The New Biology of Collaborative Production
Matana Jaturasangpairoj

After the performance, Toshiki Okada talked about a similarity between Thailand and Japan, “There aresocieties where people believe that they can change the world through their own efforts, and societies where
they donʼt. Thailand is a society where they donʼt have that belief. Japanʼs the same. In France, for example,
they do have that belief, in Korea too, and maybe America. There are people, and countries, that think that way.
But Thailand isnʼt like that. Theyʼve given up. Thatʼs what Iʼve come to understand. Probably because IʼmJapanese. Because Japanʼs similar. A real feeling of resignation flows through the novel.［1］“ What is this“feeling of resignation” that Okada describes as shared?

1

From an interview with Okada in Bangkok before heheaded to a performance in Paris, in December 2018.

2

Entering the 2010s, a wide range of Japanese literaryworks have been published in Thailand in this era,from contemporary works such as Abe KazushigeʼsIP/NN (2014), Tawada Yokoʼs The Bridegroom Was aDog (2014), Matsuura Riekoʼs Opposite Version (2016),and Murata Sayakaʼs Convenience Store Woman(2018), to works by authors of the Modern era such as
Dazai Osamu, Natsume Soseki, and Tanizaki
Junichiro. It is notable that in recent years theoriginal novels behind films, or novelizations of films,

The reception of The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed in Thailand
The publication in translation of Toshiki Okadaʼs The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed, which collects
two short novels, in Thailand was born out of the social atmosphere in a country where people are searchingfor a new form of intelligence.［2］The book was published in translation for the first time in Korea, in August
2016, followed by Thailand in November of the same year, with an English edition in September 2018.［3］Okadaʼs collection has reached readers in Korean, Thai, and in the English-speaking world.
Uthis Haemamool (author of Silhouette of Desire, the original novel on which Pratthana – A Portrait ofPossession based) is one such reader, and commented of Okadaʼs work that, “The narrative approach in thiswork is distinctive and unique, like the movement of a body. Itʼs like watching performance art. The author hasa real skill for blending performance art and literature. Itʼs a book that opens up a new frontier in narrativestyle.”［4］Uthis also said of Five Days in March, included in the same collection, “It brought to mind mypersonal memory of the Shibuya (Dōgenzaka) area. I went to Shibuya the first time I went to Tokyo. WheneverI come to Japan, I stay in the Shibuya area. I like the atmosphere there. This story shows the uglier side ofShibuya, usually hidden and not captured in photographs̶the smell of garbage in the morning there.”［5］have been published in translation, such as DorianSukegawaʼs Sweet Bean Paste (March 2018), Shinkai

Makoto and Nakagawa Narukiʼs collection of shortstories She and Her Cat (August 2018) and Kore-eda
Hirokazuʼs Shoplifters (February 2019). There wasalso the release of Thai film Homestay in 2018, which
was based on Mori Etoʼs novel Colorful (2003).
3Publication of the translated Thai edition was madepossible by the Japan Foundationʼs Support Programfor Translation and Publication on Japan, withassistance from Thai publisher Gamme MagieEditions.

4Uthis suggested The End of the Special Time We Were
Allowed for the English-language newspaper Bangkok
Postʼs The Gift of Reading (a feature in whichcelebrities recommend a book as a New Yearʼs gift), inthe 12 December 2016 edition.
5From Art and the Nation State – Considering
Thailand, a discussion between Okada Toshiki andUthis Haemamool held at in June 2017, at the 21stCentury Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Taking Uthisʼ remarks into consideration, it would seem that in Okadaʼs works, through the mutual influenceof novel and theater, new territory is being opened up, overturning the fixed ideas we had held about language
in novels. I think this is bringing something fresh to Thai readers, including Uthis.［6］Perhaps Okada chose
Pratthana for dramatization not simply because of its narrative that deals with sex and politics, but because hefelt a shared sensibility, in the way personal memory flows through the works of both writers, and how various
boundaries are crossed freely.

6One can see the sense of the impression of a Thaireader on the review site Goodreads, “The fatigueand malaise felt by the characters appearing in thiscollection, and the accompanying desire to escape,really reflects the mood of modern people living inthe 2000s. Five Days in March in particular has aninteresting story and narrative style, with theboundary between characters and narrator obscuredby shifting use of person and shifting viewpoints.
The peculiar and absurd dialogue is reminiscent of a

The New Biology of Collaborative Production

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The gaze in Pratthana: A Portrait of Possession

Beckett play, and you find yourself wanting to see astage version.”
7He states, “Itʼs about the artist having the power of

his gaze. But, that takes as a pre-requisite the model
having the power to be gazed upon. Most peoplearenʼt aware of that. Maybe itʼs not that theyʼreunaware, but that they donʼt think itʼs important.

