English: The Greater Chronicle of a Plague*
Subtitles: -Bandage-
Year: 1993
Writer: Shuji Terayama
Original Novel: A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
Locations: Space Zero
* Loosely translated from the original japanese, relying on DeepL and Jisho for cross-reference. The original Japanese title is one of the many translation of the original novel's title
Note For this, I've also included exempts from a translation of Terayama's original script
by Colleen Lanki(RIP) and Tsuneda Keiko with apropiate page citations. Please support the both of them by purchasing the full script at:
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/5/article/850470
記憶は伝染蛙の衰退
ペスト コレラ 天刑病 赤痢
疫痢 黒死病 腸チフス ジフテリア
愛の四つ足疫病ビルマ亀
疱瘡 ハシカ 紫斑病 猩紅熱
はいしん 風疹 狂犬病 蝋燭病
暗い痙攣双児のジフテリア
傷寒 象皮病 マラリア おこり
赤班瘡 綿吹病 回帰熱 体外奇腫
四月の電球賢者の風見鶏
四日熱 ハクシーネ 花粉熱 敗血症
人面瘡 天然痘 黄熱病 ジフィルス
Pestilence Cholera Leprosy Dysentery Black Death Typhus Diphtheria
Plague Smallpox Purpura Scarlet Fever Morbilli-virus German Measles
Rubeola Miliary Eczema Soft Chancre Typhoid Inanition Fever Malaria
Ague Measles Morgellons Disease Scabies Trachoma Mumps St. Anthony’s
Fire Rabies Liver Flukes Pollen Allergy Asthma Smut Sepsis Yellow Fever
Face-shaped Tumor Syphilis Gonorrhea Myodesopsia Ouroboros Syndrome White Leprosy
Ergotism Bubonic Plague Hydropic Degeneration Elephantiasis Melanaemia Smallpox Lupus Acromegaly
Hemophilia Basedow’s Disease Hives Hydrophobia Epilepsy Quartan Fever Enuresis Stye Relapsing
Fever Catalepsy Kyphosis Mongolian Spots Cowpox Tetanus Formication Porphyria
The author of the transcription did not provide a transcription here.
Red demon
Small demon
Demon electricity
Stuff it in a bottle, death by hanging
Blue demon
Small demon
Sister in the graveyard
Drifting down a river, off to be a bride
Big demon
Small demon
Child lost in hell
Went to see his mother, set her on fire
Fire
Fire
What street’s on fire?
The astronomy hospital’s burning down. Shooting star, shooting star
All the plague patients burning down. Sayonara, sayonara
Red demon, small demon
Wake up from a dream and they all burned down.
つむじ風の喉笛が また呼んだ死神や
ペスト ペスト ああかねん
天刑病に黒死病
ああ 蒙古熱 ああ 犬コレラ
ああ 赤痢蝿 ああ 紫斑熱
ああ 後ろ指さま お手手さま
墓の後ろの便箋が
御祈りする手が溶けてゆく
我が身どろどろ溶けてゆく
ああ ジフテリア ああ 破傷風
ああ 人面瘡 ああ わたぬきぬ
ああ ジフィルス ああ カタレプシー
ああ ハクシーネ
船が沈んでマストが沈む
熱で真っ赤なつむじ風
This song was not in the translated script, the original stage directions for scene 10 (Keiko, T., & Lanki, C, 2022, p. 29), had the scene set to Le Tourbillon
and I can't find anything else in the script that has the above lyrics in full
私はあなたの病気です
赤い鳥が飛んだ
一寸法師が踊った
ペストだ コレラだ マラリアだ
赤い鳥が飛んだ
三本脚の猫が鳴いた
赤痢だ 疫痢だ 黄熱だ
赤い鳥が飛んだ
死んだ水夫が穴掘った
チフスだ 麻疹だ ジストマだ
一寸法師が一寸法師が一寸法師が踊った
一寸法師が一寸法師が一寸法師が踊った
ペストだ コレラだ コレラだ チフスだ
チフスだ ペストだ 黒死病
ペストだ コレラだ コレラだ チフスだ
チフスだ ペストだ 皆死んだ
This song was not in the translated script, the stage direction for scene 17 (Keiko, T., & Lanki, C, 2022, p. ) said for madame opera, to sing the digging section, of a alleged plague opera.
ああ 死人の恋は永遠だ
ああ 死人の恋は永遠だ
Ahhhhh Ahhhhh
A dead man’s love is eternal.
Ahhhhh Ahhhhh
A dead man’s love is eternal.
