The Face of Jizo

Jizo is the guardian deity of Japanese children. His stone heads are everywhere in Japan and are said to have powers of protection that predate Buddist beliefs... though not much protection in Hiroshima on 6th August 1945 when a single atomic bomb extinguished the lives of 140,000 people.

The Face of Jizo is a deeply moving play by Japanese writer Hisashi Inoue, who died in 2010 after writing 60 plays and 40 novels, but whose legacy is continued by Australian translator Roger Pulvers, a long-time friend of the writer. Set in Hiroshima three years after the dreadful blast, the play depicts library worker Mizue (Mayu Iwasaki) as she goes about her daily life.

In the small shack she calls home (beautifully laid out by designer Tobhiyah Stone Feller) is her father Takezo, comfortably installed in a cupboard. Soon it’s clear that Takezo (Shingo Usami) is a figment of Mizue’s fervent imagination. 

The father wants her to forget the conflagration and concentrate instead on catching her suitor, a boy named Kinoshita, who plans to visit the shack to collect a sculptured head of Jizo, whose face has been melted by the atomic blast.

The to-and-fro between father and daughter is very good and the two Japanese-born actors are exceptional. Iwasaki brings real pain to the role of a Hiroshima woman, stuck in her violent past, with guilt at having survived when so many didn’t; while Usami brings some much-needed comedy to his role, always hinting at what should come next.

The play has been beautifully directed by Shingo Usami and David Lynch, a dream team for this kind of Japanese/Australian production.

There’s good music from composer Me-Lee Hay to cover the scene breaks and set-ups. The setting is brilliantly imagined, with excellent lighting by Matt Cox and sound by Zachary Saric. 

An opening on-stage, though-the-window storm goes a long way to showing us what one might expect from a Hiroshima catastrophe. 

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Phil Erbacher