[In the following essay, Rolf offers a retrospective of trends in Japanese theater and discusses works by six contemporary Japanese playwrights.]

Tokyo is the scene of extensive theatre activity. Besides the well-known older forms, the world of nontraditional Japanese theatre has expanded. Indeed, a recent directory lists one hundred and seventy-five such troupes based in Tokyo. This theatre, of twentieth-century origin, will be the sole focus here. Of the great number of theatre productions in 1990, six will be described to convey the nature of theatre in Tokyo today. Criteria for selection take into account both the play's intrinsic interest and the manner and significance of its performance. The six performances provide an introduction to many of the theatre artists who are best responding to the circumstances of theatre today. Performances were chosen from fifty seen in 1990; four of the selections happen to coincide with those of Japanese critics. All represent provocative plays and performances of great interest.

Early moves to create a modern Japanese theatre, one responding to the new reality of a modern Japan, involved late-nineteenth-century attempts both to reform kabuki and to create a new, "up-to-date" kabuki. The latter effort resulted in such things as shimpa, a hybrid form that survives today—the traditional (female impersonation, for example) side by side with the modern (actresses). The origins of modern Japanese theatre would seem, however, to lie more in two early-twentieth-century phenomena: the staging of Western drama (Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov) and the writing of Japanese plays in that new vein. By the 1920s a nucleus of modern theatre artists had evolved; novelists, too, were fascinated by the drama form, even if not always as interested in having their dramas staged.

From the outset, the new theatre (shingeki, literally new drama) was highly intellectual; there was little opportunity or need to acquire a popular following. Consequently, it tended to branch off ideologically into either aestheticism or socialism. The former championed psychological realism or lyricism and aspired to a Chekhovian complexity; the latter was marked by socialist realism and sought to lay bare the essence of socioeconomic and sociopolitical dilemmas—in short, to educate. Such a state of affairs obtained into the 1960s, even with the disruption of theatre activities occasioned by World War II.

By the 1960s shingeki had perhaps grown stale. Its realism and rationality were challenged with great success by a generation of young artists. They were inspired by a combination of factors: the example of the absurdism of lonesco and, especially, Beckett; participation in the nationwide demonstrations against the ratification in 1960 of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty (Ampo), which removed protest and anti-establishment stance-taking from the exclusive province of the old Left; and the general exhilaration of the youthful international counterculture of the middle and late 1960s.

Shingeki's contributions to Japanese theatre were many and important: the broadening of subject matter to encompass nearly all facets of life; the addition of an intellectual dimension to theatre; the placing of Japanese theatre in a more international context. The new theatre emerging in the 1960s, on the other hand, was usually referred to as underground (angura) or the Little Theatre movement (shogekijo undo). Experimentation was active on all fronts. Both from necessity and the desire to free theatre from the tyranny of the proscenium arch, various unconventional performance spaces were used—tents, coffee houses, streets, parks, rooftops. New concepts of theatre space allowed a reconceptualization of the audience, and efforts were made to dislodge it from its customarily passive, nonparticipatory role. Both the role of the director and, even more so, that of the actor received new attention. There was a corresponding reduction in the traditionally central concept of authorship, and much was tried to reduce the role of the text in a performance, which heightened the awareness and importance of the actor's physicality. The new dramaturgy often meant texts structured nonlinearly to create a sense of cyclic or mythic, rather than historical, time. The political spectrum ran from the New Left to the anarchical.

The heyday of the new, post-shingeki theatre was from about 1966 (although one might argue that it actually began a few years earlier) to 1973. The golden age ended, but in a sense the post-shingeki era continues. Stylistic assumptions that motivated the experimentation of what Japanese critics like to call the "first generation" have for the most part now become the norm. One has trouble ascribing such continuity to Japanese theatre of the past twenty-five or thirty years, however, owing to the ideological differences between the antiestablishment, New Left, or avant-garde pioneers and the more career-minded, typically apolitical artists of today.

The initial group of pioneers—playwrights Betsuyaku Minoru and Shimizu Kunio, playwright-directors Satoh Makoto and Terayama Shuji, playwright/director/actor Kara Juro, directors Suzuki Tadashi and Ninagawa Yukio—and others of about that time (Ota Shogo, Inoue Hisashi) are mostly in their fifties now (Terayama died in 1983); all remain of great interest. Betsuyaku and Shimizu have established themselves as two of the most important living Japanese playwrights, as they have gone on exploring their theatre worlds, mining claims staked out early in their careers. In the 1980s Satoh became a highly respected director, often of musical productions. Kara remains unchanged, pitching his trademark Red Tent theatre in the same old spot—the grounds of Hanazono Shrine near the sleaziest section of Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward. His broad dramaturgy and irreverent bohemianism still serve him well. Unlike others of his time, he has remained popular with young audiences. Director Suzuki has developed an international reputation for his interpretations of the Western classics and a unique approach to actor training based on traditional Japanese aesthetic assumptions. While Suzuki has thus pursued the shibui (the quiet or understated), director Ninagawa has appropriated the hade (the brilliant and spectacular) for his highly theatrical interpretations of the Western classics. Ota Shogo is well known outside Japan, as well, for his development of a distinctive minimalist dramaturgy. Although without the foreign reputation of Suzuki, Ninagawa, and Ota, Inoue Hisashi is quite famous in Japan and popularly appreciated for his clever, accessible dramas and prose.

