[In the following essay, Rolf analyzes major characteristics of Japanese theater in the 1980s.]

Twentieth-century Japanese theatre grew out of attempts to create a new Japanese theatre befitting the new Japan. As was the case with the immense socio-economic reform Japan undertook in the late nineteenth century, the model for the new theatre was the West, specifically the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Gorki, and Ibsen. By the late 1920s, what came to be known as shingeki (literally, new theatre) had produced a significant body of artists and works. The new theatre was intellectual in tone and lacked a popular audience. Much of it was characterized by a socialist realism that used the stage for the exploration of socio-political issues. Another strain of the new Western-inspired realistic theatre sought a psychological and lyrical complexity in the vein of the works of Chekhov. Even with the upheavals brought about by World War II, this state of affairs lasted into the 1960s.

The generation of artists who began their careers in the 1960s brought about a theatre renaissance that has received increasing scholarly and critical attention. Much has appeared (or is about to) concerning the tent theatres of Kara Juro (b. 1941) and Satoh Makoto (b. 1943), the drama of playwrights Betsuyaku Minoru (b. 1937) and Shimizu Kunio (b. 1936), the avant-gardism of Terayama Shuji (1935-1983), and the theatre aesthetic of Suzuki Tadashi (b. 1939) and Ota Shogo (b. 1939). The new direction taken by these artists is becoming well-documented. Facing a theatre scene dominated by realism and rationality, they worked to restore the primacy of the actor, reduce theatre's dependence on the written word, and re-establish links with an autochthonous premodern Japanese imagination. This involved new configurations of performance and audience space, new relationships between actor and text, actor and spectator. Although most of these figures are still active, their work already constitutes a considerable legacy. Their dramaturgical innovations have taken hold, influencing younger Japanese theatre artists.

A recognizable style has held sway over the past decade, one that seems to some a continuation of the tradition of the 1960s and to others something different. As will be seen, it may be both. Although not encompassing all of today's nontraditional theatre, this approach predominates among younger artists. A description of its characteristics will be followed by a close look at two compelling works as examples. Listing creates the risk of oversimplification or excessive schematization, but should provide a preliminary agenda, a starting point for discussion of this remarkable trend in contemporary Japanese theatre.

Japanese theatre today seems to have little interest in making statements. Direct concern with social or political morality is often seen as old-fashioned and inappropriate to contemporary theatre. Supporting this apolitical stance is the notion that one point of view is ultimately as valid as the next. Works by many of Japan's more creative younger artists are marked by the absence of any easily identifiable ideology, although the lack of an apparent ideological position could be interpreted as constituting one of sorts.

Many of the more successful works are tours deforce of the creative imagination, the reality presented in the performance meant to bear little relation to conventional, easily recognizable paradigms of everyday life. At any rate, no attack upon such a reality is intended. Items and figures from history and the social milieu are freely dragged in, but lacking any attempt to valorize them. They are more or less equated, morally neutral, so to speak, being merely different pieces of bric-a-brac from different shelves of the contemporary consciousness.

A defining trait of the new Japanese theatre is its frequent use of childhood. Works abound in adolescent and, especially, prepubescent characters. There is a deep fascination with the solipsistic perception that characterizes early childhood, a time of pure experience free from the demands of logic and the need to assess and judge. Setting plays in childhood provides a natural link to the world of fantasy. One source of the new theatre's many elements of fantasy is science fiction, but the result is more akin and indebted to manga, Japanese cartoons, than "science."

Manga is the constant link with the sensibility of childhood. One source of this fascination with manga is surely its visual nature, which frees it from the domination of language. The drawings of a cartoon possess a reality that precedes that of its captions (even taking into account the pictorial possibilities of the many ideographs in the Japanese writing system). Secondly, Japanese cartoons treat all manner of subjects—from the most naive adolescent romance to the atomic bomb—but the medium involves an inherent simplification. Its essentially unintellectual character makes it a key element in the packaging of contemporary Japanese drama. Not only is a cartoon world created on stage, but programs and promotional materials are similarly marked by cartoons, cutely posed photos, bright colors, and an absence of the critical and biographical commentary found in material for older artists. The artists of the 1980s cultivate an unintellectual image that belies their obvious intelligence.

