The Woman Who Eats Babies

5-9 July 2022

The Woman Who Eats Babies
And other tales from Yamanashi.

A new theatre performance based on folktales from Yamanashi, Japan.

Architects inspired by a bridge of monkeys, cursed women licking the sick, a shop keeper who hates the number four, adulterous housewives, arguing mountains, and a grave digging, dead-baby-eating woman - these are the tales of the merchant centre of Yamanashi.

Translated, written and performed by Doubtful Sound. 

Doubtful Sound is a Japanese theatre company based in London. They have performed Japanese folktales in ancient temples, at festivals, over rivers, in Japanese gardens, and at theatres in Japan and England. Their latest show is a selection of mysterious folktales and folksongs from the prefecture of Yamanashi.

Music by Yui Shikakura and others. Yui is a teacher, performer, and researcher in the field of Education, Music, Culture, and the Arts. She specialised as an Ethnomusicologist in Kabuki and Japanese Traditional Music.

As a Japanese Traditional Music specialist, she performed storytelling collaboration concerts at The British Library in 2019.  Her research focused on the gender gap in Japanese traditional arts, music education in early years, and spectral and sound quantity analysis of various vocal styles. She regularly delivers online lectures, tuitions, and CPDs in universities in Japan.

Stories originally from:
'Kai Folktales' collated by Rikki Tsuchihashi;
'Zenkoku Folktales Volume 16 - Yamanashi Collection'

For The Woman Who Eats Babies, Doubtful Sound are:
Shinako Wakatsuki (Actor/translation)
Gavin Harrington-Odedra (actor)
Andrew Wakatsuki-Robinson (Writer/Director)

This show was made possible with help from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.