ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the performative history of the translated term “revolution” between Rights Movement performances in the Meiji Period and those of the Proletarian Theater Movement in the early Showa Period. In doing so, it argues that the 1920s and 1930s Proletarian Theater Movement’s understanding of revolution is inextricably grounded in the Meiji Period. It begins with the first translations of Shakespeare into Japanese, the Roman Plays (examined in Chapter 1), to understand how performance texts fused traditional and Western notions of regime change. The chapter then looks to the dramas of the Proletarian Theater Movement and introduces a corpus coined here as Restoration Plays—plays by the Proletarian Theater Movement about the period from roughly the Meiji Restoration until the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution. Contrary to common portrayals of Proletarian Theater and culture as fixated on the present and the future, this corpus of plays demonstrates that the movement was keenly interested in history. This chapter ultimately demonstrates how history as performed on the Proletarian stage played out a catastrophic rift in the movement over conflicting revolutionary ideals.