The typical Japanese cartoon is decidedly emotive. Its onomatopoeia and exclamatory language would shame Batman; in a sense, this finds a counterpart in the unusual, fast-paced acting style of such troupes as that of Noda Hideki (b. 1955; described below). Emotive, rather than cognitive, the cartoon provides the antithesis of the rationality that was common in Japanese drama from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Finally, there is an obvious and satirical unreality about cartoons. Performances suggesting a similar air of unreality call attention to the physical reality of the actors. Distance is created between not only actor and role, but words and their meaning, as well. Although only a child would "believe" the reality of a cartoon (or a stage performance, for that matter), it can communicate an ironic perspective.

Japanese theatre artists and audiences seem drawn to the sensibility of the cartoon by its inherently visual, simple, emotive, ironic character. The fairy tale is another common, more literary source of fantastic, childish, emotive imagery. It remains popular, but its importance (although considerable) seems matched by that of the contemporary cartoon.

Today's Japanese theatre, well rehearsed and skilfully staged, is performed in a spirit of play: the more laughter, the more successful the performance. The reduced distance between actor and audience, like that between actor and text, has become correspondingly more fluid. This has resulted in closer identification by audiences with actors and their predicament as they do battle with the text. The audience and the performers become co-conspirators against the text, working together to undermine and subvert its literal meaning and surface logic. Occasionally, actors even resort to what is essentially a technique of popular comedy—laughing at one's own jokes. This further increases the distance between themselves and their acting, while reducing that with the audience.

Audiences are generally young, mostly in their early twenties, younger than most of the performers. But age alone cannot account for the conspiracy of humor, laughter not being a monopoly of youth. Still, the ludic spirit of today's theatre (like its apoliticalization and absorption in childhood and fantasy) points to a certain mentality: indifferent, self-absorbed, comfortable.

Much of the experimentation in Japanese theatre of the 1960s and early 1970s involved abandoning the traditions and assumptions of the well-made play. There was a keen awareness of the pliability of dramatic structure. Today's new Japanese playwrights and directors love to engage in metatheatre exercises, an almost mischievous playing with and exploring of theatre's malleable parameters. This is not only to rediscover or reconfirm what is now already well known, but also to make use of a dramaturgical device that is now quite familiar, if not second nature.

Beckett's Waiting for Godot was a major impetus for many of the generation of the 1960s. It was performed in May 1960 by the Literary Theatre (Bungakuza), an old and influential shingeki troupe, which had done Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in March 1955. Artists of the 1960s often explored the nature of playing and the play in original works, making such exploration an integral part of their approach. Plays today constantly call attention to the fact that they are plays, and the exposure or underscoring of theatre's unreality is often a work's apparent purpose. The effect within the apolitical, ludic cartoon world of today's theatre is to further stress the impossibility and laughableness of constructing a conventionally ordered stage reality mirroring a similarly ordered one beyond.

A complete listing of the artists and troupes whose works fit the above description is unnecessary and nearly impossible, but some of the more prominent names should be mentioned (even at the risk of unfortunate omissions). Noda Hideki and his troupe Dream Idlers (Yume no yuminsha), begun in 1976, are early, major practitioners of this theatre, as are playwright/director/actress Watanabe Eriko (b. 1955) and her group Theatre Troupe 300 (Gekidan sanjumaru), founded in 1979. Also relevant is Tin Spontaneity Troupe (Buriki no jihatsudan), founded in 1981 in a reorganization of an earlier outfit. Led by playwright/director/actor Ikuta Yorozu (b. 1949), it features actress/singer Ginpun Cho (b. 1952), an icon of the theatre of the 1980s. A polished organization that shares much of the sensibility that came to typify the 1980s is playwright/director Kokami Shoji's (b. 1958) The Third Stage (Daisan butai), formed in 1981. A grittier outfit is Third Erotica (Daisan erochika), begun in 1982 by playwright/director/actor Kawamura Takeshi (b. 1959). Its works have a socio-political dimension but otherwise belong to this theatre. Play^* Machine/Fully Automatic Theatre (Yu ^* kikai/zenjido shiata), discussed below, appeared in 1983. Project Navi (Purojekuto nabi), led by playwright/director Kitamura So (b. 1952), seems more literary in its approach but shares points of confluence with the dramaturgy of the above artists. Acquiring its current name in 1986, Project Navi grew out of earlier outfits that trace their roots to 1977.

