Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s

This title was first published in 1988: In this book the author has translated five postwar experimental Japanese plays and recreated the artistic, social and spiritual milieu in which they were created. He describes the turning point in Japanese thinking about the nature and limitations of a Western-oriented modern culture, and the creation of "underground" theatres which in which evolved a new mythology of history. Professor Goodman sees these developments as an interplay between personal and political (ie revolutionary) salvation.

David G. Goodman has been involved in modern Japanese theatre since 1968. From 1969 to 1973 he edited Concerned Theatre Japan, an English-language theatre journal. He is the editor-translator of After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Columbia University Press, 1986); Land of Volcanic Ash (Cornell East Asia Papers, 1986); and, with J. Thomas Rimer and Richard McKinnon, Five Plays by Kishida Kunio (forthcoming). In addition, he has written three books in Japanese. Goodman teaches Japanese and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Introduction The Plays FIND HAKAMADARE! Commentary The Play KAISON THE PRIEST OF HITACHI Commentary The Play MY BEATLES Commentary The Play JOHN SILVER: THE BEGGAR OF LOVE Commentary, The Play THE DANCE OF ANGELS WHO BURN THEIR OWN WINGS Commentary The Play Criticism: Tsuno Kairato and the Post-Shingeki Movement; Postscript: The Legacy of the 1960s