Ahhhhh Ahhhhh
A dead man’s love is eternal.
Ahhhhh
今日も何処かで人が死ぬ
暑い日盛り 昼下がり
赤いペストの犬が鳴く
街は疫病大流行 一寸法師が出て踊る
今日も何処かで人が死ぬ
死んだ水夫が戸を叩く
疫痢赤痢の咽が鳴る
街は疫病大流行 墓掘り人夫が笛を吹く
This is a original song for the 1993 performance.†
† This may not be case. Since it sounds similar to the reperatoire of original songs he likes to perform for live shows.
Keiko, T., & Lanki, C. (2022). A Journal of the Plague Year by Terayama Shūji in Collaboration with Kishida Rio: “Contagious Magic” for a Time of Epidemic. Asian Theatre Journal 39(1), 1-53.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0001.
Hmmm, How do I talk this, as of writing, I've not written the page for A Child in Time (the performance previous to this), so there may be some redundencies in hindsight.
This is one of the first plays in the chronology to not be based on a libretto written by J.A. Seazer. Instead, we have a restaging of Shuji Terayama's 疾病流行記 / Chronicle of the Plague
This was a show that originally performed in Tenjo Sajiki era, from 1975 to 1976. In both Japan and Internationally in the Netherlands, Belgum, and Germany
Regardless of the works that take inspiration from work or it's underlying dramaturgy(The idea of theatre as a plague, per Artaud), this is seems to be the only proper restaging of the work
Going off it's original script, this play has the honor of being one of Terayama's more overtly political works. Which sticks out because Terayama never sought value in the idea derived from Brecht
that political theatre had to didacticly convey it messaging and themes and have a clear cut message. Prefering to aproach political themes through subtext and conveyance. reflecting a situationist aproach
to social change (You must the change minds and imagiation of people to ensure social change), or alternatively, a surrealist aproach in the provocative, "fire a gun at a crowd" sense.*
With Journal of the Plague Year, this is a play almost explicitly about the historical memory of the human experimentation, that Unit 731 committed and got away with, because the US Government
wanted the experimental data collected. The setting of the play is a south-east asian nation, with one of location being Trading Vessel Pago Pago, a floating brothel that turned out to be a field hospital
where such experiments occur. And one of main characters, a man of many persona, compass salesmen, detective was also former first officer of the IJA, involved with human experimentation that went on.
Explicitly mention the deliberate infection of subjects, including the Girl that kickstarted the plague that the play was about.
What Journey of the Plague Plague so vivid sets out to do, is to remind it's japanese audience that history memory is not something you revise away or look away from in complicity. It will bite back those
who set to erase history or engage in a naive complicity, that it's just the past without any real reconciliation with victims. And we can bear witness as American reapplies the very things it used brutalize foreign regimes
and keep it's citizen in line. or alternatively, with the struggle that is going on in Gaza, regardless of my feelings regarding Hamas, Israel has allowed them to rise up and define how Gaza resists again them.
This is not a phenonom specific to your in-group, but any nation that sets to engage itself in imperialism and war. and reap it's benefits in developing the tools and means to engage in authoritarianism
against their citizenry; so that they don't dissent against their geopolitical and ideological ambitions.
*Early-Mid Tenjo Sajiki plays and Street Theatre were toeing a fine line of legality, before Terayama was told by the police to stop doing Guarilla Theatre after the Knock incident around the same time that Chronicle of the Plague Year was being devised).
The sound track for this version of the play, is a mix bag. A lot of tracks from the original score are reused, and for the original arrangements including the additional lyrics for Plague Chorus ~ Whirlwind
rear into predominance, the weaknesses of J.A. Seazer's digital turn and reliance on sequencing for drums and accompaniment. That air of Darkwave, classical influences, the digital carnievalesque and it's FM cheese,
avant-garde weirdness and rock minimalism, is a hindarance to the dramatic power that the music previously had with recorded analogue instrument and effects. Particularly the percussion, the TR-707/505 will never
come close to the live percussion and drums of the orignal versions. and the Electric Guitar tone(arguably a rompler guitar), sounds like Strat, processed through a weak MFX unit; the main saving grace is that
continuing from a child in time, is the use of stereotypically twangy FM patch like Basses for example and Analog Synths.
For that reason, this version of the score, can only be appreciated as on it's own terms, and not as a redoing of the original score, Where it counts, not in relation to the original score. Thought even then
the reuse of previous recording does knock this album down. And J.A. Seazer has done better recreations of Tenjo Sajiki era music, in the decade this album was released and especially after the late 2000s.