Noda Hideki and the Dream Idlers are at the center of the theatre style that characterizes the 1980s. Noda is playwright, director, and principal actor of his troupe but prefers the designation director or actor. Although he crafts complex dramatic texts, his direction—the unique acting style of Yume no Yuminsha—is meant to force his text into an unwinnable battle with its performance. In his more successful efforts, such as Half a God, the contest between text and performance is fought to a stalemate (rather than the text being overwhelmed, which sometimes happens). The success of a performance results from the involved interaction between the two.

As to the acting style, in one brief speech in Halfa God Noda runs, jumps, rolls on the floor, employs odd hand motions and gestures, and delivers his lines in all manner of pitches, accents, and inflections, many with no apparent semantic relationship to the words themselves. This subversion of normal speech segues into and out of realistic or emotional patches. Such performances can be jarring for one seeking a conventional style, but Yume no Yuminsha audiences appreciate them. Noda and his prominent co-actors, specifically Uesugi Shozo (b. 1955), are masters of the ironic smile that unmasks them as "actors"—people estranged from the text, as is the audience—performing an improbable role in a self-conscious, often silly style. The audience is thus included in the conspiracy to prevent the hegemony of the text by attacking and calling into question its "inherent" semantic logic.

Half a God was directed and adapted by Noda from a cartoon story by Hagio Moto. A clever fantasy involving a grab bag of mythological characters and pseudo-scientific elements, it is set in an isolated lighthouse, where live a couple and their nine-year-old daughters, Maria and Asura—Siamese twins. Maria is a simpleton, endlessly smiling, gurgling, and thrashing about; Asura is a frustrated prodigy, saddled with watching out for her twin, from whom she longs to be free. Into this situation comes the girls' new tutor; other characters include two old mathematicians and a surgeon (all played by Noda), two aunts, and a host of characters from a world of spirits and myths—a mermaid, a unicorn, a Harpy, the angel Gabriel, and, above all, a sphinx. The last group seeks to lure the twins away to the farthest reaches of their spirit world. Asura and Maria are mysterious, given the rarity and strangeness of their condition, and so belong with the sphinx and other myths. The "great doctor," played farcically by Noda, determines that an operation to separate them can save one; otherwise both will die, since they cannot go on sharing the same heart. The operation takes a year and twenty-four hours, during the first year of which Maria is apparently the one saved. But, in the end, the "dead" Asura emerges as the one to live, while Maria joins the world of myth.

The story of Half a God is intriguing in itself and bolstered by multilayered imagery. Two contrasting structures (both imagistic and philosophical) are set in binary opposition: the dichotomy and the spiral. The former involves sets of opposites—North/South, left/right, high and low blood pressure, medicine/mathematics, and, of course, the twins. An almost incantatory equation plays a key role in the linguistic and imagistic structure of the play: 1/2 + 1/2 = 2/4. The answer to a sphinx's riddle is always "man," one head over two legs, i.e., 1/2. But in the case of the Siamese twins, mathematical logic is subverted, and 1/2 + 1/2 equals not a whole person, but two heads over four legs, 2/4. In contradistinction to the dichotomy is the spiral, represented by the helix, the lighthouse staircase, whirlpools made by the water draining from bathtubs, cosmic maelstroms, the earth's rotation, a revolving stage (in motion for several minutes during one scene), funnels, and windmills. Uniting everything is the romantic, melancholy Argentinian tango, a whirling dance in 2/4 or 4/4 time, which is used frequently.

Although the above description is not exhaustive, it should suggest Half a God's fantasy and complexity. The story is, of course, not merely played straight. The performance begins with Noda and his actors (referred to by their real names) rehearsing the final scene. When acted in its entirely at the close, it is still in the form of a rehearsal. At two other points, when the audience has become engrossed in the story, director Noda suddenly interrupts and has everything gone through again with a different approach. He chides the actors for their lack of critical detachment, jokingly defined as the actor's feeling of watching himself from a distance. The opening is a wild parody of Yume no Yuminsha's well-known, energetic acting style, which is preceded by a wry description of the superfluous people, needed neither at home nor the office, who would attend such a play.

