“HAMLET” IN JAPAN

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2887, 31 March 1939, Page 7

“HAMLET” IN JAPAN

PERFORMANCE FORBIDDEN

INJURIOUS TO PUBLIC MORALS

The police of Osaka have forbidden performance of “Hamlet” on the ground (says the New York Times) that it mighe be injurious to public morals. What were their specific objections does not appear, but it has been suggested that perhaps they felt that the play was uncomplimentary to royalty, and besides that “Hamlet’s own thoughts deviated from the normal and respectable.”

It could be offered in defence that the royalty thus disrespectfully treated was merely human, not of Divine descent, and thus offered no parallel to the imperial house of Japan; that Hamlet’s behaviour, however painful to his mother, was, after all motivated by piety and loyalty towards his father, a sentiment which should be respected by Japanese ethics; and finally that the success of Fortinbras at the end of the play is a shining example of what can be done by a government in a state of military preparedness, when “incidents” in a neighbouring State compel it to make a purely temporary occupation for the restoration of order. But there would be little point in offering such considerations to the Japanese police, who in their crusade to suppress “dangerous thoughts” seem to tend towards the conclusion that any thought is dangerous.