To Nirvana and Back

An album, in the truest sense of the word, documenting the performance of Shakespeare’s ’King Lear’, in the Japanese town of Echigo-Tsumari. Renamed ’Real King Lear’, and directed by Bastiaans, the play weaved Japanese history with life stories from the performing actors’ families. Award winning designer Daisuke Nakatsuka and photographer Daido Moriyama collaborated on the project. This resulting publication presents the play and the research for it; images of flowers are juxtaposed with historical family portraits, interviews with local Japanese pensioners and haunting shots of the stage itself.