Following the seminal developments of the 1960s and early 1970s came a loss of interest in sociopolitical and philosophical issues. Theatre moved toward entertainment. This change sometimes took disappointing turns—for example, an aspiring to the slick theatricality of Broadway musicals. An immensely popular young artist in the middle and late 1970s was the talented playwright Tsuka Kohei, who used considerable irony and lively theatricality to achieve psychological depth. His works, such as The Atami Murder Case (Atami Satsujin Jiken; 1973), shifted the emphasis somewhat from the questioning and experimentation of the 1960s and placed it more upon having fun. Rock music, common in the 1960s, was used by Tsuka and others in the 1970s. But the fascination with singing, dancing, and exuberant showmanship grew, reaching a crescendo in the early 1980s, when nearly every Japanese playwright, director, and actor seemed compelled to demonstrate the ability to be musical.

Throughout this period of emphasis on showmanship, artists of a different stripe—Betsuyaku, Shimizu, Suzuki, Ota—continued their more reflective work. Novelist Abe Kobo had by now left the scene. Abe's involvement with theatre dated from the 1950s, including the acclaimed play Friends (Tomodachi; 1967). From 1973 to 1979, however, he headed the Abe Kobo Studio, which increasingly pursued a theatre of images, emphasizing the physicality of the actor and seeking theatre's emancipation from the word—in short, continuing (like Suzuki) much of the thrust of 1960s experimentation.

In the mid-1980s music returned to the background, though remaining important. Among the younger artists, a phase that continues today had begun. With significant exceptions like Kawamura Takeshi and his troupe Third Erotica (Daisan Erochika), these artists are uninterested in making statements; their "message" seems to be that there is (or should be) no message. There is a preoccupation with the world of childhood—its psychology, iconography, and, above all, school. Their dramas seem to exist in a cartoon world; paradoxically, both thematic superficiality and psychological depth seem to result. (To the 1980s what Tsuka was to the 1970s, Noda Hideki—discussed below—remains an "older" exemplar of such theatre.) Much interesting work was done in 1990 by Third Erotica and other young troupes: Play-Machine/Fully Automatic Theatre (Yu^* Kikai/Zenjido Shiato), Libre Ship (Riburesen), and Health (Kenko), Such work will be the subject of a future discussion.

Shimizu Kunio is one of the most accomplished playwrights writing in Japanese today. First, his plays are marked by skillful attention to language and imagery, his dialogue a compound of the realistic and occasional lyrical patches. His focus is psychological—not meticulous revelation of individual psychology in the manner of a Eugene O'Neill, but thoughts and feelings delineated in broader strokes. His more mature works show an affinity with both Chekhov and Tennessee Williams. There is a fascination with poetry, usually (though not exclusively) Western. Swatches of the poetry of Pushkin, Rilke, and Aragon appear in many of his dramas; their function is crucial—to enfold his characters' mental crises in poetic images, raising them to some higher plane. In such an approach are inherent risks, of which Shimizu is well aware. The trick is to maintain the necessary balance between the two levels of language; with too much elevation, the focus drifts away from the essential and off into the blue. Shimizu's technique for keeping his works firmly grounded is the use of humor, a second characteristic of his dramaturgy, to puncture the seriousness. It runs from repartee to comical characters fainting.

Pervading many of Shimizu's more stimulating plays is a sense of loss, a thematic element that also contributes to a certain stage atmosphere. This may be achieved through language or, as in Little Brother, such directorial techniques as tableaux vivants. Establishing this mood naturally involves a looking back, but it is much more likely to take the form of wistfulness than hard reexamination of the past. Change, the passing of an indispensable someone or something, the fading of youth—these are frequent occasions for loss in Shimizu's plays. He is an admirer of the aesthetic stance of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro as described in that author's In Praise of Shadows (In'ei Raisan; 1933)—for example, praise of the shadowy beauty of the traditional Japanese house. Shimizu's persistent awareness of life's evanescence seems another point of affinity with Tanizaki.

