Here, again courtesy of Japan's Shakespeare Century 日本のシェイクスピア１００年, is a picture of international geisha of mystery Sadayakko as "Orie" (おりゑ, corresponding to Ophelia) in the first Japanese production of Hamlet ever, which was produced in 1903 by her husband KAWAKAMI Otojirō's avant-garde theater company.

Kawakami's company had already produced Othello and The Merchant of Venice in 1903 before finally getting around to Hamlet; they were not time-wasters. On the other hand, NIKI Hisae characterizes their work as "sensational and melodramatic" and Kawakami himself as "a showman, who could not recognize the artistic value of the play." Ouch.

I haven't read any Kawakami-company scripts, but I have heard that, for example, the soliloquies were cut — even "to be or not to be" — so it seems fair to conclude that sensation and melodrama were prioritized over psychological portraiture. Kawakami also tended to modernize and localize the content of the plays: thus, Hamlet became a story set in contemporary Japan about Hamura and Orie instead of Hamlet and Ophelia.

Such shenanigans allowed TSUBOUCHI Shōyō to take the credit for the first modern performance of Shakespeare for his Bungei Kyōkai production of Hamlet later in the decade. What scholars mean by "modern" here is that it was a more or less faithful and complete translation, with no cut soliloquies (and absolutely no jōruri), plus the use of female actors for female parts — although, paradoxically, Shakespeare didn't do this (and Kawakami did).

Pioneering though it was, Shōyō's production had its critics. One of these critics was NATSUME Sōseki (for it is he), who wrote a typically crabby review for the papers in which he declared that "Shakespeare's plays, by their fundamental nature, do not permit translation into Japanese" (沙翁劇は其劇の根本性質として、日本語の翻訳を許さぬものである). If Shakespeare absolutely had to be translated, Sōseki went on, it should at least be done like a Noh play or something, reflecting the fact that Shakespeare's lines were poetry in an elevated style. (No idea if Sōseki was aware of Shōyō's jōruri Julius Caesar.)

Anyway, almost a century later, professor UEDA Kuniyoshi 上田邦義 took Sōseki's idea and ran with it. The result: Noh Hamlet [PDF]. According to Ueda's website, his tragedography also includes Noh Cleopatra and even Noh Murder in the Cathedral (insert "Who's on First" homage here). Be sure to check out his archives for performance videos.

To return to Noh Hamlet, here's an English backtranslation [PDF] of Noh Hamlet 2004:

Horatio: I am Horatio, who served Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. After his death, following his will, I have been travelling abroad to recount his tragic tale. Even now I deeply regret that, as he felt ill at ease about his heart when he was challenged to a fencing match by Laertes, I could not stop him from accepting it, and he lost his life. So long have I been absent from Denmark that I am now returning home to pay a visit to Hamlet’s as well as Ophelia’s grave. As I have hurried, I have already arrived at Ophelia’s grave. I will sit still and pray for her spirit.

Here in Northern Europe, spring has finally come. Blowing in the breeze, the violets, primroses, and buttercups are so lovely and wild that they remind me of Ophelia while she was alive. At her funeral, the queen offered flowers, saying, "Sweets to the sweet. Farewell. " It was here at this very spot.

I dearly remember Hamlet saying to me as his dying words: "If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, / Absent thee from felicity awhile, / And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, / To tell my story."

[A villager appears.]

Villager: To be or not to be, that is the question;
To be or not to be, that is the question ...

One final point of interest: Noh Hamlet incorporates shakuhachi. As SUGISAWA Haruko 杉澤陽子 explains in another paper [PDF], the shakuhachi is never used in modern performances of traditional noh but there was such a thing as "shakuhachi noh" in the Muromachi period: Zeami 世阿弥, in his Zeshiro rokujū igo sarugaku dangi 世子六十以後申楽談儀*, claims to have "gotten chills" (冷えに冷えたり) at the performance of Zōami 増阿弥, who was a dengaku performer and shakuhachi player active at the same time. This shakuhachi noh tradition, Sugisawa explains, is resurrected in Noh Hamlet to complement its zen-inspired, meditative nature. (Related: "Hamlet: A Study in Satori", by Ted Guhl.)

Hamlet: Know that happiness is most important. All people's—
Chorus: All people’s happiness and longevity, we pray.
Hamlet: Speak your mind—
Chorus: Speak your mind, do what you say, and do not fight. There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.
Hamlet: The rest is silence—
Chorus: The rest is silence. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest; flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.