How do you create theatre across cultures? Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey, inspired by the celebrated author Haruki Murakami’s short stories, is a new collaboration between UK theatre company Vanishing Point and Japanese venue and production house Kanagawa Arts Theatre. After premiering in Japan, it’s going to Scotland. Matthew Lenton, Artistic Director of Vanishing Point, tells us how it was made and why he loves Murakami’s work.
How did you first discover Haruki Murakami’s writing?
I discovered it when someone lent me a copy of Sputnik Sweetheart in the late 90s. After reading it, I read all of Murakami’s work up to that point. It felt like he was writing for me, and only for me. Luckily for Murakami, millions of other people felt the same way! I love his work probably for the same reasons they do. I’ve read everything he’s since written. I love how his writing has changed over the years. His latest (The City and its Uncertain Walls) is a slow, contemplative, meditative work, which I find mesmerising and moving in equal measure.
What was it about Murakami’s short stories that inspired you to adapt them for the stage?
I’ve always loved the way Murakami leaves space for his readers to dream themselves into his work. Space is what I appreciate in art, the same way I love Caravaggio or Chopin. It doesn’t tell you what it’s about, you feel it, and it leaves a lot unsaid, unseen, unheard. So I’d always wanted to adapt one of Murakami’s works and when the chance came to collaborate with Kanagawa Arts Theatre (KAAT) in Japan, the opportunity seemed too good to miss. We talked initially about another story, After Dark, but I couldn’t find a way into this, it felt too complete. Then I read Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey and found so much potential in such a short and simple story. And it had a talking monkey.
It was very important for me to find a story that we could build on, rather than trying to compress a novel into a much more limited space. It was a Vanishing Point show as well as a Murakami story, so there had to be space for both of our imaginations. To my delight, I discovered a second story (actually written first) called A Shinagawa Monkey, which offered another perspective on the same events. This was the final piece of the puzzle – together, these stories would be the bedrock for the theatrical and imaginative world we would build around them.
How did the collaboration between Vanishing Point and Kanagawa Arts Theatre come about?
KAAT’s Artistic Director Keishi Nagatsuka had seen another of our shows, Interiors, years ago at the Lyric Hammersmith and it had stayed with him. Ten years later, his colleague Mahito Horiuchi came to see the same show in Shanghai. I met Mahito afterwards and we got on well. With the common ground of Interiors, we began to discuss the possibility of working together. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship between people who are connected by art.
How was the experience of UK-Japanese collaboration?
The working relationship was really formed through individual personalities getting on with each other, seeing things a similar way, listening to each other and respecting each other's ideas and needs. Vanishing Point had to find an artistically fulfilling idea, whilst KAAT needed the same, but also something that would resonate with their audience and work for them as a theatre. We worked together over an initial period to find an idea, sending emails and suggestions back and forth. Then we had a two-week workshop at KAAT, when we were given the freedom to try a few different ideas. At the end of those two weeks, we agreed that we would go forward with Shinagawa Monkey.
Were there any difficulties that you all overcame? What did you learn from the experience? What did others learn from you?
The usual difficulties of language always exist. There were doubts about whether having two languages spoken on stage could work. There were also cultural differences which we needed to think about and be very careful about. For example, there would be ‘western’ and Japanese actors onstage, but the story was set in Murakami’s Tokyo. Arguably the story could be taken out of its Japanese context, but it would of course have a different meaning performed by Scottish actors and set in Scotland than it would performed by Japanese actors in Japan. Two different shows, really.
But we were making one show that had to work in and for both cultures so we had to really try to understand what worked in each culture, what didn’t, what cultural references were specific to one culture but wouldn’t translate in another, and which could simply be understood differently, without a problem, in each culture.
In the story, the monkey is released on Mount Takao at the end. When I read the story, I imagined a wild, snowy wilderness, isolated and romantic. In the first week of rehearsals in Yokohama, Sandy and I went to Mount Takao and discovered it was actually pretty much a tourist resort, with cable cars, people selling food and ice cream, restaurants and so on. More like Aviemore in Scotland. So a specific reference like that will mean a different thing for different audiences. But that’s not really a problem.