A final comment about Shimizu's plays: they frequently contain strong female characters, as often as not to be played by his wife, Matsumoto Noriko. Shimizu describes his attitude toward these characters in terms of the psychology of "older sisters." Little Brother is archetypical in this regard, a kind of summing up of Shimizu's insights into the older sister type, a woman more rational than the male characters (or forced to be so in order to look after them). Men in Shimizu's plays are, conversely, romantic to the point of foolishness or even insanity; women who fall under their sway are foolish, perhaps doomed.

Shimizu was a key participant in the theatre renaissance of the 1960s, as well as in the Ampo and other earlier political demonstrations. As for the latter, however, describing himself as the dutiful son of a Niigata policeman, he claims to have been decidedly a follower swept along by the crowd. Still, by the late 1960s (past the age of thirty), he was an enthusiastic leader of sorts in the Tokyo youth culture.

Playwright Shimizu has directed all but one of the performances of his theatre group, Winter Tree Troupe (Mokutosha), formed in 1976. Including small-scale atelier pieces, Little Brother was Winter Tree's twenty-sixth production; nearly all have been of his works. Shimizu is modest about his directorial skills, but his pieces fare well under his hand. He has an association dating back to the 1960s with director Ninagawa Yukio, who still often directs his works. Shimizu's directorial approach is more or less grounded in realism; primacy is put upon the word. His troupe contains many young actors, but neither his scripts nor his direction normally call for athleticism. Despite his directorial competence, Shimizu's importance is as a playwright.

Performed December 8-18, 1990, at Kinokuniya Hall, Tokyo, Little Brother opens at night upon a passing vendor of wind chimes; their relentless, hypnotic tinkling is like the spirit of the dead charismatic Ryoma, whose memory will not leave those who knew, loved, and depended upon him. Sakamoto Ryoma (1835-1867) was a samurai from Tosa han who worked for imperial restoration until assassinated by Tokugawa Bakufu loyalists. Known both for his swordfighting skills and for his role as an intermediary in consolidating an anti-Tokugawa alliance among traditionally hostile han, the young imperial martyr is revered even today.

Sakamoto Ryoma does not appear as a character in Little Brother. Rather, he is the obsession of a group of relatives and cohorts a few years after his death, the first years of Meiji (1868-1912); at their center is Otome, an elder sister, who struggles to keep his memory in proportion among the others, although scarcely able to do so herself. Her soliloquies—the first introduces a flashback to the fall of 1866 (more than a year before Ryoma's death) and the last closes the play—establish her role as a kind of narrator, the audience's closest link to the indefinable presence of Ryoma. Her soliloquies are spoken with a wistful solemnity.

Of even greater intensity and impact are the tableaux vivants, in particular the one that immediately precedes Otome's final speech. These take the form of all the Ryoma-obsessed characters posing for commemorative photos. They must hold their poses for at least twenty seconds to accommodate the ancient camera. To accomplish this they must look "natural," as Otome (Matsumoto Noriko) says, "… With a soft gaze … as if you are thinking of something glimmering.… Yes, something glimmering; your joys; your sorrows; your dreams; and, your love." Then Otome, alone now, relates how the people in the photo afterward went their separate ways. Photos are, she says, silent things that seem to try to communicate something, no one knows what. Shimizu presents the enigmatic nature of photos as a metaphor for history and legend. Ryoma is now revered unequivocally as a hero, but the truth cannot possibly have been so simple. Still, Shimizu seems to say, what more can be known or said at this juncture? Like the old photos, the history of a time like the early Meiji period just gazes back at us gazing at it, sending a silent message we can never hear.

As usual, Shimizu is dealing on a metaphoric or poetic level with the difficult questions his plays provoke. In that light, Little Brother shows great similarities to another masterful Shimizu play, Dreams Departed, Orpheus (Yume sarite, Orufe; 1986), which also deals with the process of myth-making, the psychological need to reject the death of one's, so to speak, messiah.

Like Little Brother, Shimizu's Dreams treats a crucial period and a charismatic figure in Japan's history: the 1930s and Kita Ikki (1883-1937), another imperialist (though perhaps of a different sort) put to death by a reactionary government. Sakamoto Ryoma was from Tosa, where he was held in awe. Kita Ikki was another provincial deified at home, Shimizu's Niigata. In Dreams, Shimizu relies on the lyric force of a long Pushkin poem; in Little Brother, he harnesses the power of the nostalgic image of old photographs created in the audience's mind as it gazes at the tableau vivant of the actors.

The set of Little Brother is dominated by a raised, wall-less, two-story house stage center. Basically it is conventional period realism such as one sees in standard shingeki fare, although designed by Asakura Setsu, a frequent Shimizu collaborator, known for her elaborate sets. Asakura, perhaps the most noted set designer in Japan and also active abroad, has worked often with Ninagawa Yukio, as well as with Tsuka Kohei, Inoue Hisashi, Kara Juro, and countless others. Kara says that Asakura "doesn't concern herself with the abstract core of the play, but instead tries to materialize all of its physical details." Shimizu's directions call merely for a dilapidated old house, and that is all that Asakura materializes.

