“Raw-Savage” Othello: The First-Staged Japanese Adaptation of Othello (1903) and Japanese Colonialism

Abstract

In 1903, eight years after Japan invaded Taiwan, Kawakami Otojiro¹ produced his adaptation of Othello [Osero], set in Taiwan under Japanese colonization. All the characters were turned into subjects of Japanese Empire with Japanese names, Othello becoming Muro, the first colonial general of Taiwan. The adaptation appropriated the global authority of Othello in order to meet the local, political, and cultural demands of Imperial Japan and to affirm Japanese national, ethnic, and class chauvinism. In a sense, this is a clear case of unethical “abuse” of Shakespeare’s authority. However, when examined side by side with the contemporary Japanese discourse of race, class, and empire, it testifies to the contradictions and fissures in the forms of Japanese racial ideology. Although the adaptation’s intention was to demarcate class and race lines in the emergent empire of Japan, it ended up displaying moments of ideological incoherence and incompleteness.