A short history of theatre in Japan

After Japan opened to the outer world, following Meiji restauration, the Japanese scene transformed itself. New forms of theaters developped, such a shinpa or shinkokugeki, taking distances with traditional forms such as kabuki. In the late 19th, a movement named Shingeki, the new theatre movement, opened to Western forms of theatres, translating foreign plays and performing them. From the 20s to the 40s, new theater spaces opened, such as the Tsukiji Shogekijo in 1924, and companies were formed, such as the Bungakuza and the Haiyuza. Inspired by the Théâtre libre d’Antoine, which found its source in the promotion of new naturalistic drama in Paris around 1890, Shingeki was challenged after the war. Reacting to its formal realism, an underground art scene developed in the 1960s and 1970s. The heralds of this counter-culture were Shuji Terayama, Juro Kara, Makoto Sato or Tadashi Suzuki, to name a few. They proposed wild, provocative acting and performances.
The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the development of the Japan fringe theater scene, also know as the Shougekijo. It was characterized by small scale performances, and a distanciation from both the public and commercial stakeholders. Hideki Noda, Kohei Tsuka, Shoji Kokami led this movement. Opened in 1973, Parco Theatre pioneered in recognizing the talent and potential of leading fringe directors, giving them a commercial dimension supporting their writing and picking lead casts to make popular successes.
The 1990s saw a strong development of the public theaters, with the opening of the Tokyo Metropolitan Arts Space in 1990 in Toshima-ku – it was renamed Tokyo Metropolitan Theater in 2012 with Hideki Noda at its head -, the establishment in 1997 of both the Tokyo New National Theatre in Hatsudai (Shibuya-ku) and the Setagaya Public Theater directed by Makoto Sato, and the SPAC in Shizuoka with Tadashi Suzuki at the helm. Leaders of both Angura and Shogekijo were thus at the center of the public development of theater, benefiting from government funding. From the 1980s, the launch of festivals (Toga, Toyama pref in 1982, Tokyo International Arts Festival in 1988) contributed to Japan scene exchanges with the world and its internationalization. It was followed by the Tokyo Performing Art Markets in 1995 (now Yokohama International Performing Arts Meetings) and the Spring Art Festival Shizuoka (currently World Theater Festival Shizuoka) in 2000, and finally Kyoto Experiment Autumn Festival in 2010.
(to be continued)