Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore how the idea of modern or ‘new’ theatre (shingeki) in Japan was transformed in the 1990s by renewed interest in authentically representing everyday Japanese social interactions on the stage. We also discuss some of the relevant historical debates about Japan’s shingeki. The formation of this modern theatre dates back to the early twentieth century and developed in contemporaneous fashion with European theatrical modernity. Shingeki is thus an early expression of the theme of multiple modernities that this book explores. This is an important point of contrast to other regional theatres discussed here and is an immediate example of how modernity itself is distributed unevenly across the Asia-Pacific temporality of our study.