ABSTRACT
THE MARRIAGE between Japanese and Chekhovian sensibilities seemed virtually consummated and altogether natural by the 1940s. In Japan at the turn of the century any mention of the Russian writer had seemed exotic and suggested an intellectual adventure; by 1947, Osamu Dazai, in his novel The Setting Sun, had his heroine, Kazuko, address a letter to her prospective lover, Uehara Jirō, using the initials MC, My Chekhov, not to provide an arcane reference but as a point of repair that his readers would recognize at once. At the end of 1945, when performers from various modern theatre companies banded together, their forces having often been cruelly dispersed by the government during the war years, there was no question but that the play to produce at the Yūrakuza was The Cherry Orchard. The affinities had defined themselves quite naturally.
