Hiroshi Sugimoto's RIKYU-ENOURA: A NEW NOH PLAY Premieres Tonight at Japan Society

Japan Society presents the world premiere of Rikyu-Enoura: A New Noh Play by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Commissioned by Japan Society and Odawara Art Foundation for the Society's 110th Anniversary, this noh play, which is newly written but adheres to noh's medieval language, is performed in traditional style with noh masks, costumes, musical instruments and chanters.

This program arrives as a featured event in the NOH-NOW Series as part of Japan Society's Fall 2017-Winter 2018 Performing Arts Season. Rikyu-Enoura will have three performances: tonight, November 3, tomorrow, November 4 at 7:30pm, and Sunday, November 5 at 4:30pm at Japan Society (333 East 47th Street).

For this new noh play, internationally acclaimed visual artist and traditional Japanese art connoisseur Hiroshi Sugimoto has assembled Japan's top noh actors including Kanze Tetsunojo and Katayama Kurouemon and noh musician Kamei Hirotada on o-tsuzumi (large hand drum), among others, along with Akiko Baba, esteemed Japanese traditional-style poet, as librettist for the medieval-language script. As part of the performance, a tea ceremony by Sen So'oku, direct descendent of revered 16th-century tea master Sen-no-Rikyu, evokes Japanese life of long ago.

Rikyu-Enoura is based on actual events centered around the forced ritual suicide of Sen-no-Rikyu (1522-1591), the tea master heralded as the father of chanoyu (Japanese "Way of Tea"), who influenced wabi-cha style's emphasis on simplicity. Beginning in 1582, Rikyu was tea master for Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), a samurai warrior who became the ruler of Japan by suppressing the turbulence at the end of Japan's Warring State Period. Rikyu rose to prominence before his eventual suicide, ordered by Hideyoshi.

This new noh play, as imagined by Hiroshi Sugimoto, is set several decades after Rikyu's death. The story follows Hosokawa Tadaoki (1563-1646), the retired head of an influential samurai clan and disciple of Rikyu, as he journeys to Enoura (present day a town within Odawara City in Kanagawa Prefecture) to pay his respects to his master at the Tensho-an, the tea house that Rikyu built for Hideyoshi. Along the way, Tadaoki encounters an old man who describes details of a tea ceremony took place at the Tensho-an. In the second half of the play, the ghost of Rikyu appears, recalling how his minimalist aesthetics did not align with Hideyoshi's extravagant taste, ultimately costing him his life.

Rikyu-Enoura was conceived by Hiroshi Sugimoto, inspired by his time in Enoura in Odawara City, where he purchased a parcel of land on a hill facing the Sagami Bay to establish his Odawara Art Foundation's main facility, Enoura Observatory, which opened in September 2017. When he learned that The Remains of the Tensho-An were only 500 yards from this property, Sugimoto visited the site, beginning a deeper exploration tied to Rikyu and his time, the Tensho Period (1573 -1592). Drawing upon the influences of art and time and place, Sugimoto envisioned a concept for this noh play, with a story based in this period and region, featuring an actual tea ceremony with Sen So'oku, a direct descendent of the play's protagonist.

Conceived by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rikyu-Enoura features noh Libretto by writer/poet Akiko Baba. The Stage Directors are Katayama Kurouemon and Hiroshi Sugimoto, and noh Music Director is Kamei Hirotada. Rikyu-Enoura previewed in special showing at the MOA Museum of Art in Japan in February 2017, directed by esteemed noh actor Asami Masakuni.

This world premiere is presented in conjunction with Japan Society's Fall Gallery exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: Gates of Paradise, which focuses on the 16th century and one of the earliest, and largely unknown, encounters between Japan and the West as seen through the eyes of Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Additionally, this program reunites Japan Society with renowned artist Hiroshi Sugimoto following the 2013 presentation of the ritual noh SANBASO, divine dance, co-presented with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, with set and costumes by Sugimoto and performed by star kyogen actor Mansai Nomura, and the 2005 modern noh play The Hawk Princess (Takahime) with stage design by Sugimoto.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948, Tokyo, Japan) has defined what it means to be a multidisciplinary contemporary artist, blurring the lines between photography, painting, installation, theater, and most recently, architecture. His iconic photographs have bridged Eastern and Western ideologies, tracing the origins of time and societal progress along the way. Preserving and picturing memory and time is a central theme of Sugimoto's photography, including the ongoing series Dioramas (1976- ), Theaters (1978- ) and Seascapes (1980- ). In 1999, Deutsche Guggenheim commissioned and presented an exhibition of his series Portraits (1999- ). Sugimoto has organized and curated several exhibitions of his own work as well as traditional Japanese art, sometimes juxtaposing the two bodies of material in single exhibitions, such as History of History, which was co-organized with Japan Society (on view from September 23, 2005 through February 19, 2006) and the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. His work is held in prestigious museums and collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; National Gallery, London; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Tate, London; and Smithsonian Institute of Art, Washington, D.C., among numerous others. The artist's most recent institutional exhibitions include 'The Sea and the Mirror,' at Chateau La Coste, France (May 9 - September 3, 2017) and at Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Italy (May 16 - October 1, 2017). Sugimoto's numerous theatrical works including The Hawk Princess (Japan Society, 2005) and SANBASO, divine dance (Guggenheim Museum, Japan Society co-presentation, 2013) draw on the traditional Japanese theater forms of noh and bunraku.

