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.

Kokumin Engeki which means the National Theater was a popular concept with journalism, the academy, and the goverment, in Japan under WWII. We associate Kokumin Engeki with Japanese wartime nationalism and fascism. The government promoted the Kokumin Engeki contest from 1941 to 1944, but it is the strangest thing that the some plays of national policy were rejected or defeated. As a matter of fact, the state powers and academic authorities didn't have the distinct concept of Kokumin Engeki. This thesis is about the confusion of the Kokumin Engeki contest as seen in the participating plays of FURUKAWA ROPPA's company and his diary.