FestivalTokyo

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Fukushima City Hall

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Visiting Fukushima for research but caught by record-breaking rainfall, I had no choice but to look around facilities near my accommodation. I first went to Fukushima City Hall, a walk of just two minutes but one that still left me completely drenched. The play became a story about wandering around the city hall building, including two businessmen from a photocopier manufacturer I met that night at a restaurant. I was inspired to write a play about what happens while moving inside a building and where the story is told in a very disparate way. (Saki Yamada)

Mosquitos

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This play comprises four little pieces, each of which is a simple conversation or a short exchange of behavior. One is about people on their guard against mosquitos, only for a wasp to come and the people run away. Another is about a married couple passing by a man, and a mosquito almost simultaneously bites the husband and the man. Yet another is about two male junior high school students who are tickling each other until a mosquito lands on one of their faces. The final story is about a woman unable to sleep because of a mosquito and a man who is fast asleep. They are banal episodes about mosquitos that could take place seemingly anywhere. (Ippei Miyake)

Throw a Song, Like a Ball

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Moving from Toyoharu Junior High School in Saitama, renowned for its student choir, to Fukushima, Yutaka Kawakami falls in love with a doctor called Hosaka. Having left his elite school and unable to bare his passion for singing, yet ignored by Hosaka, Yutaka spends his days moping around the throat clinic where Hosaka works, his depression unchecked or affected by the love clumsily shown by his mother Mariko or brother-in-law Tadashi. After suddenly and somewhat obstinately singing together at school with Yuki Okamoto, a fellow student who is concerned for him, Yutaka promises her he will attend choir practice the next day, having previously tended to bunk off. (Mitsuru Aida)

A Stranger

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A mother and her daughter live in Fukushima City. The mother is tidying away in the kitchen after the evening meal. The daughter is watching TV. She eventually turns off the TV and goes to start her homework, but then becomes aware of the presence of a male stranger beside her. The mother and daughter are both surprised but, realizing the man is hungry, the mother makes him a rice ball, which he eats with relish and then leaves. What was this stranger’s visit? The mother sees the face of her dead husband, while the daughter ponders what it means for people to seem similar to someone. (Masataka Matsuda)

Tobu Gymnasium

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Hearing that the venue for “Performing Fukushima” was a gymnasium, I was prompted to write this play about a sports club that I glimpsed through the large window of a gymnasium one evening after the rain. The two-story building was like a public hall and all that could be seen from the street outside was a ball and the backs of the people inside. (Saki Yamada)

 

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The Boy and the Driver

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A young boy has fled from a hospital. Using a wheelchair, he clenches some coins left in a vending machine and arrives at the taxi rank in front of the hospital. He knocks on the window of a taxi and surprises the driver. The driver then understands from the boy’s faltering speech that he has a strong wish to go to a river. Along the way, the driver treats the boy to an ice cream and they get to know each other better. Arriving at Abukuma River, the driver asks the boy if he would like to go into the water. Although initially hesitant, the boy lets the driver hold him and they wade into the shallows. Partway through the story there is a scene where the boy asks the robot Pepper how to get to the river. The play experiments with having a human being play a robot. (Ippei Miyake)

Senganmori

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When first traveling to Fukushima City, I searched for places where I could somehow meet locals and he came across the Fukushima Iino UFO Museum. It features displays of photographs and accounts of UFO sightings near the mountain of Senganmori as well as various other UFO-related materials from around the world. It is not clear why UFOs would apparently appear like this in the area. The play depicts people drawn together at the museum by a strange magnetism. (Keisuke Kamiya)

Laughter

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In Fukushima City, there is a cheap lodging that was formerly a long-established inn before the 2011 disaster. The protagonist, Satoru Tamura, is talking about laughter with his wife Ryoko and daughter Satsuki. Satsuki is Ryoko’s child from another relationship and not Satoru’s biological daughter. Satoru has recently let Ryoko handle the management of the lodging so that he can concentrate on writing poetry that he publishes on his blog. The three are now listening to a recording Satoru made of Satsuki and her friend reading the poetry and laughing. A decontamination worker, Shimizu, is staying at the lodging. Ryoko earns money by having sexual relations with the workers who stay and Shimizu is one such person. Satoru spends each evening drinking with his young male neighbors and living with abandon. That night he goes dead drunk to Shinobu Bridge and watches the Shinkansen bullet train pass by on its way to Tokyo. (Masataka Matsuda)