Some things were more tricky, like how names work in Japanese and what they mean, and also how much status plays a part in the way people interact with each other. One scene we had in rehearsals just didn’t work and would have been so profoundly different in one culture compared to another that it was gradually adapted into something else.
What advice would you give to other artists who want to collaborate internationally?
Enjoy the adventure. Don’t be afraid if initially you don’t know ‘how’ to do something. Things that initially seem like obstacles will soon become your friends and open the door to somewhere interesting. People are more or less the same, so find common ground. Where there are differences, embrace them. They will help you make a better and more innovative piece of work.
What’s special about this production for audiences in the UK, Japan and beyond?
To use a cliché, it’s a unique piece of work, involving two languages and two cultures. Yet it overcomes those differences by enabling ‘actors' to speak in their own languages whilst the ‘characters’ nevertheless understand each other. It's a technique that works very well, perhaps because we’re increasingly used to following subtitles, both on streaming services and on stage as access becomes increasingly important. So language is ceasing to be a barrier.
This is something Vanishing Point has always been interested in, going back to Interiors, which was a collaboration between Scottish and Italian actors. In that show, to overcome the difficulties of language, we removed it altogether and had characters ’talking’ to each other on the other side of a window whilst the audience looked in. We could see the characters talking to each other, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. In fact the actors were silent, imitating talking. It was a different kind of language, a language all of its own. What language is, and how it can be used in different ways, has always interested us.
What are its bigger themes?
At the end of Murakami’s story, Confessions of A Shinagawa Monkey, the narrator imagines what the reaction would be if he wrote about his encounter: "I hesitate to ask, since you’re the author, but what’s the theme of this story supposed to be" "Theme? Can’t say there is one", comes his own imagined response, "it’s just about an old monkey that speaks human language… where’s the theme in that? Or the moral?"
These days, so much art seems (obliged?) to wear its intention, and often its moral outrage, on its sleeve. Maybe we’re in a time when we seek clear moral outcomes to reassure us against a seemingly amoral world? Maybe this raises separate questions about the responsibility of art? But I like the ambiguity of this work because it engages the viewer/reader in the role of dreamer.
A literary review of First Person Singular – the collection of Murakami’s short stories which includes Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey – failed to appreciate the story and described it as one-dimensional and ‘childish’. I couldn’t believe that someone could have read this story and seen so little in it, or – frankly - applied so little imagination to it. For me this tale was full of meaning and all the more powerful because of the delicate way the meanings within it were balanced. The story is a provocation, not an answer, it’s full of potential not just for the reader but for the artist who wants to take it somewhere.
Murakami’s writing is a bit like music. Of course, there are themes and meanings, but like notes in a musical composition they sit there, resonating, building, diminishing and leaving an overall impression of something. My best guess is that the reason Murakami is so popular the world over is that he leaves space between the notes for his readers, allows them to place themselves into the story, to pick out the themes that most resonate with their own lives. Inside these spaces, are chasms, which penetrate deep into the darkness and in that darkness there’s beauty and pain. I realised that our responsibility in creating our story of the Shinagawa Monkey was to do the same, to let the notes sit in the music, let them work together to create ‘something'.
What’s next for this production and for Vanishing Point?
Next for Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey is Tramway in Glasgow, which sold out quickly so we’ve announced additional performances to meet demand. Then at Dundee Rep, also sold out. After that, there will be international performances in 2026 and a return to Japan in 2027.
We’ve just opened Darwin, Nevada, a co-production with the Piccolo Theatre in Milan, with renowned Italian storyteller Marco Paolini. This will tour to major theatres across Italy over the next two months.
Then comes a co-production in Denmark, deliberately smaller in scale and more versatile, yet technically ambitious. Love Beyond, our collaboration with Ramesh Meyyappan and Raw Material, will be performed at Hong Kong International Arts Festival before hopefully touring in Japan in 2026. There will be a co-production with Lottounico in Rome and the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, based on Kafka’s The Trial. And there will be a production at the Bellini Theatre in Naples.
All of this goes hand in hand with our small-scale work which tours to rural venues across Scotland and our production of the work of younger and emerging artists from Scotland.