Keiichiro Shibuya’s android opera: the theatrics of exoticism

This chapter discusses Keiichiro Shibuya’s “android opera.” Shibuya is a Japanese composer and musician who is known for his cutting-edge electronic music and an experimental operatic work with Vocaloid Hatsune Miku in 2012. Since 2017, Shibuya has been developing what he calls android opera that involves two series of robots of human-like appearance created by the famed Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishigiuro and researcher of artificial life Takashi Ikegami: the android Skelton and the Alter android. Shibuya’s android opera has been presented in international art and cultural festivals. I will discuss Shibuya’s dramaturgical strategy for his recent two works of android opera: Scary Beauty (2017-2020) and Mirror (2022-2023). In these two works, Shibuya places the android machine at the centre of the operatic works as a reciter, a singer, and a conductor performing before live orchestral musicians. I investigate the technological theatrics of Shibuya’s android opera, which is concerned with dark themes such as the end of humanity and machinic otherness. I argue that the Alter android offers Shibuya a strategic “self-Occidentalisation” in its navigation of the Western operatic tradition and a concurrent “self-Orientalisation” that satisfies the appetite of non-Japanese audiences for a perceived exotic Japonism. In turn, this strategy raises recognition of Shibuya’s work in Japan and overseas.