At the heart of the development of modern Japanese culture, the theatre mirrors the issues and concerns of a society transitioning from the Tokugawa era to the modern period. Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance fills a gap in current Japanese theatre scholarship; the book discusses the role of women in modern theatre, buto dance, experimental theatres that combine traditional theatre with modern forms, and plays by Abe Kobo, Mishima Yukio, and Senda Koreya. With important contributions from both established and emerging scholars, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in theatre, modern performance, or Japanese studies.

Beginning in late Edo, the Japanese faced a rapidly and irreversibly changing world in which industrialization, westernization, and internationalization was exerting pressure upon an entrenched traditional culture. The Japanese themselves felt threatened by Western powers, with their sense of superiority and military might. Yet, the Japanese were more prepared to meet this challenge than was thought at the time, and they used a variety of strategies to address the tension between modernity and tradition. Inexorable Modernity illuminates our understanding of how Japan has dealt with modernity and of what mechanisms, universal and local, we can attribute to the mode of negotiation between tradition and modernity in three major forms of art-theater, the visual arts, and literature. Dr. Hiroshi Nara brings together a thoughtful collection of essays that demonstrate that traditional and modern approaches to life feed off of one other, and tradition, whether real or created, was sought out in order to find a way to live with the burden of modernity. Inexorable Modernity is a valuable and enlightening read for those interested in Asian studies and history.

On August 15, 1945, when the war ended, almost all of Tokyo and Osaka's theaters had been destroyed or heavily damaged by American bombs. The Japanese urban infrastructure was reduced to dust, and so, one might have thought, would be the nation's spirit, especially in the face of nuclear bombing and foreign occupation. Yet, less than two weeks after the atom bombs had been dropped, theater began to show signs of life. Before long, all forms of Japanese theater were back on stage, and from death's ashes arose the flower of art. Rising from the Flames contains sixteen essays, many accompanied by photographic illustrations, by thirteen specialists. They explore the triumphs and tribulations of Occupation-period (1945-1952) theater, and cover not only such traditional forms as kabuki, no, kyogen, bunraku puppet theater (as well as the traditional marionette theater, the Yuki-za), and the comic narrator's art of rakugo, but also the modern genres of shingeki, musical comedy, and the all-female Takarazuka Revue. Among the numerous topics discussed are censorship, theater reconstruction, politics, internationalization, unionization, the search for a national identity through drama, and the treatment of the emperor on the pre- and postwar stage. The essays in this volume examine how Japanese theater, subject to oppressive thought control by prewar authorities, responded to the new-if temporarily limited-freedom allowed by the American occupiers, attesting to Japan's remarkable resilience in the face of national defeat.