ACM THEATRE

Theatre Echo"Ra-Nuki no Satsui"

April 29 (Thu.),1999

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Written and Directed by: Ai Nagai
Performance: Yoshihito Yasuhara, Hiroharu Ochiai, Sakiko Uran, Kazuo Kumakura, et al.

In any country and any era, the speech habits of the younger generation seem a bit confused, especially to the members of the older generation, who usually deplore the "bad language" used by young people. "The Dropped �Ra� Murder" is an intellectual comedy that sheds light on the linguistic condition of modern Japan, as it comically describes the discord between the two sides of the generation gap.
In standard, grammatically correct Japanese, the potential form the verb is formed by inserting the two syllables "ra" and "re" in the infinitive � "miru" (�to see�) thus becomes "mirareru" (�can see�). The trend among younger speakers of Japanese, however, is to only insert the "re" and to drop the "ra" instead of "mirareru," then, they would say "mireru." This phenomenon is called the 'dropped "Ra"' which forms part of the title of the play.

The play features a middle-aged gentleman, Mr. Ebina, who is pained by such "improper" Japanese usage. As luck has it, he ends up working as the subordinate of a young man who likes to speak with dropped "ras." Not only that, but there is someone else in the same office who does not know how to use her "keigo" (honorific/deferential Japanese) correctly, and another woman speaks the Japanese version of Valley Girl speech ("kogyaru" speech, or "high school girl" talk). To add insult to injury, some women use men's speech, while other office workers cannot help sprinkling their speech with a lot of incomprehensible English words. Mr. Ebina's office is thus a veritable "break show" of misused language.
Of course, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to try to correct all this wrong usage, as it would leave little time for work. On the other hand, Mr. Ebina fears that ignoring such bad speech would mean the demise of the Japanese language, so he resolves to stand up for the cause of correct usage. From that day forth, the whole atmosphere of his office transforms completely. Whenever anyone is guilty of dropping their "ras," in particular, Mr. Ebina's anger verges on the point of wanting to murder the perpetrator.

This comedic masterpiece, by focusing on the vicissitudes of language usage by the younger generation, takes a hard look at the relationship between language and the way we live. This work by Ai Nagai won the 1st Tsuruya Nanboku Prize for Drama, and she won the Heisei 9 (1997) Minister of Education Award for New Artistic Person of the year.