Toshiki Okada (岡田利規): Deconstructing Language and the Body on Stage

Introduction

Toshiki Okada (岡田利規) is a playwright, director, and novelist, and the founder of the theater company chelfitsch, for which he writes and directs every production. His work is known for highly colloquial language and a distinctive physical style.

Okada won the 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2005 for Five Days in March (三月の5日間), sharing the award with Kudo Kankuro. The play is set during the days around the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq. Since then, his work has been widely presented abroad, particularly in Europe.

Early Life and Career

Born in 1973 in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Toshiki Okada entered Keio University's Faculty of Commerce in 1992. In 1997, he founded chelfitsch, a name that comes from a childish distortion of the English word "selfish." Okada has said that he chose it at twenty-three, when he thought of himself as childish and selfish.

The Japan Foundation notes that he was largely unknown until the Kishida award.

The Kishida Prize-Winning Work

Five Days in March (三月の5日間) -- 49th Kishida Kunio Drama Award, 2005

Five Days in March, first performed in 2004, covers five days in March 2003: the two days before and the two days after March 21, Japan time, when U.S. forces began bombing Iraq. Rather than addressing the war directly, the play follows Minobe and Yukki, a young couple who meet at a live show in Roppongi and go straight to a love hotel in Shibuya, where they stay for the five days. Around them, others go on with their lives. Two young men, Yasui and Ishihara, half-heartedly join an antiwar march in Shibuya.

The Japan Foundation's summary says the play has no real plot or notable incidents. Seven performers, labeled "Actor 1," "Actor 2," and so on, take turns telling the audience what the characters did, rather than simply playing them. The dialogue is rambling and highly colloquial, and the performers' bodies carry out exaggerated versions of everyday gestures.

Theatrical Style and Philosophy

Okada's writing has been described as "super-real" Japanese. Key elements of his style include:

Colloquial language: Okada writes in rambling, highly colloquial Japanese. Actors in the plays also narrate, moving in and out of the roles.
Movement drawn from language: Okada has said that he does not see himself as a choreographer. He has actors draw movement from their lines, and then selects or shapes those movements, for instance by asking them to exaggerate a movement or repeat a gesture.
The relationship between word and body: Okada has said that language "must affect the body that speaks it."

His method has changed over time. After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear disaster that followed, he reconsidered his approach, and Ground and Floor (2013) pushed further into fiction. With stage and video designer Shimpei Yamada, he has also developed "EIZO-Theater," which turns display space into theatrical space.

Major Works

Beyond Five Days in March, Okada has created an extensive body of work. Descriptions below follow the company's own pages:

Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech (ホットペッパー、クーラー、そしてお別れの挨拶, 2009) -- Premiered at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. Three short pieces set in an office, where a female temp worker's contract has been terminated: her colleagues search a magazine for a restaurant for her farewell party, two permanent employees discuss the air conditioning, and she gives a farewell speech on her last day.
Current Location (現在地, 2012) -- Made as Okada reconsidered his approach after the 2011 earthquake. Seven women live in "the village," where rumors say the village will be destroyed, and must decide whether to believe them.
Ground and Floor (地面と床, 2013) -- Set in a near-future Japan, among the dead and the living, with music by Sangatsu.
Time's Journey Through a Room (部屋に流れる時間の旅, 2016) -- A ghost who died still holding hope for the future speaks of that hope, which pains the living, who find hope hard to sustain.
Eraser Mountain (消しゴム山, 2019) -- A collaboration with artist Teppei Kaneuji, inspired by the reshaping of the landscape in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, after the 2011 tsunami. It seeks a world where people and objects relate on flatter terms.

Okada is also a prize-winning writer of fiction. The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed (わたしたちに許された特別な時間の終わり, 2007), a collection of two short stories, won the 2nd Kenzaburo Oe Prize, and appears in English as The End of the Moment We Had (translated by Sam Malissa, Pushkin Press, 2018). Its first story is based on Five Days in March. Broccoli Revolution (ブロッコリー・レボリューション, 2022) won the 35th Yukio Mishima Prize.

Legacy and Influence

His international presence can be traced in the following:

International recognition: chelfitsch's first performance outside Japan was at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels in 2007, and it has returned there repeatedly. It has also appeared at Paris's Festival d'Automne, and Metamorphosis of a Living Room (2023), with composer Dai Fujikura, was presented at the Wiener Festwochen.
Work with European theaters: Okada directed repertory works for the Münchner Kammerspiele from 2016. Two of his productions for German theaters, The Vacuum Cleaner (Münchner Kammerspiele) and Doughnuts (Thalia Theater, Hamburg), were selected for the Berliner Theatertreffen, in 2020 and 2022.
Other recognition: His Unfulfilled Ghost and Monster: ZAHA / TSURUGA (未練の幽霊と怪物挫波／敦賀), which uses the narrative structure of noh, won the 72nd Yomiuri Prize for Literature in the play and scenario category and the 25th Tsuruya Namboku Drama Award.
Academic discourse: Kunstenfestivaldesarts notes that his work is the subject of academic study.

From fiscal 2025, Okada has been the artistic director of the festival Autumn Meteorite Tokyo.

How to Experience His Work

For those interested in discovering Toshiki Okada's plays, our theater library offers a gateway to Japanese dramatic literature. You can search for scripts and related works through our script search page, where you can browse by playwright, cast size, duration, and other parameters. In English, Aya Ogawa's translation of Five Days in March appears in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (Columbia University Press, 2014). Keep an eye on international festival programs as well, where chelfitsch's work continues to appear.

Toshiki Okada (岡田利規) | Kishida Prize-Winning Playwright Guide