Steam, Roadside

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Fukushima City resident Yokooka accompanies Kinuta, who has come from Kanagawa on a trip, and together they are walking to the Iizaka hot spring resort. Yokooka listens to Kinuta as she talks about her life so far while gazing at the rows of houses. They find a footbath and watch the water that is too hot to enter. A candid girl and children from the neighborhood surround Yokooka, but then leave, and the couple go their separate ways. On his way home, Yokooka takes turns washing his back with some elderly men at a public bath. Touched by human life, Yokooka phones his girlfriend, Kanako, but his proposal goes badly so he contacts another female friend. (Mitsuru Aida)

 

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Just Like a Woman

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Yukio Hirayama, who belongs to a comedy group, meets Maria Kawasaki, who is a member of a small political organization called the Small Women’s Party. The catalyst for their first meeting was when Kawasaki overheard the rehearsals for Hirayama’s group’s comedy show. The Small Women’s Party organizes its activities according to the ideas of Miyako Okaboshi, the party leader who wants to reform Japan’s male society through the small efforts of women. Hirayama is infatuated with Kawasaki but then one day finds out that she is in love with another party member, a woman called Ogawa. Hirayama tells Kawasaki that he will take it upon himself to tell Ogawa about how Kawasaki feels about her and to help ensure her love is requited. Kawasaki rejects his offer. Just at that moment, violence breaks out within the comedy group and the play ends with Hirayama about to become a victim of this. (Masataka Matsuda)

The Police Station Dojo

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This play is deeply ingrained with the marebito theater company performance style whereby the audience gradually imagines a scene from the utterances and actions of the actors on a bare stage. Ir had long felt attracted to the visually curious way that police in Japan display seized stolen goods to the press by arranging them over a blue tarpaulin sheet. I was also interested in the spirit of martial arts that prizes gratitude toward the sacred space that is the dojo. The resulting play explores the theme of a situation that, while difficult to understand for outsiders, has become utterly normal for the people involved. (Keisuke Kamiya)

Dream Junky

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Nayo has a dream about miso soup with a caterpillar in it. Megane hates listening to people talking about their dreams. Knowing this full well, Nayo takes delight in talking about his dreams in the university seminar room, unfazed when he makes Megane angry as always. Megane is furious at what Nayo says: “I want to tell you about my dream because you hate it.” Nato corrects himself, telling him he likes how he doesn’t enjoy stories about dreams. Before they know it, they are debating the structure of the dream. Nayo concludes by saying that eating a caterpillar was the key to seeing what lies beyond the dream, but Megane is left bewildered. (Mitsuru Aida)

Dancing at Machinaka Hiroba

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In this loosely staged play, eleven people perform a group dance under the supervision of an instructor at Machinaka Hiroba, a plaza in the center of Fukushima City. (Masataka Matsuda)

 

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Fukushima District Court

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Caught by heavy rain, this was the second location that I could visit. Having nothing else to do, I sat in on three trial hearings. One was for a person who became a drug addict after their family left the area following the 2011 disaster, while another trial involved a tearful family dealing with a 15-year sentence handed down to the defendant. However, I ultimately wrote about a habitual fare dodger, a case that on the surface seemed the least exciting as a story. The play was inspired by the desire to create a kind of space from the defendant’s apathy toward his surroundings, his meticulous tricks refined from the previous times he was caught, and the strange camaraderie between the railway company employees with stable salaries deriding the defendant, who is someone too poor to buy tickets, during a break in the trial proceedings. (Saki Yamada)