Along with The Third Richard (Sandaime Richado, 1990), Half a God is Noda's masterpiece and exhibits all the traits of this new theatre.

Performances by Play^* Machine/Fully Automatic Theatre often provide consummate examples of the childhood fantasy prevalent on Japanese stages. A Deep Breath of My Time is a group composition, such as Play*Machine is known for. It is credited, however, as composed and directed by Yoshizawa Koichi (b. 1960), codirected by Shirai Akira (b. 1957), with dialogue by Takaizumi Atsuko (b. 1958); the latter two are the work's featured actors. Volumes One and Two appeared in 1986 and 1987, respectively. A brief look should help reveal the nature of the attraction to the perception of childhood, the sensibility of the cult of prepubescence.

The opening is a monologue by a grade school boy, Yamada Noboru, played by actress Takaizumi Atsuko. Takaizumi is known for her male impersonations, especially the little boy Yamada (who also appears in other works) and a nondescript "salaryman" in late middle age. Home alone, Yamada wants to eat, not just anything but a rice omelette prepared just so. This frustrated desire leads to a favorite Play*Machine technique—using strong desires or thoughts as springboards to fantasy. A French chef appears from inside the refrigerator but is not what the little boy needs. The stage then darkens and bright light pours from the refrigerator, out of which dance many chefs carrying ingredients and cooking utensils. Other settings include school, the swimming school Yamada is forced to attend, a movie theatre, and a bar where he drinks when he imagines how alcohol might give him the strength to face school.

His fantasies never lead to fulfillment. He ends up without his rice omelette, having "killed" it when he throws it on the floor in a tantrum (he and the cooks do hold a proper funeral for it, however). He carries his insecurities and anxieties everywhere. Likewise, he cannot escape the passing of time. That it is his constant companion is clear from the huge round alarm clock he carries everywhere. It being his only friend, he talks to it and even dries its eyes as he and, presumably, his clock cry in the movie theatre at Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Garland he sees only on the screen, but he meets many other characters from his fantasies—Superman, Frankenstein, Olive looking for Popeye, Japanese cartoon figures, his favorite baseball player, a sumo wrestler, an Arab, women.

The close of the long day of childhood fantasies segues into the twilight of Yamada's long life. Takaizumi, suddenly dressed as the old salaryman, gives Yamada's retirement speech from the department store where he has quietly worked for thirty-five years. Never married, he has nothing to look forward to in retirement; he regrets nothing except a marketing opinion he once gave that led to an off year in sales. After thirty-three years there had been talk of promotion to a position of responsibility, but he asked for a transfer to the toy department instead.

A Deep Breath of My Time, like many of these works of childhood fantasy, is a psychological drama. Placing insecurity and anxiety in childhood keeps them at a safe distance for adult audiences. There is a longing, a nostalgia, for the simplicity and naivety with which a child conceives of and expresses psychological dilemmas. This feeling is fostered by the cuteness of the child characters on stage, their exaggeratedly childish clothes, walk and, above all, talk. Wanting a rice omelette is probably a simpler, more elemental frustration than those of an audience ranging from many in their twenties to a sprinkling of people in middle age. The frightening nature of Yamada's deep-seated sense of foreboding and personal inadequacies is defused when encountered within the context of childhood fantasy. The ending is moving but somewhat sentimentally so. What saves the performance from being mere escapist entertainment is its imagistic complexity and the troupe's ensemble (and, in many cases, individual) acting skills.

A Deep Breath of My Time implies a critique of society, but the dominant philosophical note is resignation. There is a sad inevitability about Yamada's life, but through nearly all the performance he is a lovable little boy. His sudden appearance as old employee Yamada is too brief to alter the charming image of him already created. The obnoxiousness that a "real" boy such as this would likely convey is obviated by the great distance between character and role occasioned by the use of an adult female. Similarly, two adult actresses play two little girl classmates of Yamada's as obnoxious, but the result is humor. A Deep Breath achieves some psychological depth but, as with most such contemporary Japanese drama, the actors' and audience's shared fun in the performance is its real raison d'etre. As Takaizumi disappears behind the curtain, smiling and waving at the audience a few yards away on virtually the same level, the bond between performer and spectator is deepened; there is the reassurance that the humorous, moving story and expert performance were just that and nothing more. Nothing happening in the theatre is intended as a specific challenge to anything beyond it.