Japan Society's Fall 2017-Winter 2018 Performing Arts Season includes the second installment of the NOH-NOW Series, featuring four extraordinary events in dance and theater. The Series launches with the North American premiere of Luca Veggetti's Left-Right-Left (October 13-14, 2017). Following this presentation of Rikyu-Enoura, the Series continues with Siti Company's Hanjo (December 7-9, 2017), and concludes with Satoshi Miyagi's Mugen Noh Othello (January 11-14, 2018). Japan Society's current Performing Arts Season kicked off in September with the North American Premiere of Moto Osada's opera, Four Nights of Dream, (September 13-16, 2017). These events, coinciding with Japan Society's milestone 110th Anniversary, bring together celebrated artists from the U.S. and Japan, delivering world class cultural offerings while continuing Japan Society's mission to deepen mutual understanding between the two nations into the Society's twelfth decade. The popular NOH-NOW Series debuted to much acclaim in 2007 timed to Japan Society's centennial, and now, ten years later, the Society proudly serves up a new edition with a slate of performances highlighting how contemporary artists draw inspiration from Japan's centuries-old traditions.

Since the inception of the Performing Arts Program in 1953, Japan Society has introduced nearly 700 of Japan's finest performing arts to an extensive American audience. Programs range from the traditional arts of noh, kyogen, bunraku and kabuki to cutting-Edge Theater, dance and music. The Program also commissions new works to non-Japanese artists, produces national tours, organizes residency programs for American and Japanese artists and develops and distributes educational programs.

Founded in 1907, Japan Society in New York City presents sophisticated, topical and accessible experiences of Japanese art and culture, and facilitates the exchange of ideas, knowledge and innovation between the U.S. and Japan. More than 200 events annually encompass world-class exhibitions, dynamic classical and cutting-edge contemporary performing arts, film premieres and retrospectives, workshops and demonstrations, tastings, family activities, language classes, and a range of high-profile talks and expert panels that present open, critical dialogue on issues of vital importance to the U.S., Japan and East Asia.

During the 2017-18 season, Japan Society celebrates its 110th anniversary with expanded programming that builds toward a richer, more globally interconnected 21st century: groundbreaking creativity in the visual and performing arts, unique access to business insiders and cultural influencers, and critical focus on social and educational innovation, illuminating our world beyond borders.

Rikyu-Enoura has performances are Friday, November 3 (followed by an exclusive MetLife Meet-the-Artists Soirée), Saturday, November 4 at 7:30pm and Sunday, November 5 at 4:30pm.

Tickets for November 3 (Performance + Soireé) are $120/$100 Japan Society members. Tickets for November 3, 4, 5 (Performance Only) are $95/$75 Japan Society members. Tickets can be purchased by calling the Box Office at 212-715-1258 or in person at Japan Society (M-F 11:00am - 7:00pm and Sat-Sun 11:00am - 5:00pm). For further details, or information on packages including the NOH-NOW Series, visit www.japansociety.org, or call 212-715-1258.

Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street, between First and Second Avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd Street-Grand Central Station or the E at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street). For general information, contact 212-832-1155 or www.japansociety.org.

Pre-Performance Lecture:
Dr. Takeshi Watanabe, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University, leads a pre-performance lecture on the history of the tea ceremony and Sen-no-Rikyu one hour prior to the start of each performance. FREE and open to all ticketholders.

Gallery Exhibition / Hiroshi Sugimoto: Gates of Paradise October 20, 2017 - January 7, 2018
Conceived by internationally acclaimed artist and Rikyu-Enoura co-director Hiroshi Sugimoto, this exhibition visualizes an early encounter between East and West during a fluid, turbulent period in 16th-century Japan. Hiroshi Sugimoto: Gates of Paradise traces the journey of four Japanese youths who in 1582 were dispatched as envoys to the princely and papal courts of Europe, making them among the first Japanese to travel to the Western world and placing them at the mercy of global, political and religious forces far beyond their control. The exhibition includes tea implements attributed to tea master Sen-no-Rikyu, the protagonist of the noh play Rikyu-Enoura, as well as East-West hybrid nanban paintings, among the type of artwork supported by Rikyu's patrons and Japan's powerful 16th-century rulers, Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi.