[ENG SUB] Aiau Bridge Dream (OSK Revue, 1989)

[nightless_castle]

Summary: Kamijo Wataru (Shinonome Akira) comes to Osaka from Tokyo on a job to compose the music for an upcoming local musical. There, at the Aiau Bridge, he meets a mysterious girl named Mizuki (Tomomi Ai) who tells him that she’s “been waiting for him”. When asked by Wataru if they knew each other and what she meant by this, she simply asks him to “remember” before disappearing. A lovers bridge, a jealous goddess, a kabuki dance troupe… what is it that Wataru can’t remember? A love story that spans across 400 years, from the Jōkyō era to modern day Osaka.

→ DOWNLOAD HERE

Not Takarazuka this time but finally OSK! An all female revue company that I really love. More information about this dreamy and hauntingly beautiful show below. Lots of historical context and cultural terms in this one.

I’m actually a big fan and longtime follower of OSK Revue so I’m happy that I actually finished this one. To give an extremely summarized background of OSK revue for those who are unfamiliar, it’s an all female revue founded in 1922 in Osaka and was one of Japan’s “big three” all female revues back in the day along with Takarazuka and SKD (OSK’s sister company). OSK has a very rich and complicated history and the company has gone through many reformations throughout the years. This musical is from the “Kintetsu era” of OSK, when they were still sponsored by their parent company, the railway company Kintetsu. Kintetsu suddenly terminated their support and dropped OSK back in 2003, however thanks to the hard work and passion of several OSK members who volunteered to set up a campaign for OSK’s survival, OSK was reformed and rebuilt from the ground up by volunteers and the actresses themselves, although now significantly downscaled. When OSK was reformed into a new company they also lost their publisher and did not retain the rights to reprint any of their products, which is why it is very hard to find old OSK shows. Miraculously though I managed to get my hands on this show's program so here we are.

As befitting of an OSK work, this musical’s story is set in Osaka. The Aiau bridge, which the story is based upon, is a real bridge in Dotonbori built in the 1680s. Historically the name has been read in many different ways such as “Aioi” or “Aiai” but the official reading is “Aiau”, which means "interaction (between people)". The musical uses two names to differentiate between time periods so don’t be confused. The bridge was quite a popular avenue for Noh actors and geisha to meet as it was located near theaters and tea houses, however it started to become known as the Break-up Bridge "縁切り橋" (Enkiri-bashi) when rumors spread that anyone who crossed the bridge would destroy the romantic ties with their lover.

This musical is the playwright Kitabayashi Sawako’s very first OSK work. She is known for her fantasy stories and her fusion of traditional Japanese performing arts with modern arts. Kitabayashi grew up in Osaka and was especially familiar with the Aiau Bridge. As canals and bridges are very culturally important to Osaka, she made this musical as a wonderful homage and love letter to her hometown. Kitabashi went on to write and direct more OSK musicals up until the year 2003.

I don’t really know what to say about this musical other than it's a really beautiful story and just really good. This show looks and feels like a dream. The kabuki scenes are especially so beautiful. The music is also amazing and out of this world. Also, Shinonome Akira is such a great singer. Actually they’re all great singers. The acting was lovely too. OSK is so good. I love OSK! This is a treasure of an old musical and I’m extremely grateful it didn’t become lost media.



Although she’s not in a very prominent role, one of my favorite OSK actresses, Daiki Makoto (who’s quite young here, this was her third year in the company) actually has a decent amount of screen time in this show as the side character "Makoto". For those who don’t know, Daiki Makoto was a very important figure who helped protest Kintetsu’s decision to terminate support for the company. She is known to be the only person out of the 71 members in the troupe at the time to first voice her opinion against OSK’s dissolution (in her exact words, she told them “I don’t want that!”). She went on to become the first top star after OSK’s reformation during the “NewOSK Revue'' era. She did a lot for the theater and many believe that OSK would not exist today if it weren’t for her.

By the way, the encore is subbed (except for one song which was in English and I couldn't for the life of me transcribe unfortunately). Make sure to watch till the end to see the OSK anthem with their infamous sakura parasols!

Translator’s notes:

I’m a big fan of localization but when translating media that’s very cultural and traditional, I tend to want to respect the original language and keep the heart of it in there as much as possible. Anyway I decided to keep in a lot of the honorifics this time. Sometimes not everything has to be in English :)

It was a bit of a challenge translating Osaka and Tokyo dialects, which I had to differentiate because it’s made to be a whole point in the story. I’m pretty sure I would have had an easier time translating this into my mother tongue, Indonesian. To me, some aspects of the two dialects are somewhat comparable to the big city Jakarta/Jaksel dialect with smaller town dialects in Indonesia. I was born in a small town in Kalimantan and spent some of my childhood there so I had my fair share of speaking with "aku/kamu" and "-kah?" but then I went to highschool in Jakarta and became the exact pretentious “gue/lo” cityfolk stereotype we’d make fun of in the countryside (which the characters in the show also do) so I’m familiar with both. Anyway, it’s a hard thing to translate these dialects because obviously there is no direct English “counterpart”. In general though, translators usually go with either Scottish or Southern accents when localizing the Osaka dialect. I just went with very subtle things (using more slang/informal words, making them sound more casual and relaxed, etc) while keeping the aforementioned Indonesian dialect comparison in my head (which helped quite a bit).

京の都 (Kyo-no-Miyako) — An old name for Kyoto.

大和のつるし柿や ((Like) the dried persimmons of Yamato) — An old proverb that means “to like (doing) something but be bad at it”. Yamato is the old name of the Nara prefecture, where persimmons grow (and are hung to dry). Dried persimmons have hardened stems, so it’s a sort of pun since ヘタ (stem) and 下手 (unskilled, bad) are pronounced the same way (“heta”).

貞享二年 (Jōkyō 2) — The year 1685. Jōkyō (貞享) was a Japanese era name after Tenna and before Genroku. This period spanned the years from February 1684 through September 1688.

一子相伝 (Isshisouden) — The practice of the handing down of secret knowledge of Noh from father to son.

八百八橋 (The 808 bridges of Naniwa) — A term during the Edo period for the many many bridges and canals in Naniwa (current day Osaka).

妻敵討 (Megatakiuchi) — A term for revenge on an adulterer

後追い松の緑橋 (The Midori Bridge of pine trail) — The poet Sugawara no Michizane’s favorite tree was a plum tree. He also had pine trees and sakura trees in his mansion which he also loved. A romantic legend says that when the poet left Kyoto for Daizaifu, the plum tree longed so much for its master that it flew to follow him all the way from Kyoto to Dazaifu, where the tree became known as the “Tobiume'' (flying plum). The sakura tree became so sad that it died, but the pine tree actually also flew and followed Michizane, however it was exhausted and stopped in its trail around Kobe and took root there. “Midori Bridge” (Green Bridge) refers to both the color of the bridge after the pine trees left its trail, as well as the real bridge in Osaka with that very name.

河原者 (Kawaramono) — A lower class in Medieval Japanese society. Kawaramono were engaged in well digging, kabuki, gardening, and the like.

There is some dialogue from the script that has been revised or changed/improvised. One in particular that’s quite relevant to the plot is the dialogue during the final fight scene. In the script, Hashihime says to Amehiko “after I tore you two apart, that woman still came to see you”. In the show she says something like “after you chose the arts over love, that woman still came to see you”. I think it’s a pretty crucial difference because the first one makes it obvious that the whole thing was Hashihime’s fault, whereas the second one puts the blame on Amehiko. I changed this to be “after I made you choose art over love, that woman still came to see you”, sort of combining the two.

Comments

[ribon]

thank you!

[nightless_castle]

you're very welcome~! ^^