Haruo Shimada

What does a Japanese magician bring to a world stage? Shimada's answer was unambiguous — bring something Japanese, and do it to world standard. The wagasa, the Japanese parasol, became the emblem of that.

Reference footage (unofficial)

The following are not official channels but uploads by third parties. We link to them rather than embedding them, and will take a link down promptly at a rights holder's request.

• The full dove act Channel: Live Your Magic
• Manipulation act Channel: AllAboutMagicians
• Dove act Channel: Live Our Magic

Key achievements

1. Born in Tokyo; apprenticed to Shōkyokusai Ten'yō at 15 and made his professional debut at 17.
2. Went abroad at 19 and built a worldwide reputation performing overseas.
3. Developed his Japanese-parasol routine while working abroad, establishing a distinctly Japanese stage act.
4. Honoured as Magician of the Year in the United States and with the Ten'yō and Ishida Tenkai prizes in Japan.

Apprenticed at fifteen, abroad at nineteen

Haruo Shimada was born in Tokyo on 19 December 1940.

He was apprenticed to Shōkyokusai Ten’yō at fifteen and made his professional debut at seventeen. Ten’yō had been a pupil of Shōkyokusai Tenichi, which places Shimada in the third generation of modern Japanese magic and makes him a fellow pupil of Tenko Hikita I.

At nineteen he left Japan. This was a period when working abroad was far less common than it is now, and from there he built an international reputation performing overseas.

It started with Pollock

Around 1960, Shimada saw Channing Pollock’s dove act in a film of European stage performances.

That was the origin. He took up work with doves and set about finding a shape of his own.

Being struck by a predecessor’s performance and using it as a starting point rather than a template is how a craft passes healthily between generations. What matters is that he did not stop there.

Choosing the parasol

Later, working abroad, Shimada developed a routine built around the Japanese parasol.

His judgement is visible in that choice. Competing overseas, he did not trace Western conventions; he brought a Japanese one with him.

To Japanese eyes the wagasa is an everyday object, but to audiences abroad the form was unfamiliar. A parasol opens. Its shape and colour arrive on the stage. That alone makes the act unlike anyone else’s.

And, interestingly, it was fresh to Japanese audiences as well. An ordinary object becomes something else under stage light. Taking your own culture and putting it to new use through an outside eye is not an easy thing to do.

Recognition on both sides

Shimada was named Magician of the Year in the United States and received the Ten’yō and Ishida Tenkai prizes in Japan — one of very few Japanese performers honoured on both sides.

In June 2007 the American magic journal Genii ran a feature on him. Nineteen pages. That a foreign specialist journal devoted that much space to a single Japanese performer records where he stood.

2022

Haruo Shimada died on 30 April 2022, at eighty-one.

A boy who knocked on Ten’yō’s door at fifteen crossed the sea at nineteen and stood on world stages with a Japanese object in his hands. He spent a lifetime demonstrating what a Japanese magician could do abroad.

When Japanese performers work overseas today, the road is already open. He opened it.

Notable works

• The Japanese-parasol routine, his signature work, developed while performing abroad
• His dove act, taken up after seeing Channing Pollock on film
• Magician of the Year in the United States; the Ten'yō and Ishida Tenkai prizes in Japan

Chronology

Only years that could be verified are listed.

1. 1940 Born in Tokyo on 19 December
2. 1955 Apprenticed to Shōkyokusai Ten'yō at fifteen
3. 1957 Makes his professional debut at seventeen
4. 1959 Goes abroad at nineteen and works overseas thereafter
5. 2007 The American magic journal Genii devotes a nineteen-page feature to him in its June issue
6. 2022 Dies on 30 April