ABSTRACT
The sixties in Japan were a period of intense eschatological reflec tion. Profound questions regarding ultimate ends were being asked in many artistic media. The plays written during this period reflect this trend, which resulted from the profound historical trauma of defeat in the Second World War, reactivated and exacerbated by the failure of the struggle to prevent renewal of the United States-Japan Mutual Security Treaty in 1960. Disillusioned with both the left-wing political and modem theatre movements, younger theatre people embarked upon a self-conscious attempt to develop an alternative historical mythology that could animate a comprehensive new movement in poli tics and the arts.