Costumes in Little Brother were also in keeping with period realism; changes in costumes and props were used to illustrate and underscore Japan's rapid westernization between 1866 and 1871. Acting was, likewise, generally realistic, except for lyrical scenes or, naturally, the exaggerated humor of the comic relief. Many scenes were darkly lighted, but seldom beyond the exigencies of Shimizu's generally realistic directorial concept. Music was used sparingly as a quiet undercurrent to scenes of heightened intensity, in particular the tableaux vivants.

In conclusion, Little Brother reveals Shimizu's preoccupation with a crucial period in Japanese history, one of transition to the modern age, necessitating the beginnings of Japan's ongoing process of westernization. Shimizu hints that even after the Meiji Restoration the often sanguinary struggles that typified pre-Meiji Japan would be continued and, quite possibly, intensified, albeit in other guises; but he goes no further into specific historical assessments, preferring to adopt a relativist stance. Clearly, it is the eternal fact of inevitable change upon which Shimizu wishes to train his considerable writing and directing skills.

Betsuyaku Minoru was a key figure in the development of the new theatre of the 1960s, the first major pure playwright to emerge from the movement. He has remained a respected writer and has built up an important body of dramatic literature. Into the mid-1970s, Betsuyaku had a deep infatuation with the dramaturgy of Samuel Beckett; critics (and Betsuyaku himself) quite rightly cite that influence regularly. From Beckett he derived an understanding of minimalism, the conviction that the simplest language, sparest sets, and most basic human relationships could be the stuff of powerful theatre experiences and deep psychological insights. A more enduring infatuation is that for the world of the fairy tale, the universal link with the psychology of childhood. Betsuyaku's works incorporate many elements from Japanese children's games and songs, the tales of Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, manga (cartoons). Betsuyaku sees the absurdist techniques of Beckett and lonesco, and the psychology of the fairy tale, as similarly useful approaches for liberating theatre from a linear conception of time. Both free us from fear of the illogical and the forbidden, rendering more approachable hidden areas of the human psyche.

A performance of a Betsuyaku play is usually a quiet affair. A certain convention in directing his works has developed, no doubt influenced by the quiet intensity of his two important early works, The Elephant (Zo; 1962) and The Little Match-Girl (Matchi-uri no shojo; 1966). Actors speak the typically commonplace lines without relying on the fast, loud delivery traditionally associated with Japanese avant-garde theatre of the 1960s—Kara Juro, for instance. Likewise, actors move slowly, not in the silent, glacial manner of Ota Shogo or with the intellectual stylization of Suzuki Tadashi, but more like preoccupied or weary people from the everyday world. A character who strides purposefully on stage in a play's beginning may be found at the end sad, hesitant, or, more likely, dead.

Many Betsuyaku plays portray a process of victimization in a context of moral relativism. There are few heroes or villains, virtually no concept of character or personality, only situations and circumstances. Notions such as an individual overcoming adversity through force of will are alien to Betsuyaku's world. Victim or victimizer, winner or loser—the inner core of one is indistinguishable from that of the other. A person can be the one just as easily as the other. Some Betsuyaku plays do employ a specific social and historical context, allowing the Betsuyaku who was a passionate participant in the Ampo and later political struggles to emerge; but such works seem increasingly in the minority compared to his more abstract efforts.

House lights dim to begin Letters from the Wildcat, revealing Betsuyaku's most often used set—a telephone pole on an otherwise bare stage. Performed by Bungakuza (Literary Troupe) on November 2-13, 1990, at Kinokuniya Hall, it is a catalog of Betsuyaku's most familiar props, settings, situations, characters: a handpulled pulled cart; a baby buggy; a tea party alfresco; a woman with a parasol; men with black umbrellas; an unsuspecting traveling salesman as protagonist/victim; wandering symbiotic couples (including one person leading the other on a rope, like Beckett's Lucky and Pozzo); a Christian "minister" in the incongruous garb of a padre; wind sounds; a voice from a raspy speaker mounted high on the pole; women singing children's lullabies. Over all is a quiet, languid air of absentmindedness and fatigue.

The title derives from tho works of Miyazawa Kenji, in particular his fairy tales "The Restaurant with Many Orders" (Chumon no oi ryoriten; 1924) and "The Life of Gusuk Budori" (Gusuko Budori no denki; 1932). The Western-style restaurant in the former Miyazawa tale stands alone in the forest, a lure for unwary hunters who enter thinking "many orders" implies good food and many customers, only to find that it means customers are ordered to prepare themselves step by step to be eaten by its proprietor, the Wildcat. "The Life of Gusuk Budori," on the other hand, is a story of ultimate self-sacrifice, whose elements include famine and child abandonment, set in a land called Ihatobo. Other Miyazawa works are drawn upon also—for example, verse from his Spring and Asura (Haru to shura; 1924-1925) poetry collections is recited by the salesman to close the play. Betsuyaku has based his works upon Miyazawa's before, most notably Journey to Giovanni's Father (Jobanni no chichi e no tabi; 1987), also directed by Fujiwara for Bungakuza. The fascination with Miyazawa is widespread among contemporary theatre artists; other examples include Inoue Hisashi's The Ihatobo Drama Train (Ihatobo no geki ressha; 1980) and Kitamura So's So's Draft of Milky Way Railroad Nights—A Revision (Soko: ginga tetsudo no yoru—rivijon; 1990).

In Betsuyaku's Letters from the Wildcat seven characters (of the play's ten) are journeying to Ihatobo, summoned there by letters from the Wildcat. Ihatobo seems to be a kind of endpoint, a terminal station, though not a "heaven" (the presence of the padre/minister notwithstanding). As is usually the case, Betsuyaku's salesman seems drawn into things by the other characters, by the situations and relationships they create. Incest (brother and sister), child abandonment, refusal to take responsibility for these crimes—all are prominent in the play. There is repeated reference to the famines of twenty-three and forty-two years earlier, when the two abandonments took place. The seven reach Ihatobo, where they are welcomed with fireworks and the tea party, then called away by ones and twos by the welcoming voice from the loudspeaker. The salesman, confused that the others seem to know when they are to be called, goes quietly, soliloquizing the poetry of Miyazawa Kenji. Over the whole finish—snow has begun to fall—is an attempt at lyricism and a note of spiritual transcendence.

Interpreting Betsuyaku's suggestive, enigmatic text, director Fujiwara Shimpei saw the characters as fettered by what Betsuyaku terms a "chain of unhappiness." Keeping an anthology of Greek tragedies beside his Letters from the Wildcat script, Fujiwara conceived of the dilemma of Betsuyaku's characters as similar in kind to that of an Oedipus destroyed by a chain of events he never understands until too late. He also sees in this and other Betsuyaku works affinities with Buddhist notions of karma—in the sense that even the smallest actions of insignificant people have great cosmic implications. Whereas Miyazawa's works may focus on the great good coming from individual acts of self-sacrifice, Betsuyaku's characters seek, in Fujiwara's words, to expiate their sins. Fujiwara's aim is to somehow direct such weighty matters in a "light" fashion. Betsuyaku's association with Fujiwara and Bungakuza goes back to the 1960s; he has written a new play for them almost annually since 1974.

Yamazaki Tetsu began his theatre career with a brief but formative stint of less than a year in Kara Juro's Situation Theatre (Jokyo Gekijo), handling lighting and assistant directing chores in 1970. He had begun seeing the theatre of Kara, Terayama Shuji, and other new artists as early as 1967, while a university student. Through most of the 1970s he headed a troupe that approached performing in the Kara manner, trucking their plays about Japan, in the spirit of "riverbed beggars" (kawara kojiki), the outcast forebears of kabuki. Yamazaki considers actors to be theatre's main element, given their overwhelming physical reality; they are not merely people who memorize. He is uncomfortable with the label of playwright (as well as that of artist) and prefers to be called a director. He places great emphasis on the shared nature of theatre's creative process; indeed, he describes the writing of his plays as a verbal manifestation of his relationship with a group of actors. In 1980, Yamazaki and others formed the troupe Transposition 21 (Ten'i 21), for which he regularly writes new plays that he directs himself.

The Seventh Sick Ward (Dainana Byoto) is a somewhat rare commodity: a successful theatre troupe without an influential playwright or powerful director. Its head (zacho) is primarily an actor, Ishibashi Renji, who appeared in some of the early successes of Shimizu and Ninagawa. They perform infrequently, compared to other troupes, with one or even several years between productions. Yamazaki has written for them before, but they are best known for their interpretations of plays written for them by Kara, especially his Two Women (Futari no onna; 1979). Seventh Sick Ward would seem a good combination with Yamazaki, given his strong feelings about the primacy of the actor. Whereas he views the creation of a performance as a joint effort, a pulling together, Ishibashi describes the rehearsal period as a breaking apart, a process sharpening the actors' awareness of their essentially separate natures. An important member of the Seventh Sick Ward is actress Midori Mako, a key reason for its success and cult status. Post-shingeki theatre has produced its famous actresses. Ri Reisen, until recently Kara's wife, matched the gritty, boisterous world of his Red Tent theatre with her hoarse, unpretentious, energetic style. Midori Mako, on the other hand, projects an aura of fragility and mystery.

