Abstract
The Tsukiji Little Theater is a theater company founded in 1924, one year after the Great Kanto Earthquake, by Kaoru Osanai, Yoshi Hijikata, and others. The troupe split up the following year when Osanai died in 1928. The theater was located in Tsukiji, which is the center of Tokyo. This theater had a capacity of ~500 people and was equipped with the latest facilities. The audience of this theater mainly comprised young intellectuals. This theater was also the center of the new theater movement, staging a series of foreign plays. This paper will focus on the performances outside of the Tsukiji Little Theater, that is, regional performances, to reconsider the diverse activities of this theater as a theater company and its influence. Many previous studies on Tsukiji Little Theater have been conducted. However, the actual situation of performances outside the theater, especially in regional areas, has not been sufficiently clarified. Thus, research on the attempts of the troupe to expand its audience nationwide can still be conducted. This paper aims to provide an overview of the external theater performances of the troupe considering the Hiroshima performance as regional performances. Specifically, this paper shows that the Tsukiji Little Theater’s attempts to expand its audience base as a theater company, starting with its performances at the Kotobuki-za Theater in Hiroshima City. The Hiroshima performance was the catalyst that prompted Haruko Sugimura to join Tsukiji Little Theater, and a local new theater company called Juichinin-za supported the theater by hosting a roundtable discussion. Hiroshima is well known as the city where the atomic bomb dropped in World War II in 1945. As symbolic damage in Japanese theater, Sadao Maruyama, who had been an actor at the Tsukiji Little Theater, had just toured Hiroshima in 1945 as part of a wartime theater unit and lost his life in the atomic bombing. This tragedy was described in a play by Hisashi Inoue after the war and is still often performed today. In brief, this paper will attempt to reconsider the context of performing arts by focusing on the relationship between Tsukiji Little Theater and Hiroshima.
https://ror.org/00ntfnx83 
