ABSTRACT
WHAT WAS THE NATURE of the movement for a modern theatre in Japan? By 1925, Japan had several thoroughly professional playwrights who wrote works of considerable literary interest, dealing with concerns that would have seemed no less important to a European or an American audience than to a Japanese one. Yet the manner in which Japanese writers first came to take an interest in the theatre, and the problems they faced, suggest that their difficulties were more complex than any their European counterparts had encountered a generation or two before. A brief description of the early attempts made in Japan to alter the nature of the traditional theatre and elevate the function of the playwright will serve to indicate just how difficult these problems were.