The time is now; the place, a basement coffee shop in a part of Tokyo not far from Disneyland, an area under tremendous pressure from developers and real estate speculators. Across the back wall of the set are a row of windows, at leg level of pedestrians outside, and a glass door entrance at the audience's right. Stairs lead down along the wall from the glass door to the middle of the shop. Construction scaffolding for the adjacent lots is visible through the windows and door; there is the sound of a wrecker's ball battering away. The props follow natural laws—phones ring, the jukebox works. The acting is, likewise, realistic. Many customers come in, all to various degrees desperate.

What comes through clearly is the characters' utter boredom and frustrated communication, the desperation with which they pursue their respective ends—becoming a prostitute to escape the frustrations of a housewife's life; the taking by a young man of any part-time job that pays well and is a little "interesting," even if it means committing acts of violence; being a gangster and forcing people to sell their homes; running a coffee shop as a means of escape from the complications of a career; coming from the country to see Disneyland and deal somehow with the family suicide of one's children and grandchildren. Resembling a compendium of recent social issues, Silence is in danger of overdosing on topicality. What sparks it to life is the mad Midori Mako character, a failed actress who claims to have thought up a screenplay that will be used for a Hollywood movie. Actually, it is Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, which she tells (with great skill) in detail on stage to the other characters. They become engrossed in the telling, even though some know it is a famous film, not her creation.

As the vibrations from the wrecker's ball punctuate her story and send dirt down the walls, it becomes apparent that these contemporary Japanese are as desperate as Bonnie and Clyde in the America of the Great Depression—both societies in both times putting corporate finances and economic development first and the individual last. In the end, the greedy, frustrated gangster runs amok in the coffee shop, accidentally shooting Midori, whose script (like Bonnie's poem) is now complete. The last scene uses the light from a filmless movie projector to frame the tableau of the dying actress, her former husband (the proprietor), and his second wife. Silence was performed by Seventh Sick Ward, June 9-25, 1990, at the Sangenjaya Chuo Gekijo, an old movie house in a rather outdated shopping district, which further intertwined the worlds of film, theatre, and storytelling.

The stylistic innovation that characterized the new theatre of the 1960s has largely become second nature to younger artists. One such troupe is Shinjuku Ryozampaku (Ryozampaku alludes to the Chinese classic The Water Margin), formed in 1987, primarily by artists from the Red Tent world of Kara's Situation Theatre and Satoh Makoto's Black Tent Theatre 68/71 (Kokushoku tento 68/71). Led by actor/director Kim Sujin (the zacho) and playwright Chon Wishin, SR has pursued the same total theatre that typified both the two tents and Terayama Shuji's determinedly avant-garde Tenjo Sajiki (The Gallery). In particular, SR has tried to expand the performance space beyond the confines of their tent theatre, a space no longer so unconventional. Most performances incorporate the special characteristics of the site to achieve spectacular entrances, exits, and backdrops. A link is forged between the sealed, "artificial" world inside the theatre and the open, "real" one beyond. In Chon's Carmen Nocturne (Karumen yaso kyoku; 1987), the tent was pitched in an abandoned railway station, which allowed actors and stage to enter spectacularly from out of the dark on a flatcar. Another production Kim directed saw SR perform with the back tent flap open: passing commuter trains created a strange backdrop to Yamakawa Santa's Quest for Ammonites—Night of Distant Thunder (Ammonaito kuesto—toku kaminari no kikoeru yoru; 1988). Street theatre pieces often accompany SR's tent performances; Watanabe Eriko's Star Cavalry Gathering in the Night—Dark Sunday at the End of Showa (Yoru ni muragaru hoshi no kibatai—Showa no owari no kurai nichiyobi; 1988) had a huge lighted dragon and actors on lighted bicycles rolling through the streets. Shinjuku Ryozampaku's artistic rationale for such glitter and scale is to create a spectacle, more in the nature of kabuki than experimentation with some theoretical basis, as with Terayama, Satoh, and Kara. SR seeks to surprise and delight—to inspire wonder, not provoke thought.

The Legend of the Mermaid was performed by Shinjuku Ryozampaku on the shore at Enoshima, May 25-27; on the Yokohama waterfront, June 29-July 1 (after touring several regional cities); and by Shinobazu Pond in Tokyo, July 18-August 6. The Yokohama performance of June 29 is described here.

The tent theatre was set up beside a river, which was used for the initial entrance and final exit by boat of much of the cast, during which the back and side tent flaps were raised. A water pit at the front center of the stage was also used with energy and effect. In the tent/little theatre tradition, seating was on the ground; the front two rows of spectators huddled under a large sheet of plastic provided to protect them from the splashing. The cast was active before the performance, mostly doing practical chores such as lining up the audience to enter, but also performing quietly among them. This had some effect in reducing audience/actor distance and audience/performing space distinctions, even among the generally inhibited, unresponsive theatregoers. Sets and props were proletarian—noodle carts, small factories, slum streets, a boxing ring. Also in the tent/little theatre tradition, there was great dependence on lighting and music—abrupt, drastic changes in both, a link as well to the melodramatic world of taisho engeki (popular drama), found in such places as the Asakusa area of Tokyo. There was much live singing by the cast, reminiscent of the Black Tent, as was a brief teaching scene, the structure and humor of which called to mind Satoh Makoto's works.