The Man from Kobe

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Sekiguchi, who came to Fukushima from Kobe to work in the post-disaster reconstruction, hits a child with his car. The child’s parents are divorced and seem to remain on bad terms. The monk who arrives for the funeral is more worldly than spiritual, and makes many indiscreet remarks. In despair, the mother is unsure how to respond to what he says. Sekiguchi, meanwhile, has become a drunk following the accident. Around this time, antipathy has spread locally toward the people who came from Osaka to Fukushima for the work. Detecting his Kansai region accent, Sekiguchi is turned away from a drinking establishment. He is picked up by a tout and taken to a hostess club. The drunk Sekiguchi becomes violent and flees the bar. During the research, I frequently heard hostile remarks about “Osaka people.” The play explores the way people tend to resort to discrimination during times of uncertainty. (Ippei Miyake)

Greeting

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A girl arrives at the room of a boy. She says she has come to say hello, but the boy questions the original meaning of a greeting. The girl cannot answer. He explains that the word for “greeting” in Japanese derives from a dialogic Buddhist practice and that it means to check their answer and see if someone was properly trained as a Buddhist or, on the other hand, to probe or search for something. As such, he tacitly suggests that there is an ulterior motive to the girl’s visit. The girl becomes curious about the messy state of the boy’s room and, as if dancing, starts looking around the room. (Mitsuru Aida)

At Starbucks

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The play is set in a branch of Starbucks inside JR Fukushima Station. An old married couple, female high school students, company employees, and various others are talking among themselves. A man appears. He is writing a play that he wants to stage in Tokyo. For this reason, he walked around Fukushima all of yesterday doing research. An apparent angel then appears and asks the writer if he can sit in the same seat. Receiving this request, the man tells the angel about the scene he saw while doing his research. Near an unmanned train station, he came upon a place enveloped in light. And as he tells the story, the man himself enters this scene. (Masataka Matsuda)

The Patrio

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There is an apartment building with a patio-style inner courtyard. Separated by this courtyard, two sisters live in separate apartments. At the older sister Sumiko’s home, her daughter Momo is having a party with her friends from her time studying abroad. The party is noisy and can be heard outside. However, the midsummer patio remains tranquil. The two sisters are having a conversation across the courtyard, grumbling about housework or telling a kind of scary story. People are heading home from a nearby movie theater. They include a man and a woman who are on a date but not yet lovers, resulting in a rather awkward atmosphere between them. Eventually, the faint sounds of a saxophone are heard on the patio. It is apparently being played by the husband of someone who recently moved to the building from Chiba. His wife, however, is worried about the radiation from the nuclear power plant and is suffering from a mental illness. The two sisters then talk about their memories of the little trip they took one summer when they were young with their grandmother. Sumiko’s memories are unclear but the younger sister, Yoko, who back then already had a strong personality, continues talking about that time. Yoko went off by herself, leaving her grandmother and Sumiko and waiting a long time at the rural station for a train to come. I made a lot of effort to portray summer memories. (Ippei Miyake)

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National Treasure Shiramizu Amida-do Temple

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On her second trip to Fukushima, I rented a car. The play came from the my desire to write something in the first person about a place where she was aware that I looked like a tourist, even though there were almost no other visitors. (Saki Yamada)

Racetrack

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Suguru and Yuki are a couple in their late twenties who go to the horse racetrack on a day off. Yuki is a novice when it comes to horse racing but sometimes wins on bets with high odds. Suguru is having an affair with a regular at a restaurant he goes to. Yuki is tired of her undefined relationship with Suguru. I wanted to write a play depicting a couple breaking up at a sunny horse racetrack where it feels like you are out for the day on a casual picnic. When I went to the racetrack in Fukushima, peaches were on sale right by the entrance. (Natsuka Kusano)

 

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At the Meet-and-Greet Fan Event

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At a live music venue in Iwaki, many ardent fans have gathered for an event celebrating the birthday of Shiori, a member of a local music idol group. Among the fans, however, is a man who looks suspiciously out of place. He has come in order to cause an incident, believing he can help Shiori quit the idol industry. The deified position of the “idol” does not leave them with any freedom. This is linked to the way people are fated to live in a certain place. The play is a story about Fukushima, where people are now forced to wear the “armor” of radiation. It asks us to consider how much soil will we have to dig up until we return to the previous Fukushima. (Takashi Shima)

