joy of benshi to not only the modern audience but across borders of language and space. Having entertained the audiences of Washington, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the benshi performers returned to Tokyo for their only performance in Japan.

From left: Hideyuki Yamashiro, Ichiro Kataoka, Nanako Yamauchi

Once the performance started, I could hardly believe that the benshi was the same man cracking jokes about the differences between audiences in the United States and Japan, his voice itself was impressive, alluring the audience with its power and energy. The stage was transformed with his voice, as he adeptly portrayed different characters and their idiosyncrasies. Stately and warrior-like in one word and then motherly and grievous in the next, the benshi in this performance navigated the roles with the deft skill of a craftsman. Female and male benshi alike portrayed incredible vocal acrobatics, playing characters of an array of ages and personalities. Their voice is their brush, and with it new layers of humour and drama are added to the stories, animating characters in the full bloom of their emotions.

Ichiro Kataoka

The Art of the Benshi was coordinated by the Yanai Initiative, a joint collaboration between Waseda University and University of California, Los Angeles which aims to promote Japanese humanities and arts worldwide. The performance included western monochrome films, such as The Oath of the Sword, which is the earliest known Asian American film. I could not help but admire the layers that the piece took on. It is a humorous and dramatic show of how globalisation has intertwined cultures and lives, centring around the son of a Japanese fisherman who travels abroad to study and the loneliness of the girl he left behind. While the film originated in California in 1914, in 2024 the benshi performed it in Japanese with English subtitles in both the U.S. and Japan, for an audience of people from all over the world.

The Oath of the Sword was just one example showing the borderless nature of art, and the benshi’s skill to navigate those lines with an accurate reading of their audience. As Waseda retains its place as a university with international recognition and pioneering acceptance of international students, the themes of studying abroad and twists of fate not only deeply resonated with the international crowd at Okuma Auditorium, but the performance was also a testament of art’s ability to represent human lived experience, to remain relevant and entertaining.

Professor Hirokazu Toeda giving the closing address.

At first glance, silent films appear an anachronistic relic of the past, but the live element of benshi performance introduces an exciting immediacy and allows space for reinvention. While a benshi performance is typically a solitary act (save for the live musicians), the treat of this performance was when all 3 performing benshi emerged from offstage to execute the first and last pieces. In the final act, a fast paced procession, they animated the tale of Jiraiya the Hero, which followed a formidable hero who wielded both the power of lightning and the toad spirit. Suspenseful pursuit, ninja trickery and zoomorphic battle, the screen was populated by warriors, animals and statesmen, brought to life in the interplay of the benshi’s voices, such that when a new character appeared they were both formidably foreign and peculiarly familiar.

The final bow

A powerful end to a thrilling performance, the thundering of the Japanese drum reverberated in the hall until it was overtaken by a wave of applause. The Art of the Benshi 2024 World Tour was an exhilarating peek into the world of Japanese performing arts, a gripping show of the sheer immediacy live performance can create. In the reinvention and promotion of the silent film art form, the benshi transformed film in front of the audience’s eyes, giving them an unforgettable experience.

*This article was written by the following Student Contributor:

Josephine Pau
School of International Liberal Studies