After graduating, Fukuda briefly worked as a reporter for the Tokyo Times newspaper before joining the Mingei Theatre Company as an assistant director, later branching out into play writing under the guidance of his mentor Junji Kinoshita.
[1] As a member of the Shingeki ("new theatre") movement, Fukuda's early works adopted a socialist realist stance, as reflected in plays such as Long Rows of the Gravestones, which dramatized the Kawai Eijiro incident of 1938, in which a liberal professor had his books banned, and which had left a profound impression on Fukuda's mentor Kinoshita when he was a student.
[2] Another early play in this mode was Oppekepe, which dramatized the struggle of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement during the Meiji period and received the National Arts Festival's Encouragement Award (奨励賞) in 1958.
[8] Historian of Japanese theater David G. Goodman has called Record Number 1 “a pivotal moment in the history of the modern Japanese theater movement,” one that “challenged every aspect of the Shingeki orthodoxy.”[9] A large number of Angura directors and playwrights worked with Seigei and Fukuda in the early 1960s, including Jūrō Kara, Makoto Satō, and Minoru Betsuyaku.
In this satyrical play, a group of medieval peasants search for a Robin Hood-like figure called "Hakamadare" to lead them in their struggles, but when the finally find him and he turns out to be a self-serving villain, they kill him and establish their own government.