Iwaki City Coal & Fossil Museum (Horuru)

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The Iwaki City Coal & Fossil Museum (Horuru) is located in a suburb of Iwaki. The life of a coal-mining town in the early Showa period is recreated with to-scale models. Two women come to see the exhibits. They then go to a space where a futabasaurus dinosaur is on display. In the space, the history of the planet from its birth to the present is shown on a single line. Looking at this, the pair feels dizzy at just how tiny and insignificant their position within that history is and at the lack of coherence of the world that determined this. (Masataka Matsuda)

The Old Man’s Story

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There was a man without much time left to live. This play is based on a conversation I had with that man. I think the man said that even after being told he does not have long to live, he wouldn’t give up on life. He spoke about that incredibly human, rough sensation of wanting to cling on to life. But for someone whose memory is fading as a side effect of his medication and can no longer remember what time it is, what is his concept of time now? This was the question that inspired the play. The person talking to the old man in the play is a stand-in for me, who slightly regrets the rather forced way I linked things to Fukushima. (Ippei Miyake)

 

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Secret Hotel

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In room 308 of the secret hotel, a female high school student is treated like a prostitute by her partner and becomes depressed. Miwa and Saori in room 310 are enjoying themselves in their room. Makita is in room 312 with his lover, Hideto. Waiting down on the street, Tatsuo starts a fight with Ikeda, who has just come out of room 311, but is scolded by his superior, Kaji. Having heard from Saori about a man, Miwa and Saori decide to bring their party to an end, while the schoolgirl bumps into Tatsuo on the street. Tatsuo having left with Kaji, the student is called over by Miwa after parting ways with Saori, but she doesn’t accompany Miwa and instead goes somewhere else. Miwa eventually sets off for home. (Mitsuru Aida)

National Route 6

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Connecting inner Tokyo with Sendai, National Route 6 runs almost parallel with the JR Joban Line from a certain point in Ibaraki Prefecture onwards. I was driving in the Hamadori area of eastern Fukushima near the sea. Originally I wanted to write a drama that uses telephone communication. But when faced by the sight of large barricades like gates in front of the houses on either side of the road, of their gardens filled with vegetation that had grown far taller than a person, and by the abandoned convenience stores or pachinko parlors with their broken windows, I felt unable to put anything into words. I tried writing down all the types of vehicles that I saw and from there the play proceeded very smoothly. I particularly like how the weather forecasts for Fukushima featured in the play differ slightly across the prefecture’s three regions of Nakadori, Hamadori, and Aizu. (Natsuka Kusano)

 

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Every Day, Every Night

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One summer night at a house located some distance from Iwaki, the scriptwriter Sakura Ishimoto is working alone. The illustrator Mako Mori arrives. Sakura makes no attempt to conceal her surprise at Mako’s unexpected visit while she is trying to work. Mako has come to visit her old college friend Sakura because her job as an illustrator in Tokyo is not going well. Their lives together over the next few days involve various curious episodes. The neighbor Kaori Hijikata brings along her fiancé. Sakura lets two unemployed men she met at a local bar stay over. A strange-looking local pair of twins come and go. Mako sketches out these incidents over the days like a diary. (Masataka Matsuda)

Collecting the Remains

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There are people who were hit by the tsunami and have still not been found. Their families and friends put on protective clothes and quietly head to the beach to search for any traces of them. It is a task that is carried out within a limited period of time. But it is not only happening in Fukushima; there are people all over the world looking for remains like this. In Chile, for instance, opponents of the former dictatorship were murdered and even their bodies disappeared. People continue now to search for pieces of bone among the sand. This is an impossible task of finding pulverized remains among the red soil. The play was inspired by the desire to portray the irreplaceability of someone that you love. (Ippei Miyake)

 

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Satellite, Boat Pier, New Track