They think that the result of the artistʼs gaze is whatʼsleft in the picture. But the modelʼs endurance of thatgaze is there. Most people donʼt look at pictures thatway. But the gaze is always bidirectional. From time
to time the model will transmit a message to theartist, absorbed in his gaze on the model, asking

whether heʼs aware that the modelʼs endurance ofthat gaze, of being drawn, is essential to his art. The
model is not simply a being that is gazed upon, themodel has eyes capable of their own gaze, and theright to return the artistʼs gaze. Sometimes itʼs goodto show oneʼs own power to endure observation.
8A scriptwriting camp was held in Kumamoto inJanuary 2018. Based on feedback on Okadaʼs firstdraft script from assistant director Wichaya Artamat
as to sections to cut and sections which should beemphasized in performance, the Japanese and Thai
scripts were brought together and polished to as toenhance conformity of nuance in the respective
languages. Then, after a second draft, rehearsals
began with a third draft, and there was a continual
process of editing based on how lines felt when they
were performed on the actual stage by the actors, andasking the performersʼ opinions about lines (e.g.,whether something feels unusual in Thai). The lyricalexpression of the original novel, and the lines asdelivered by the actors on the actual stage werescrutinized. In a sense, they were working towards a

Describing concepts in a text he wrote to audition performers in Bangkok,［7］in April 2017, Okada said, “Bytalking about how the relationship between an artist and model viewing and being viewed is in fact a mutualrelationship, I want to trigger the realization in the audience that the same is true of the relationship ofviewing/being viewed with performance and audience.” The gaze is always bidirectional in Pratthana, givinga clear sense of the mutual relationship of viewing and being viewed. From the audition-text stage, emphasis
has been placed on the viewer/viewed relationship, and giving the audience an understanding that this is arepresentation of being viewed has been stressed consistently. What is the significance of making the audienceaware of the party “being viewed?”
The central protagonistʼs name, Khao Sing, is a verb meaning “to possess,” in the sense of a spirit moving into
a person and taking control of his actions. In the naming ritual scene (hazing new students), “He is dragged
forward and told to open his eyes. Blinding white light blasts in his face, he recoils and falls down. Theupperclassmen push him back upright”; heʼs given his new name by his seniors when they ask, “Have you beenpossessed by a ghost or something?” Throughout this ritual, he has to follow the orders of his seniors, and by
being given the new name Khao Sing, the protagonist ultimately becomes accustomed to discipline, regardlessof whether there are any more senior people around. He comes to feel that he is being observed, even if there isno one in particular observing him. During the play, Khao Sing is repeatedly possessed by a pee am (sleepghost), and Waree gives a graphic account of Khao Singʼs state of despair when he says, “You want somethingthat you canʼt see to come and taste your flesh, letting yourself be done to, in whichever way it wants. So you
wonʼt feel guilty of the restrictions or limits youʼve set up for yourself if you fall into the state of being tied
down and helpless.” And when Khao Sing is “lashed countless times by the scourge of memory and therepeating circumstances which we call the present, until [his] whole body and heart are completely beaten andnumb,” interjections from the narrator such as, “You donʼt feel it anymore,” introduce a form of direct
second-person address not found in the original, carrying the dual-meaning of addressing Khao Sing and theaudience, and one might even imagine a gaze directed from self to self.

closer interlingual mutual intelligibility, between
Thai and Japanese, and between the novel andMeanwhile, a stepladder stands towering in the center of the stage from which one can look down overeverything, but the time goes by with the actors and audience hardly looking up at it. On the importance ofsetting to Pratthana, assistant director Wichaya Artamat comments that, “The way that feet are emphasized:
the figure of Khao Sing massaging Wareeʼs feet; the discussion of anatomy, the size of feet and faces; Jarunan
Phantachatʼs narration about the weight of feet, and feet and legs marching to the city; and the way a lot ofpeople lie face up on the ground and lift their feet̶it made me think of the grass-roots Red Shirt movementin 2010.”［8］Highly durable feet form the towering stepladderʼs base, and emphasizing the feet recalls Okadaʼs“power of those who endure observation,” that is to say, an awareness of individual rights.

theater.

This is how the significance Okada described when he said through the creative process that he wanted to“make this a work able to give people the important experience of living the life of another” has been brought
to life. As for the “feeling of resignation” felt in both Thailand and Japan, I think a creative note from Okada
may shed some light on the matter, “Itʼs relevant for all of us forced to live and think within the framework ofa nation state... Because the things portrayed here are related to us at an essential level.”(Translated from Japanese by Ben Cagan)

Matana Jaturasangpairoj
A translator, and Japanese literature scholar fromBangkok, Jaturasangpairoj is a lecturer of the JapaneseSection, Department of Eastern Languages, Faculty ofArts, Chulalongkorn University. She obtained her PhD
from the Graduate School of Letters, Osaka University.
She worked as a research fellow at the Department ofJapanese Language and Literature, School of Education,
Waseda University, in 2014. As well as Toshiki Okadaʼs
The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed, she has alsotranslated works by Haruki Murakami and Hiromi
Kawakami into Thai.

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