Shingeki

[2] The Meiji Restoration in 1868 had led to the introduction of Western drama, singing, and acting onto the Japanese stage, as well as bringing the conventions of realism.

He wrote and directed many early Shingeki plays, translated the entire works of Shakespeare into Japanese, and taught theater and literature as a Waseda professor.

His plays include Kiri no hitotha (A Leaf of Paulownia), and En no gyoja (The Hermit), which were heavily influenced by western style playwrights, and dealt with psychological insight that did not fit into the mold of kabuki theatre.

He produced and directed plays that were considered landmarks in the new theatre, however, the Bungei Kyokai was disbanded in 1913 due to drama between the members.

[6] Osanai Kaoru, is a second major figure in the Shingeki movement, played a key role in inspiring other artists and playwrights.

[4][7] The troupe produced many Western plays, including; Chekov's Uncle Vanya and Cherry Orchard, Ibsen's Ghosts and An Enemy of the People, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, etc.

[4] Scholars considered his production of Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, with kabuki reformed actor, Ichikawa Sandanji II, the origin of Shingeki.

Playwrights such as Kubo Sakae, Murayama Tomoyoski, and Miyoshi Jurō were key figures in Shingeki political theatre.

[8] The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (or SCAP) and Shingeki theatre artists have a long history of interaction during the occupied of Japan that often led to confusion and cultural misunderstandings.

[9] In the early postwar years, many Shingeki performers reacted to their wartime repression by embracing leftism, and some members even joined the Japan Communist Party (JCP).

The JCP helped support the revival of the Shingeki movement in the early postwar by organizing “workers’ theater councils” (kinrōsha engeki kyōgikai, abbreviated rōen).

This meant that their productions tended to be more conservatively leftist and socialist realist to appeal to the sensibilities of the left-leaning labor unionists in the rōen and their JCP backers.

[13] This was the genesis of the "Angura" theater movement in Japan, also known as the also known as the "Little Theater" (小劇場, shōgekijō) movement, which rejected the Brechtian modernism and formalist realism of Shingeki to stage anarchic "underground" productions in tents, on street corners, and in small spaces that explored themes of primitivism, sexuality, and embodied physicality.

[15] Kaoru Osanai himself was placed in charge of Shochiku's training school and produced Souls on the Road in 1921, a work that has been called "the first landmark film in Japanese history".