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In the suburbs of Fukushima City, a building houses three legal betting shops. The ground floor is for betting on track cycling, the second floor for boat racing, and the third for horse racing. These are introduced in order during the course of the play. This is performed by the same actors playing three roles each. In all of the floors, the visitors exchange almost identically sounding conversations while continuing to place bets with similarly fixated gazes in the direction of the screens showing the respective sporting events. (Tomoyuki Takahashi)

Conveyor Belt Sushi

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This play is about what happened later to two characters from “Art School.” A woman imagines what it is like to be the plates of sushi placed on the conveyor belt and travel around and around the restaurant. Next to her, a man eats sushi. (Keisuke Kamiya)

Kozue and Mokichi

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The pregnant Kozue is knitting while waiting for her husband to come home. Her older brother, Mokichi, turns up for the first time in a while. Mokichi, who is always flitting from job to job, is relieved that Kozue’s child is doing fine. A heavy drinker, he actually came to Kozue’s home in order to get booze. He also tells her that he has quit his latest job and is again unemployed. He quit due to his coworker Kazu. The play ends with Mokichi hearing Kozue’s husband arriving home and hiding in order to jump out and surprise him. The short play depicts a small earthquake. It is the completely ordinary post-disaster landscape. (Ippei Miyake)

 

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Tommy’s Barbershop

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Ihara doesn’t take his temperature even if he gets a cold. This is because he doesn’t want to be misled by numbers. Tomii is shaving Ihara as he listens to this. The rather fastidious Fukunaga speaks with Aiba, who comes in later. For him, too, there are numbers that he doesn’t want to know about. Aiba asks Tomii why it is that a masseur will say “Good job” after giving someone a massage. Next in comes Sugita, who has many interests and whose grandchild is about to be born. Tomii asks Sugita about the “Good job” question. Sugita answers blandly that if something is needed to serve as a signal that something is over, then a gentle one works well. (Mitsuru Aida)

The Tree of Tears

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Man 1 is hiding in a ditch, watching Man 2 and Man 3. Man 3 has come home. He presses the intercom but Man 2 is asleep and does not notice. Man 1 suddenly blows in his ear and Man 2 wakes up. Man 3 is a top civil servant who has been sent from Tokyo to Fukushima to help in the reconstruction. Fooling around with his boyfriend, Man 2, he grumbles about his job. Man 2 has left home but his father’s health has recently taken a turn for the worse. He is unsure about whether he should go home to see his father. To encourage Man 2, Man 3 tells him the story of the tree of tears. However, upon coming to the end of the story, Man 3 finds that Man 2 is fast asleep. Watching this, Man 1 lightly wipes away tears for some reason. (Ippei Miyake)

Aquamarine Fukushima: Coral Reef Sea

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At the Aquamarine Fukushima aquarium, various people pass by the enormous Coral Reef Sea tank. (Masataka Matsuda)

The Sports Shop

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I like the local sports shops that can be found in different areas. These sports shops sell the jerseys and indoor footwear designated by schools in the district. I remember the feeling in junior high school of inching closer to adulthood that came from wearing the school uniform or officially approved jersey. This is also the time when one’s relationship with others starts to become more complicated. Children form their own version of society among themselves. Even though we all experienced this ourselves once, after so much time we are no longer able to imagine how they feel. The resulting play explores the theme of using the imagination to compensate. (Keisuke Kamiya)

 

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Performance and Conspiracy

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At a university in the suburbs of Fukushima City, the members of a theatre club are rehearsing at an outdoor performance space. There have been staying on campus in order to concentrate on the rehearsals for their production of Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus” to be performed in a few days’ time. However, the director Kitaura has gone missing and the performance is in crisis. The rehearsals have nonetheless continued, led by Takano, a senior member of the club who is playing the role of Oedipus in the production. The person playing the role of Ismene, Hino, hears from another member, Suzuki, that Kitaura’s disappearance is possibly a conspiracy by some unknown authority figures. Suzuki gives Hino a bottle with a letter that he says he picked up from the sea in Minamisoma, where Kitaura went missing. The letter was written by Kitaura and addressed to Hino. (Masataka Matsuda)

