The Kishida Prize Winners of the 2000s: Diversification and Experimentation

Introduction

The first decade of the twenty-first century produced a strikingly varied list of Kishida Prize winners. The prize went to writers as different as Nagai Ai (Brother Returns, 2000), Mitani Koki (Okepi!, 2001), Nakashima Kazuki (Aterui, 2003), Kuramochi Yutaka (One Man Show, 2004), Okada Toshiki and Kudo Kankuro (2005), Tsukuda Norihiko and Miura Daisuke (2006), Maeda Shiro (2008), and Horai Ryuta and Motoya Yukiko (2009). No award was made in 2002 or 2007.

This article looks at three of those winners, Okada, Miura, and Maeda, whose work shows just how far apart the decade's new voices could be, and at one contemporary, Nagatsuka Keishi, who was a repeated finalist.

The Post-Quiet Theater Landscape

By the early 2000s, the quiet theater of the 1990s was an established approach. Hirata Oriza's "contemporary colloquial theater" was widely known, and younger playwrights could define themselves in relation to -- or in reaction against -- its principles.

The Kishida Prize winners of the decade did not settle on any single aesthetic, and the three writers below are a good illustration.

Okada Toshiki: Language and the Body

Okada Toshiki (岡田利規, born 1973) won the 49th Kishida Prize in 2005 for Sangatsu no Itsukakan (三月の5日間, Five Days in March), sharing the award with Kudo Kankuro. Okada founded the company chelfitsch in 1997 and writes and directs all its work. The name is a coinage from the English word "selfish," as if slurred in baby talk. The company's own profile says his method has drawn attention for the distinctive relationship it creates between words and the body.

Five Days in March, which premiered in 2004, is set in Tokyo during the days around the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Two young people who meet at a live show in Roppongi spend five days in a Shibuya love hotel, while others go to a movie or casually join an anti-war march through Shibuya. Nothing dramatic happens. The actors narrate these events to the audience rather than simply playing their characters, so that the piece feels closer to testimony than to conventional drama.

The company has performed in more than 90 cities in Asia, Europe, and North and South America. Since 2016 Okada has also regularly written and directed work for German public theaters, and two of those productions were selected for the Berlin Theatertreffen: The Vacuum Cleaner (Munich Kammerspiele, 2020) and Doughnuts (Thalia Theater, Hamburg, 2022).

Miura Daisuke: Documentary-Style Discomfort

Miura Daisuke (三浦大輔, born 1975) won the 50th Kishida Prize in 2006, sharing the award with Tsukuda Norihiko, for Ai no Uzu (愛の渦), first staged in April 2005 at THEATER/TOPS. Miura leads the company Potudo-ru (ポツドール), founded in 1996 and known for what has been called "documentary theater."

Ai no Uzu gathers strangers for a single night of group sex. Their talk starts out polite and grows more candid as the night goes on, and at dawn they put their social masks back on. One reviewer of a 2009 revival found it uncomfortable to watch because it exposes what people usually hide. Miura wrote and directed the 2014 film version himself.

Maeda Shiro: Absurd Deaths on Campus

Maeda Shiro (前田司郎, born 1977) won the 52nd Kishida Prize in 2008 for Ikiteru Mono wa Inai no ka (生きてるものはいないのか, Isn't Anyone Alive?). He founded and leads the company Gotanda-dan (五反田団), established in 1997.

The play is an absurdist piece set at a university. Students and others in and around the campus talk about ordinary matters until, one after another and without explanation, they begin to die. Sogo Ishii directed a 2012 film version, and the play appears in English in The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Japanese Plays (2022). Maeda also writes fiction and won the 2009 Mishima Yukio Prize for the novel Natsu no Mizu no Hangyojin (夏の水の半魚人).

Nagatsuka Keishi: A Repeated Finalist

Nagatsuka Keishi (長塚圭史, born 1975) was a Kishida Prize finalist four times in this decade but did not win. One of those nominations, in 2005, was for Hataraku Otoko (はたらくおとこ).

The son of actor Nagatsuka Kyozo, he founded Asagaya Spiders (阿佐ヶ谷スパイダース) in 1996. He became artistic director of KAAT Kanagawa Arts Theatre in April 2021.

International Connections

Okada is the clearest example of the decade's international reach. Five Days in March went to Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels in 2007, chelfitsch's first overseas appearance, and to the Festival d'Automne in Paris in 2008. He has returned to the Festival d'Automne many times since, and chelfitsch appeared at the Wiener Festwochen in 2023.

Conclusion

The Kishida Prize winners of the 2000s were a varied group. Okada's narrated, physically distinctive theater, Miura's confrontational documentary style, and Maeda's absurdist comedy of sudden death are very different answers to what a play could be.

For international audiences, Okada is the most accessible way in: Five Days in March is available in Aya Ogawa's English translation in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (Columbia University Press, 2014).