Japan Creative Centre
FREE ADMISSION!

The Japan Creative Centre invites you to join us at our JCC film screening and creative session. As part of JCC's creative program, we will be screening exciting Japanese movies at the end of every month. The screening will then be followed by an informative sharing session where guest speakers will share their thoughts and insights on all things Japan!

For our fifth session, we will be screening the kabuki adaptation of "Kanadehon Chūshingura" with a pre-screening introduction to enhance your appreciation of the rich and intricate art of kabuki by Ms Yow Wei Meng. After the screening, Ms Yow will discuss the popularity and significance of kabuki in Japanese culture during a sharing session. She will also share further insights about the famous tale seeped in history.

Many Japanese would recall a famous event that happened in 1701 inside the Tokugawa Shogun’s castle in Edo (now Tokyo) that inspired the creation of the wildly popular puppet play “Kanadehon Chūshingura”, more commonly known as “The Treasury of Loyal Retainers” in English. On that fateful day, a feudal lord drew his sword inside the Shogun’s castle – a forbidden act punishable by death – and injured a higher ranking official. As a result, he was sentenced to “seppuku”, a ritual suicide. His retainers were dismissed and became “ronins”, i.e. samurai without a master.

Two years later, on a snowy winter night, 47 ronins broke into the mansion of the senior official and killed him to avenge their master. They surrendered to the authorities soon after and were all sentenced to death by seppuku.