Revolution

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The play is set not in Fukushima but in Havana, the capital city of Cuba. It was inspired by my experiences of staying in both Cuba and Fukushima. Cuba once wanted to build a nuclear power plant. Fully funded by the Soviet Union, the project was scrapped in 1992 just as it was nearing completion due to the collapse of the USSR. I had a sense that Cuba had taken a completely opposite direction to Japan’s. Though not an affluent nation by any means, it didn’t feel at all sad. It is a strangely optimistic and attractive country. The play is about a man who travels to Cuba from Fukushima and the woman he meets there. (Keisuke Kamiya)

 

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You Are My Theatre

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The play starts at the retirement party for Yamamura. Just as they are leaving the party and saying their goodbyes, they realize that among the small group a stranger has appeared without anyone noticing. They ask Yamamura who the person is. Yamamura replies that the person is “Theatre.” She explains that she used her retirement bonus to buy a theatre in human form. Yamamura then takes Theatre home, where she lives alone. Theatre starts to recite dialogue from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” on Yamamura’s bed. Time passes and Yamamura takes Theatre on a walk along a path with a view of the Abukuma River. She makes Theatre perform the scene of Juliet’s suicide. Doing this, however, Theatre actually dies. (Masataka Matsuda)

From Koyasu Bridge, Tomioka River

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In the town of Tomioka, Fukushima, two young sisters are wandering aimlessly. They say they are looking for their mother. Black bags of decontaminated waste are piled up high, but the girls do not know about radiation. This is because the characters in this play are actually animals left behind in Fukushima. The sisters meet Mr. Kami (literally, Mr. Paper), an old man who speaks in Osaka dialect. They ride on Mr. Kami’s back and fly up into the sky. This “paper” is the play script or text. The play was written as an attempt to probe the question of whether or not depicting bold and dynamic fiction on the page is important after the 2011 disaster. (Takashi Shima)

 

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A Bench at Aeon Cinema

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On the fifth floor of a shopping mall in Fukushima City, there is a bench by the entrance to Aeon Cinema. Various Fukushima locals come and go. Nonomiya and Mochizuki are sitting on the bench. They remember how they once happened to be on the same Ban’etsu East Line train bound for Iwaki and talk about that time. Mochizuki is a female college student attending a university in Fukushima and has just been to an orientation event about local corporations held on the fourth floor of the mall. Eventually, Sumire Miyaoka comes along to see Nonomiya. Miyaoka tells Nonomiya to stop following her around like a stalker. Mochizuki regrets sitting next to Nonomiya on the bench. (Masataka Matsuda)

Metasuta (Mitsuru Aida)

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There is a shite (the main protagonist in a Noh play) and jiutai (chorus), performing the Noh play “Iwafune” (Sacred Stone Boat). A boy wants to buy a weekly manga magazine but he has no money. Mingling with the people looking around the grounds of Tsuruga Castle, he searches for any coins that may have been dropped. At the hill of Iimoriyama, a man and woman are on a date, but it’s not going well. The boy who wants to buy the magazines goes to Keiko, who works at a coffee shop called Kura, to sponge money, but instead just gets a free serving of pasta. The man at Iimoriyama visits a shrine and throws money into the offering box while thinking about the woman, only for the boy who wants to buy the magazine to catch the coin. This infuriates the man. The shite starts to dance. (Masataka Matsuda)

 

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2n People Who Cannot Go Home

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The high school student Maki Ando leaves her voluntary evacuation shelter in the Kanto region and goes to where her father, Satoshi, is living away from the family for work in Iwaki. Maki knows that her father is having an affair with Mirei, who was evacuated from the Fukushima exclusion zone to Iwaki. Every weekend in front of Iwaki Station, the high school student Yuki Izumida plays music on the street but is unsure about continuing after receiving an anonymous threat from someone. When Yuki performs, he looks just like Maki and the stories of these two people who have never met gradually converge. When originally performed, two different actors played Yuki for the scenes when he was not playing music and playing music, while the actor who played the latter also played the role of Maki. (Tomoyuki Takahashi)

