Yes! The Japanese hip hop scene is huge! I think Japanese rappers are getting better too. What about the appeal of the music? I had read that hip hop was big in Japan. Japanese history is abundant with its share of political drama, so I’m sure a parallel could be drawn, although I’m not well versed enough in Japanese history to give you specific examples… That gets asked a lot, and truthfully, I think the heart of the show is a story about human relations and drama, just like Les Mis, with a backdrop of history, so I think there’s a high chance of success. Why do you think a Japanese audience in general would respond to Hamilton? How well-versed are they in American history? Are there parallels with Japanese history? ![]() I liked it so much that I even wrote an article describing to the Japanese audience the cultural significance behind the show’s colorblind* casting, and the impact the show has had as a piece of modern American theater. ![]() I resisted listening to the sound track beforehand because I wanted to experience it for the first time live, then I got deeply hooked onto the sound track, and was lucky enough to watch it for a second time on Broadway, this time with full knowledge of the show. My first exposure was the Broadway show with the original cast. When did you first come into contact with the musical and how did you initially react? Obviously the hope is that it will be used for the official production, but there is no word whether that will happen any time soon, especially with the pandemic ravaging. It’s been an eye-opening experience in pushing the possibilities of translating while maintaining the rhyme scheme, which requires broader interpretations for certain lines, so it breaks traditional translating convention. I spent the last year and a half translating all of Act 1, and half of Act 2, mostly because I wanted to hear what it would sound like. “The word in Japan is that Hamilton is impossible to translate.”Īre you going to translate more of “Hamilton”? His resume is full of Broadway shows that he performed in Japan – “Next to Normal,” “Rent,” “The Last Five Years,” “The Rocky Horror Show” - but not “Hamilton,” because there hasn’t been a Japanese production of it. (As you’ll see below, that clearly rubbed off on him.). ![]() Before that, he lived in England, the son of a Korean-Japanese mother who was studying linguistics at University College London. Although he has lived in New York City since 2011, during the pandemic he is “currently stuck in Japan,” where he grew up from the age of 10. Shin-Parton, who also goes by Gen Shin and Jamie Parton, is an actor and singer who has performed in both Japan and the United States. Gen Parton-Shin sent me the two videos below of songs from “Hamilton” - “My Shot” and “Helpless” - that he translated into Japanese.
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