Set in childhood, seeking a cartoon fantasy world, the well-rehearsed, imaginatively staged theatre from the 1980s provides an ironic perspective on all realities—social, political, or theatrical. Revealing no familiar ideology of its own, however, it mounts no concentrated attack upon or challenge to any one specific reality. The theatre event itself becomes the point. Self-referential and playful, it assumes the audience's sympathy as it undermines the text, demonstrating that there can be no single agreed upon meaning or reality. Lessening the distance and deepening the bond between performer and spectator, there is a diminution of the audience's critical attitude toward the performance.

Whether indulging in a pseudo-science-fiction fantasy or exploring the psychology of a lost soul hiding in the shadows of the work ethic, the sensibility of childhood (as it exists in the adult imagination) wraps everything in a soft, protective cocoon. Performers and audience delight in this image of childhood simplicity. The gap between the gray, hard, adult world and what they see as a brighter, more innocent time is mined for considerable humor. In the guise of childhood fantasy, all aspects of human experience can be drawn upon freely for imagery without any thought of logicality. The mind of the child is thus seen as resembling the world of the dream.

Final assessments of the new theatre of the 1980s are problematic; it is impossible to gauge its significance at this early date. There is also the question of its relation to the theatre renaissance of the 1960s. Critic Senda Akihiko sees a direct line of descent from Kara and the others he terms the First Generation down to today's newest generation. His divisions are strictly chronological. Using the metaphor of a romantic voyage, he sees each generation sailing forth on paradoxical voyages of discovery in a world where the ocean has been reduced to an inland sea. Senda's views are opposed by Saeki Ryuko and Tsuno Kaitaro, both with the New Left Black Tent in the 1960s. Saeki sees some continuity, but holds it to be deterioration. Among other things, he objects to Senda's implication that today's theatre achieves more psychological depth through its interiority, free now of the ideological paradigms that characterized the theatre of the 1960s. Tsuno sees artists of the 1980s just repeating the 1960s, the metatheatre Senda regards as a defining trait of the new theatre having also been common in the 1960s. For Tsuno, the earlier theatre was an avant-garde movement that petered out after about five years (1972), as all such movements must, what it stood for probably expressed afterward in other artistic or political forms.

Theatre today, like that in the 1960s, emphasizes the actor's physicality, maintaining the link established by Kara and his contemporaries with such actor-centered older theatre forms as kabuki and taishu engeki (literally, popular theatre). However, a difference between young theatre artists today and those of the 1960s is the way they see themselves in relation to what was once known as the establishment (taisei). Prompted by sympathy with student and labor activism, the theatre of the 1960s was often confrontational in spirit. Its form and style may have survived, but from the start artists today are more career-oriented. As typified by the well-known public persona of Noda Hideki, youth's rebellious pose has been replaced by nonchalance. Noda and his troupe have achieved success and recognition—awards, corporate sponsorship, and a niche in the cultural establishment. In 1985, a Noda play could pun at the expense of the Actors Theatre (Haiyuza), a venerable shingeki troupe dating from the 1940s; in 1990, Play*Machine/Fully Automatic Theatre makes joking (perhaps envious) references to Noda's Dream Idlers.

Many of the traits of Japanese theatre today are in line with international trends, as was also generally true in the 1960s. Much as the earlier theatre could be discussed in terms of the international avant-garde, the vocabulary of postmodernism could be applied to today's theatre. To refer to one persuasive study, it obviously possesses the tendencies of postmodern theatre described by Patrice Pavis: "depoliticization"; much of a performance's "coherence and totality" coming from the "process of its making and its reception"; and, a "plurality of readings." Yet it is equally obvious that, as was true with theatre in the 1960s, a specifically Japanese sensibility and theatrical assumptions are also at work.