This exam takes 90 minutes. You and two of your classmates need to schedule a time with Jan Bardsley for your exam.  You are encouraged to prepare notes to bring to the exam.  Preparing these notes will help you organize your information and ideas for the exam.  It's also a good idea to meet with your group in advance to discuss these questions and possible answers.  You need to have a good idea of what you want to say as the exam moves quickly.  I promise it will be a lively exam, too. We'll all learn more in the process of these discussions.

Excellent answers show that you know the texts, that you can synthesize what you have learned, express yourself clearly, and that you can think imaginatively.

Creative written assignment:
        Last summer you worked as an intern at the Takarazuka Theater in Takarazuka, Japan, writing promotional material for them in English.  The directors were happy with your work and believe that you grasped what was most essential about Takarazuka in a short time.  Now Takarazuka wants to hire you to find them a "real American story" that can be transformed in spring 2005 to their stage.  Give them a two-page report on what you think this story should be and why it would work well for Takarazuka.  What makes this story "really American," and how do you see it played out on the Takarazuka stage.  Give some ideas for costuming and staging, and make sure to show how otoko-yaku and musume-yaku will fit in.  (After you have your draft, run it through spell check and word count.  It should be about 500 words).
 

Exam Questions:

• Choose one of the student group presentations (other than your own) and describe why you found it successful.  To answer this question, you need to define what "successful" is in this instance.

• Kyôgen:  These short comedies tend to get overlooked in broad discussions of Japanese theater.  We read several in translation and you wrote your own. What's the most interesting question to ask about this genre?  Create a question, tell me why it's a significant one to ask, and give me an idea referring to a specific play of how you'd think about answering it.  Here, we're going for the process of creating answers and questions, rather than looking for any one specific answer. 

• Compare/contrast the construction of masculinity in Takarazuka to that of a warrior from any Noh, Bunraku or Kabuki play of your choice.  In answering this question, you need to consider how masculinity is defined in Takarazuka and in your example play.  Your discussion might explore such things as aspects of staging, relationship of role to actor, and the language and action of the character in a given play.

• Compare/contrast the dancer/serpent of Dôjôji (either the Noh or Kabuki play) to some other instance of transformation in Japanese theater, manga or animation.  What is the function of the transformation?  What ideas does it communicate within a given play, theater or anime, for example?

• Fandom!  Compare/contrast Masuyama as a Kabuki fan especially enamored with the onnagata Mangiku in the Mishima short story "Onnagata" to the Takarazuka fans as described by Robertson. (We've read lots about 'Zuka fans by Robertson so be careful to select which aspect of this fandom you'd like to discuss).

• Chikamatsu (1653-1725) wrote: "Art is something which lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.  Of course, it seems desirable, in view of the current taste for realism, to have the retainer in the play copy the gestures and speech of a real retainer, but in that case should a real retainer put rouge and power on his face like an actor?  Or, would it prove entertaining if an actor, on the grounds that real retainers do not make up their faces, were to appear on the stage and perform with his beard growing wild and his head shaven?  That is what I mean by the slender margin between the real and the unreal.  It is unreal, and yet it is not unreal; it is real, and yet it is not real.  Entertainment lies between the two."