What's On

Toco Nikaido is a celebrated Japanese theatre director, actress, singer, and choreographer. With her extensive knowledge of Japanese subculture, Nikaido started Banana Gakuen Junjo Otome-gumi (Banana Academy Pure-hearted Girls Group) and moulded her unique creative style that mixes perspectives from her own generation and those of 1960s and 1970s Japanese student movements. In 2013, Banana Gakuen Junjo Otome-gumi disbanded and reformed under the new name Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker. Enthusiastically received by audiences around the world, Nikaido continues to produce theatre with a frenzied combination of dance, music, and video that feature elements from pop, anime, idol live performance, and more.

Celebrating the group’s first performance as part of LIFT (22 June - 2 July 2016), Nikaido will talk about the unprecedented approach applied in her own brand of performance, as well as discuss the formation of her companies, presented in both Banana Gakuen Junjo Otome-gumi, and Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker. This talk will also examine where this unique troupe’s performance style and subject matter fit in the context of the current state of Japanese theatre and Japanese pop culture scene, and explore what the future could bring.

The Japan Foundation is pleased to support a major new commission by Japanese artist Koki Tanaka held at The Showroom, London, which will be his first solo exhibition in the UK. Tanaka’s project departs from his interest in the local histories of The Showroom’s neighbourhood in Church Street, London. Through a series of communal actions and proposals in the lead up to and during the exhibition, involving a range of contributors, Tanaka suggests a composite approach towards how to read the present through the past, and about how these can be starting points for new social possibilities.

This year’s Japan Foundation-supported Edinburgh Film Festival will feature an exciting selection of Japanese films. In addition to new releases such as Satoko Yokohama’s The Actor and Eiji Uchida’s Lowlife Love, the festival will also be showing two classic Japanese films based on manga as part of the “POW!!! Live Action Comic Strip Adaptations” strand, Golgo 13 directed by Junya Sato (pictured), and Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance directed by Kenji Misumi.

For the full lineup, please visit: www.edfilmfest.org.uk

This year’s London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), a biennale festival pioneering new forms of theatre and presenting spectacular performances, will present Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker, a performance orchestrated by Tokyo-based artist and pop-idol Toco Nikaido. Featuring choreographed medley of dance, music, bellowed slogans and video clips, and paying homage to otagei (ritualised dancing and chanting by groups of fans), the performance captures Japan's unique subculture in all its multi-coloured, cacophonous, frenetic glory.