This lecture focuses on how Beckett’s drama has been accepted and translated within Japanese theatres in the twenty-first century. The first part analyzes the relationship between Beckett’s plays and traditional Japanese performing arts, through which intersemiotic translation functions effectively. In contrast, the second part examines the representation of Beckett’s drama as the mirror that reflects modern Japanese society, including consumerism, natural disasters, gender issues and the recent pandemic. The contrast between the traditional and the modern exemplified by Japanese theatres gets to the core of Beckett’s drama, which traverses time and space diachronically and synchronically.

Yoshiko Takebe is Professor in the Translation and Interpreting Course at the Department of Practical English, Shujitsu University in Japan. Her research focuses on the correlation between nonverbal and verbal forms of expressions with respect to drama and theatre. Her recent articles on Beckett are ‘Translating the Ecological Aspects of Beckett's Drama into Japanese Theatre’ in Sameul Beckett and Ecology (Eds. Nicholas E. Johnson, Trish McTighe, Céline Thobois-Gupta. London: Bloomsbury, 2025) and ‘Translating Beckett’s Voices in Different Cultures’ in Beckett’s Voices / Voicing Beckett (Eds. Laurens De Vos, Mariko Hori Tanaka, and Nicholas E. Johnson. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021). She is currently a visiting lecturer with the Drama Department at QUB.