Companía teatral multidisciplinaria Nikkei México-Japonesa
Akikompania
Music - theater
"Contramarea, the return of the Samurai"
Synopsis:
In October 1613, a great mision was commended to the Samurai, Hasekura Tsunenaga, to begin a titanic journey in order to establish a commercial treat between Japan and the New Spain.
Hasekura disembarked in New Spain and after realizing that he would be unable to make the negotiation to happen, he traveled towards Spain where he betrayed his Budhist believes for those of the Europeans, just to complete his duty. An audience with the King Felipe III failed and finally, he arrived to Roma where the Pope Paulo V welcomed him with honors and gave him the keys of the city. Therefore in order to fulfill his mission he changed his religion to Christianism. Then negotiations were interrupted again in response for the Catholic followers killing in Japan then he had to come back to Japan empty handed . In his way back to Japan, and knowing he would be despise for his acts back home, he commited suicided by doing himself the “harakiri”
Hasekura traveled through the Pacific and Atlantic ocean in a journey where the only thing he could get out of, was a personal confrontation and a lonely ending. It is, out of this conflict and based on the Shusaku Endo novel “The Samurai”.
Justification:
The staging focuses on the perceptual subjectivity that is born from the experiences experienced by the Samurai Hasekura during his mission, thus making this historical episode a singular version that, beyond showing the hard data, is situated in the mental construction that It remains as true when we live the experiences in our own flesh.
Thus "Contramarea" seeks to mean in a single word all the antagonism that the protagonist of history suffers, the paradoxes in which he observes himself while he is victim and victimizer in the unsuspected channels of life. The title also aims to manifest the adverse and forced condition in which that mission occurred, which despite always going with the wind against it was never abandoned by its emissary and finally alluding to the fact that at that time the Pacific sea route (Japan Mexico) was contrary to the navigation of his time. Regarding the subtitle of the work "the return of the Samurai" refers that it is a recapitulation that occurs in the memory of the character who returns aboard the Galleon San Juan Bautista.
