Portland State Professor of Japanese Laurence “Larry” Kominz’s latest project—the first English-language translation of Yukio Mushima’s play The Black Lizard, currently showing at Southeast Portland’s Imago Theatre—is receiving rave reviews.
Portland State Professor of Japanese Laurence “Larry” Kominz’s latest project—the first English-language translation of Yukio Mushima’s play The Black Lizard, currently showing at Southeast Portland’s Imago Theatre—is receiving rave reviews.
Set in the 1960s, the play tells the story of Japan’s most infamous jewel thief known only by the pseudonym “The Black Lizard.” After kidnapping the child of a wealthy merchant, the thief is tailed by a dashing detective named Akechi Kogoro.
An educator and author, Kominz is also a studied performer of nihon buyô (Japanese classical dance) and kyôgen (a form of traditional Japanese theater) and has directed student productions of both.
Kominz has been the artistic director of summer Japanese performance festivals at PSU since 1992 and currently serves as Japan editor for Asian Theatre Journal. In addition, he is a member of the Japan Society of New York’s performing arts advisory committee.
In this exclusive interview, Kominz discusses The Black Lizard, his fascination with Japan and why he’s remained at our university for all these years.
Vanguard: When did you first become interested in Japanese culture and studies?
Larry Kominz: It goes way back. When I was a child, my father had two temporary stints working in Japan as a scientist, and he took his family both times, so I developed an interest in Asia at that time.
I didn’t originally study Japanese because I went to international schools, and at that time—which was the late ’50s and early ’60s—Japanese wasn’t considered to be an international language, so they didn’t teach it even in Japan [laughs]. But I ended up majoring in Asian studies in college and really became interested in Japanese drama while studying abroad in Kyoto.
VG: What sets Japanese drama apart from that of Western society?
LK: A lot of [Japanese theater] is virtuoso performance. And it’s not like we don’t have that kind of feeling here, but there is a kind of a stage presence and joy in the make-believe, a recognition that theater is art and should be beautiful and impressive and not try to disguise the fact that it is fictional and unrealistic. So that was what really appealed to me.
VG: Why did you decide to teach at PSU? Why have you stayed?
LK:My primary field is Japanese literature and drama. And at one time, there’s only going to be 10 or 12 openings for that in the United States, so you apply to all of them and see what happens. If you really love your field and your craft, then you feel like wherever you go, you’re going to make a great career for yourself.
So I felt very fortunate when Portland State hired me, because I was from the East Coast, and I liked being on the West Coast—I’m kind of a coastal guy [laughs]—and they gave me an offer. And then the program began to kind of grow, and I was around for that. I’ve been given a free hand to teach the subjects I want to and create my own course load, so that has been great.
VG: What is your favorite and least favorite part of your job?
LK: [Laughs] My most favorite and least favorite? Well, my favorite would have to be teaching. I’m really lucky to teach all of the courses I enjoy teaching. So right now, that’s a drama course, which ends with a big public performance. There’s so much variety in what we’re doing, because there is everything from acrobatics to virtuoso vocalization to beautiful dancing and costumes and music. Some people call it “circus theater,” which is devaluating it a bit, but it is that much fun, and working with the students is really exciting for me.
As for my least favorite, it would have to be doing committee work with my colleagues—which I know has to be done. But I would much rather hang out and have a beer with my colleagues [laughs]. Committee work isn’t fun.
VG: What would you be doing if you weren’t teaching?
LK: It’s hard to say. If I had to make a living and suddenly all universities ceased to exist, I would make a living as a Japanese translator and interpreter because I have those language skills. What I would want to do if I weren’t teaching would be to be the director of a small theater company, but that is so hard to do. But that’s just a dream.
VG: What do you do in your free time?
LK: I like to ski, but I don’t do it nearly as much as I used to because I don’t have that much free time anymore. I like to try and keep in shape with yoga, but I have to do that in order to be able to teach the physical side of kabuki to students a third my age [laughs]. But I like it, too! And I love going to the theater and just seeing every kind of play.
VG: Why did you decide to work on The Black Lizard?
LK: Of course, the author Mishima is incredibly famous, and my advisor Donald Keene was his very good friend back in the ’50s and has translated some of his plays. And they were interesting, but they had never really turned me on when I had seen them performed. But then by chance I went to go see a kabuki play written by Yukio Mishima, and it was the best kabuki comedy I think I have ever seen! And I was like, “Wow, this guy wrote this, too?”
I started to rediscover him as a playwright and realized that all sorts of gems had not been translated into English. That’s when I discovered The Black Lizard. After I did some research, I found that it had a great track record in Japan and has one of those absolutely iconic roles—like how maybe every serious actor in America wants to play Willie Lohman from Death of a Salesman because it requires so many emotions.
It doesn’t matter if a play is old; we keep doing the classics, and The Black Lizard is a classic. And that brought us to the challenges that go along with figuring out how to present it accurately in English for the first time and perform it. And [artistic director] Jerry and Imago Theatre have worked tirelessly and done fantastically on the piece.
VG: What went into the translation?
LK: I didn’t want to take on the translation entirely alone, so I contacted a good friend and colleague of mine in Tokyo who is a professional musician and translator named Mark Oshima. I wanted him to look at every single translation I made first, and he was really excited by the project! There’s nine plays total in the anthology I’ve been working on, and he’s done a fabulous job helping me with everything.
I’ve heard people saying that The Black Lizard doesn’t even sound like it was originally in Japanese, and that’s partly due to Mark and Jerry’s genius. This play is a mix between classical and modern, which is tough to pull off! And it’s just filled with soliloquies—which are mini-monologues about how a character feels—and they never happen in real life [laughs], so being able to accomplish moments like those is brilliant.
VG: What is your next project?
LK: Short term, we have a classic kabuki and taiko performance on June 10, which is going to knock people’s socks off. Medium term, we’re going to have two Japanese performance workshops running during the summer—one theater arts for weeks one through four, and one Japanese language course weeks five through eight.
Then long term, Imago Theatre and I are working on another Japanese kabuki production. And then in between all of those is a sabbatical for next year, where I’ll be in Tokyo learning even more about Japanese culture, so I can do more projects at PSU and around town. So watch out for those!