Ban’etsu East Line to Iwaki

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Various passengers are riding on a two-carriage train heading to Iwaki on the JR Ban’etsu East Line. Just as the train passes through the mountains, a foreign laborer says “Kamimata” and starts to look anxious. It seems like he is referring to a station called Kanmata. Another male passenger explains that the train has already passed that station and he should get off at the next stop and then take a train going back the other way. It is not clear if the foreign laborer fully understands but nonetheless he gets off at Kawamae Station. However, a piece of luggage is left behind and a married couple starts to speculate if it belongs to the foreign laborer who just got off. After coming to a stop, the train once again bustles with noise and commotion. (Masataka Matsuda)

 

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Spinoff Edition: Fukushima, Osaka

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In Osaka, there exists an area called Fukushima. There is also a town called Fukushima in Hiroshima Prefecture. In fact, there are many such “Fukushimas” around Japan. It is no exaggeration to say that these places were all contaminated by radiation after the 2011 disaster. This play is about a young boy searching for a girl based only on the information that she is waiting by a bridge in Fukushima. Meeting an unpopular YouTuber and a local old woman along the way, he eventually sets out for Osaka’s “Fukushima bridge,” which burned down in a great fire in the past. Looking back through history before the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan has experienced many kinds of natural disasters across the ages. We must not allow the loss ushered in by such catastrophes to blight places just because they bear the name Fukushima. What is crucial to this play is the foolhardy choice of the young boy not to go to the eponymous prefecture in the Tohoku region of northeast Japan when he first hears the name “Fukushima.” (Takashi Shima)

The Braille Library

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Braille libraries are facilities set up so that even the visually impaired can enjoy reading. There are now such facilities in every prefecture in Japan. At a Braille library, people make Braille books by converting preexisting publications into Braille as well as preparing audio books, which are recordings of a book read aloud. This play portrays the relationship at such a place between people who cannot read printed text. (Keisuke Kamiya)

 

Shioyazaki Lighthouse

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This play that shifts vertically between different times and locations was inspired by my surprise at a particularly tall lighthouse as well as the incredible view of the coast from that lighthouse, one that felt almost like computer-generated imagery and gave no hint of what had happened there in the recent past. (Saki Yamada)

 

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At the Former Site of a Bakery

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At a residential neighborhood in the city of Minamisoma, tourists have followed a map to arrive at a bakery, only to discover that it is now an empty lot. Historic ruins were found while the shop was being renovated, with the result that it has transformed into an excavation site. The history of the location is told in fits and starts by the travelers who meet at the site as well as by the people doing the excavation work and the bakery owner, who comes every day to check on the excavation. Originally below sea level, the story of the place encompasses the activities of Neolithic people and its use during the Edo period as a paddock for horses, before reaching its recent history as an airfield for the army during the war. (Tomoyuki Takahashi)

The Suffering of Moriyama

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This is a straight play about Nao Moriyama, who is waiting for someone at an outlet of a chain restaurant near Fukushima Station. A young man, Akira Toyama, arrives at the next table, where there is a mother and daughter. A regular at the bar the mother runs, Akira is apparently here to meet the daughter, Ayumi, and becoming her private tutor. Nao is killing time with a coloring book but finds herself unable to take her eyes away from the adjacent trio’s table and its uneasy mood. The basic scenario of the play, where a home tutor is introduced to a student, was something I actual witnessed at such a restaurant. (Natsuka Kusano)

Her Highness Kazuko Kitashirakawa’s Visit to the Roadside Rest Area Yotsukura

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On National Route 6 that runs along the Pacific coat, there is a roadside rest area called Yotsukura. On the ground floor there is a store selling local foods and specialties. The second floor is a food hall. At the facility drivers and tourists take a break from traveling. Among them is a woman calling herself Wako Kitashirakawa (a name with associations of the Imperial Family), who is apparently traveling to all these roadside rest areas around Japan, as well as someone who is accompanying her. “Princess” Wako speaks to the people visiting the roadside rest area. She then says she wants to look at the sea and walks out onto the terrace to get a view of the ocean. (Masataka Matsuda