Many things happen in Chon's play. As in Mishima's modern no play Sotoba Komachi (1956), a poet and an old woman sit on a bench; the poet tells the story of a family with many brothers, which the other actors perform, while the old woman comments on its significance. Trapped in the slum, the family vents its bitter frustrations in crimes of passion. A constant motif is that all life originates and somehow belongs in the sea. The forgotten slum is intended to be like the unseen, unknown depths of the sea. There are ethereal, supernatural characters who forge that link, preparing for the final scene when the earth opens and the sea reclaims the poet, the family of his story having returned to the sea.

Chon was nominated for the Kishida Kunio Drama Prize for Legend but failed to gain it—mostly because judges felt his borrowing from Visconti's 1960 film Rocco and His Brothers was too liberal. Still, the world of film (to which SR has often referred) is obviously a congenial source for a troupe seeking a theatre world that both embraces and is somehow larger than life.

Noda Hideki, actor, director, playwright, and leader of the Dream Idlers Company (Yume no Yuminsha), may be the consummate example of the theatre artist of the 1980s. While an underclassman, Noda formed his troupe out of the college drama club in 1976. Often appearing on television, he has become something of a celebrity; his blend of ironic nonchalance and puckish naivety appeals to younger Japanese.

Noda thinks of himself as, first of all, an actor; his awareness of himself as such greatly influences both his directing and writing. Dream Idlers' performances are marked by action. A high school hurdler, Noda leads the charge as the cast scurries and bounds about the stage—not in a display of acrobatics per se, but movement in double time, matching the rapid delivery of the actors' lines. With typical self-effacing irony, Noda claims that Dream Idlers' rapid speech was born of necessity—to cover up deficiencies in student actors—but it has the effect of undercutting the hold of language over the performance. Extremely well rehearsed actors advance Noda's typically involved plots with a delivery that seems disinterested in, distant from, ironic toward, the words' meaning. The story is just a way of holding the audience's attention; its meaning seems of little significance, one story (any beginning, middle, or end) as good as another. The cardinal sin is to be slow or boring. Rather than patiently building toward something (although the plots do run on), each section, every minute, must be interesting, in the sense of fun, in and of itself. There are many pranks and puns. Plays typically present important scenes from childhood; promotional materials and programs are always studiously childish, done in bright colors, with cartoons, cutely posed photos, and a total absence of the critical, biographical, and historical information one finds in programs for works by older artists, such as Betsuyaku and Shimizu. Much like Noda's dramaturgy, this style and the anti-intellectualism it implies seem an attempt to thwart interpretation. One is left with only the experience of the performance itself.

The Third Richard was performed at the Tokyo Globe Theatre, October 26 to December 2, 1990 (and in Osaka, December 5-16). Ostensibly an interpretation of Richard III (given the title), it becomes, almost from the start, a different play—one about the "historical" Shakespeare and how he manufactured from his imagination a hunchbacked, villainous Richard III, although in fact the king had been neither. Richard is put on trial for war crimes. Shylock (played by Noda) is also a major character, another aggrieved figure made unsavory by Shakespeare, another victim of the Bard's imagination. Underlying this is the notion that the truth of the past exists only in the past and cannot be conveyed to the future. Shakespeare's characters, such as Richard III and Shylock, are the product of—and as such exist only in—Shakespeare's fantasies. By extension a question is posed to the audience: Whose fantasy do you exist in? Noda uses scenes from Shakespeare's childhood—and a troublesome younger brother, Richard Shakespeare—to have the Shakespeare of Noda's fantasies creating such villains as Richard III to work out his own psychological compulsions. The effect of all this is to convey the view that truth is illusory and relative, that value (or judicial) judgments are based on subjective, rather than objective, criteria. The twelve jurors—all members of the audience—are evenly divided (six for conviction; six for acquittal); the thirteenth juror, an actor, who decides the matter, is vindictive.

The description to this point might imply that Noda's work is more "serious" than it is. Whatever its implications and the questions it raises, it was performed in a spirit of play. This approach aided the success of the actors' intrusions into the audience, some of whom (possibly "plants") were made to say a word or two in answer to very simple questions and, in one case, to stand up, turn around, and face the audience. At one point handbills relating to the play were passed out among the audience by actors from the stage. The acting was the customary Yume no Yuminsha style—much running and jumping, lines delivered at odd paces and in a variety of voices and accents unrelated to meaning. The set was somewhat elaborate with arches and several entrances; the costumes were a mix of period, contemporary, and the fantastic. Lighting effects and recorded music were used liberally, but the considerable success of the performance resulted essentially from the interplay of the content of Noda's play and the acting style of his troupe.

