The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Japanese Plays

Bacchae-Holstein Milk Cows; One Night; Isn't Anyone Alive?; The Sun; Carcass

Yuko Kuwabara, Takuya Yokoyama, Shiro Maeda, Satoko Ichihara, Tomohiro Maekawa

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350278400
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre Playwriting

Published alongside The Japan Foundation, this collection features five creative and bold plays by some of Japan's most prolific writers of contemporary theatre. Translated into English for the first time, these texts explore a wide range of themes from dystopian ideas of the future to touching domestic tragedies. Brought together in one volume, introduced by the authors and The Japan Foundation, this collection offers English language readers an unprecedented look at some of Japan's finest works of contemporary drama by writers from across the country. The plays include: The Bacchae-Holstein Milk Cows by Satoko Ichihara (Translated by Aya Ogawa)
This play takes themes of the ancient Greek tragedy Bacchae by Euripides to examine various aspects of contemporary society, from love and sex, man and woman, intermixture of different species, discrimination and abuse, to artificial insemination, criticism of anthropocentricism and more. It was the winner of the 64th Kishida Drama Award. One Night by Yuko Kuwabara (Translated by Mari Boyd)
The setting is a small taxi company run out of the home of its owner in a country town. One night the mother, Koharu Inamura, decides to leave the home in order to protect her children from her husband's domestic violence, promising them that she will come back in 15 years. The play depicts the family's reunion after having to live with the burden of that one night's (hitoyo) incident and how they restarted their lives after it. Isn't Anyone Alive? by Shiro Maeda (Translated by Miwa Monden)
This laid back, absurdist work examines death through a goofy lens. In the play, strange urban legends abound in a university hospital where young people die one after another, all with mobile phones in their hands. The Sun by Tomohiro Maekawa (Translated by Nozomi Abe)
Depicts young people torn apart in a near future setting where humanity has split into two forms: Nox humans who can only go out at night, and Curios, the original type of humans that can live under the sun. Carcass by Takuya Yokoyama (Translated by Mari Boyd)
This play takes its name from the Japanese word for dressed carcasses of beef and pork that have been halved along the backbone for meat. It deals with the dignity of being alive as seen through the lives of workers in the meat industry based on interviews and research. It won the Japan Playwrights Association's 15th New Playwright Award in 2009.

One Night

Yuko Kuwabara

Translated by Mari Boyd

Characters

Koharu Inamura (age fifty-six), mother of the Inamura family

Daiki Inamura (age thirty-six), eldest son, Fuku-chan’s Appliances employee

Sonoko Inamura (age thirty-three), eldest daughter, bar employee

Yuji Inamura (age thirty), second son, freelance writer

Yumi Shibata (age fifty-two), office worker and dispatcher, Koharu’s best friend

Susumu Marui (age thirty-eight), president of Inamaru Taxi company

Maki Ushiku (age thirty-two), daytime woman driver, nicknamed Moe

Yoichi Utagawa (age thirty-five), full-time driver

Mr. Yoshinaga (age unknown), from a dairy farm in Hokkaido

Fumiko Inamura (age thirty-eight), Daiki’s wife, in mediation for divorce

Junya Tomokuni (age twenty-nine), yakuza, formerly “younger brother” to Doshita

Hinako Kimata (age twenty-four), Tomokuni’s lover

Michio Doshita (age fifty), new taxi driver; former “older brother” yakuza to Tomokuni

Background

Inamaru Taxi company is located in a mountain town about two hours away from central Tokyo. In 1975, Yuichi Inamura and his wife, Koharu, started a family-owned taxi business under the name of “Inamura Taxi,” and gradually increased the number of vehicles and employees. In 1982, it became an incorporated taxi company.

In 1996, business was temporarily halted due to a certain incident; however, when Yuichi passed away suddenly, Koharu’s older brother, Shinichiro Marui, took over the management of the business. Inamura Taxi was renamed “Inamaru Taxi” as a joint management company with the Inamura family’s eldest son, Daiki, succeeding to the position of company owner.

After Shinichiro’s death in January 2011, his son, Susumu, took over as president.

The company currently has about ten employees, a few of them are from the Inamura Taxi days, but the majority are relatively young.

The types of workers are: alternate-day shift drivers, night/day shift drivers, office staff, and dispatchers.

Their main source of income is from dispatching taxis via the booking service, and the taxis rarely cruise for customers. Located in the countryside, they are open twenty-four hours a day, but few call late at night.

There is a private railway station about a five-minute drive away and a national railway station twenty minutes away.

Stage

The office of Inamaru Taxi (formerly Inamura Taxi). Built next to the main house of the Inamura family, it is an old prefabricated and reinforced concrete building.

The entrance to the office is located stage left. By the entrance, there is a counter, equipped with a desktop computer for inputting daily reports and a breathalyser.

On the wall next to the counter is a whiteboard for writing down shifts and colored magnets with employees’ family names on them—yellow indicating day shift; blue, night shift; and red, absence.

In the center of the office, there is a large dining table with chairs, where the employees hold meetings and take breaks.

Upstage are two small private rooms. One is a curtained-off nap room with a wooden bunk bed and shelves for uniforms and seat covers.

The other is a dispatch room that takes dispatch calls and contains a phone, a desktop computer, and a bookcase with a local map of the area.

There is a window with a blind between the dispatch room and the main office, so what is going...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Japanese Theatre by Playwrights of Generation X and on
• The Bacchae—Holstein Milk Cows
• Introduction to the Playwright and the Play
• Playwright Biography
• Playtext
• One Night
• Introduction to the Playwright and the Play
• Playwright Biography
• Playtext
• Isn’t Anyone Alive?
• Introduction to the Playwright and the Play
• Playwright Biography
• Playtext
• The Sun (2016)
• Introduction to the Playwright and the Play
• Playwright Biography
• Playtext
• Carcass
• Introduction to the Playwright and the Play
• Playwright Biography
• Playtext
• Copyright