The Daitoa War: Kabuki's Three War Plays

Abstract

More than 100 new “overnight pickle” (ichiyazuke) war plays were staged on kabuki programs between 1931 and 1945. The themes of these plays invariably supported government war aims and policies. Further, the plays refute the usual description of the kabuki repertory as wholly classical: contemporary events were regularly dramatized on kabuki stages down until 1944-1945. In support of the war, kabuki producers entertained elite government guests, raised war funds to purchase armaments, purged “immoral” plays, gave “morale” (ian or imon) performances to military and industrial audiences. And, most important, they staged newly composed war plays (sensôgeki). Three plays written late in the war are examined here. In Gôda Toku's Honolulu City (Honoruru-shi, 1942), issei and nisei living in Hawaii demonstrate their loyalty to the Japanese Empire by wildly cheering as Pearl Harbor is bombed. A mother in If to the Sea (Umi yukaba, 1943), by Kikuchi Kan, stoically accepts news that her eldest son has died in a naval battle in the Pacific. Ten Thousand Cheers for the South Seas (Nanyô banzai, 1944), a dance play, was written by Kimura Tomiko to propagandize for the government's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Daitoa Kyoei Ken) policy.