Playwright/director Kitamura So heads the Nagoya-based Project Navi (Purojekuto Nabi), a prominent theatre troupe in the 1980s. Although not a famous actor, Kitamura and his troupe seem cast in a somewhat similar mold to Noda and his Dream Idlers Company. That is, Kitamura's productions are packaged in the same juvenile style implying a similar anti-intellectual stance. But the similarities may be superficial. Kitamura is a skilled playwright; although far from realistic in their approach, Project Navi's performances rely little on fast pacing and athleticism and give attention to the literal meaning of words.

Kitamura has also explored the nature of stage space and questions of authorship. And, like so many other contemporary Japanese theatre artists, he is greatly preoccupied with childhood and its possibilities for revealing basic human obsessions and motivations, which leads naturally to the world of fairy tales and the writings of Miyazawa Kenji, as noted in my discussion of Betsuyaku.

Project Navi's more successful productions combine Kitamura's artfully crafted scripts with the troupe's well-rehearsed acting and highly professional stagecraft. As several of its actors have comedic and musical proficiency, Project Navi is almost always worth watching. Will Kitamura, born in 1952, continue to grow as a playwright/director following a trajectory like that of a Shimizu Kunio? Or will he become trapped in the youthful style with which his troupe has been so successful? The question is of great interest.

A cutout city skyline low across the back, the bare stage is covered by a platform a few inches high, which represents the rooftop on which all the action of People on the Roof takes place. This comic portrayal of sexual frustration begins quietly and deliberately on a well-lighted stage. The acting proves to be a mixture of the realistic, wistful, and broad; the comedy sometimes borders on slapstick. Tokyo performances were at the Honda Theatre, May 29 to June 3, after earlier presentations in Nagoya and Itami (near Osaka).

Many people come in ones, twos, and threes to the roof, where they encounter one another and reveal their various stories. Pervading all is the theme of sex. A young woman with a baby on her back enters with a young man. She describes a scene of al Fresco sex acts in an explicit way that sets the tone for the play. He tries to convince her he is faithful to her. She claims he has taken a lewd photo of her; when he denies it, she suggests he take one of her next time they come to the roof. They leave with the entrance of three schoolgirls who have lively discussions about sex. A stolid workman enters, as well, followed later by a man in a trenchcoat, a flasher who is aroused to action overhearing the girls' talk of sex. Two more couples round out the eleven rooftop denizens: a blind professor in a wheelchair and his female companion, who reads him the Confucian Analects and lewd stories; a young man and a working girl he is trying to dump (although she has aborted two of his children) so that he can marry his boss's daughter.

Going through the humorous warmup rituals of a sumo wrestler, the silent exhibitionist finally speaks toward the end, revealing his dual identity: salaryman/pervert. Adding to the humor, the blind man at one point puts on a demonstration of wheelchair basketball. Toward the close, his companion dramatically steps off the edge of the roof/platform—but nothing happens, destroying the fiction of the stage as a separate reality. After a musical number, "Whatever Will Be Will Be," the close sees the woman with baby flashing the workman, who chooses to go on cleaning the roof rather than take her up on her proposition. She takes it well and goes off, leaving him working, working.

In Kitamura's inventive piece, all actions seem morally equated. It is a humorous treatment of contemporary sexuality, a subject seldom encountered on the recent Japanese stage. Kitamura and Project Navi, in spite of the carefree style they assiduously cultivate, present a performance that is both comfortably entertaining and disturbingly thought-provoking.

The experimental approaches of twenty-five years ago have become, if not a new orthodoxy, at least well established. Realism, the onetime bugbear, may remain stigmatized but still can produce viable theatre. Among younger and older artists alike, there is a preoccupation with legend and myth rather than history. The prevailing relativism precludes probing and assessment of the past and, not surprisingly, aids the retreat into the nonjudgmental world of childhood and the fairy tale. Human psychology is seen as more compelling than the sociopolitical or philosophical realm. And, especially among younger artists, there is an unabashed embracing of the purely entertainment values of theatre.

There is much theatre in Tokyo to be seen, assessed, and (if worthy) reported on. And the scene may be expanding, for the Tokyo area is in the midst of a building boom. This wealth of new theatres is the welcome fulfillment of a long-standing need and may create equally welcome opportunities for Japanese theatre people. There is a stimulating increase in imported foreign productions, but how will Japanese artists respond to the changing circumstances? Much of the major work of the past thirty years has come from small theatres and avant-garde experimentation. Approaches, assumptions, and techniques that are the product of decades of performances in small or unconventional spaces are not always easily transported to large conventional theatres. Such considerations and the lure of money make the future hard to predict.