‘We are all one Grizabella’: Prostitution, Theology and the cult of Cats in Japan

Cats has been extraordinarily successful in Japan since its first performance in Tokyo in 1983. Although the Japanese have responded warmly to the purely entertaining aspects of the musical, from the beginning they have been encouraged to find a deep meaning in it, too. This meaning is centred on Grizabella, called an ‘old prostitute’ in the Japanese translation. This article reviews the evidence for identifying Grizabella as a prostitute, the way this has only slightly registered in western criticism, the cultural factors which may have affected her explicit identification as a prostitute in Japan, and the elaborate interpretative apparatus Japanese critics have erected around the cat elevated to the status of a ‘sacred prostitute’ by Masayuki Ikeda, Japan’s most influential commentator on Cats. In conclusion, it is suggested that this study shows how even carefully ‘cloned’ musicals can develop distinctly different meanings despite the systems of controls designed to produce uniformity.