Pathway to Japanese Literature
Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.
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| Original Title | 芝居と僕 |
|---|---|
| Author | 岸田 国士 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A young intellectual’s journey into the heart of theater unfolds across continents and cultures, bridging the vibrant stages of 1920s Paris and the smoldering ruins of post-earthquake Tokyo. Immersed in France’s theatrical renaissance, he grapples with the chasm between script and performance, tradition and innovation, while dissecting the alchemy that transforms words into living art. Yet his homeland’s rigid Kabuki traditions and fledgling "new theater" movements haunt him—a dissonance sharpened by encounters with visionaries like Copeau and the starving idealism of avant-garde troupes. Torn between reverence for Western dramatic rigor and a simmering desire to redefine Japanese storytelling, he pens his first play—a fragile bridge between worlds—amid financial precarity and existential doubt. As seismic shifts reshape Tokyo’s cultural landscape, his return sparks collisions: between commercial pragmatism and artistic purity, between borrowed forms and an elusive "Japanese essence." The stage becomes a battleground where ghosts of Molière and Kabuki masters clash, whispering urgent questions about identity, legacy, and what it means to make theater pulse with modern life. Will his hybrid creations ignite a revolution or crumble under the weight of tradition? The curtain rises on a transformative era—for both one man’s soul and a nation’s cultural destiny. |
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