"Dangerous Thoughts" at the Theatre in Interwar Japan

Abstract: What role did shingeki , with its emphasis on translated drama, play as the political climate shifted from liberal to more restrictive during the interwar period? At the beginning of Japan's twentieth century, Western literature was imported en masse, and in the mid-1920s the Tsukiji Little Theatre opted for a repertoire of only translated drama for the first few years of its existence. What was the reason for the censorship? If liberal ideas were deemed unworthy of promotion, what subjects could lead to warnings, deletions, or publishers using fuseji to hide offensive words? If the censors were still basing their decisions on the tradition of kanzen chōaku (promoting virtue and punishing vice) at a time when literature and drama were moving away from didactic themes and more toward "art for art's sake," how did theatres still manage to stage translated drama on such a large scale? The starting point for this investigation into censorship and extralegal methods of controlling publication will be the staging of foreign drama at the Tsukiji Little Theatre 1924–1926, with particular attention to dramas depicting the battle between the sexes and the possible conflict they might cause in relation to traditional gender values.