Themes of Town, River and Sea in SHIMIZU Kunio's Plays around 1970

Abstract

SHIMIZU Kunio's plays, which were staged in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, have been discussed always with special reference to their political contexts. The present paper, however, takes a thematic approach to the plays, leaving off the political background of them. Imageries of town, river and sea will be taken up and examined as dominant themes of those plays, which, we argue, represent, and at the same time protest against, the contemporary controlled society.