ABSTRACT
Find Hakamadare! had revealed the wizened puppeteer who animat ed the automaton of historical materialism and had shown how pro found theological and eschatological questions would have to be con fronted before an alternative to the Old Left political and cultural movement could be found. Kaison the Priest of Hitachi showed those questions would necessarily involve the Japanese gods, who remained alive and influential in the Japanese imagination. Satoh Makoto’s My Beatles continued this process. The play reveals how the twenty-threeyear-old playwright arrived at the unexpected and unwelcome conclu sion that hoary cultural archetypes in modem dress continue to shape Japanese political attitudes and reflexes.
