KINOSHITA Junji seems to have become interested in Okinawa in 1960, fifteen years after the end of World War II, when he co-created the

, Okinawa, for the first China tour of the Shingeki theatre troupe, “Nihon Shingeki Dan.” The work presents an Okinawan woman named NAMIHIRA Hide, who kills a former sergeant of the Japanese Army, YAMANO Takekichi, by cutting the rope he holds onto. She thus severs what Japan's past has been burdened with and she, as an Okinawan, throws herself to death from the cliff. Kinoshita completed the play in 1963 by confronting the issue of Okinawa within Mainland Japan without visiting Okinawa. What made him create a drama of alienation (à la Brecht) that was beyond his own theory of drama is firstly a kind of refracted double structure; he “looks at Okinawa through the eyes of Noboru JABANA, while being looked at by the same eyes in turn.” This was caused by Kinoshita's sympathy with the life of Jabana, one of the intelligentsia in the Meiji Era. And secondly, a realistic impact of dissolution of his theatre company, “Budo no Kai”. Accordingly, the alienation effect in this play is produced by placing “Okinawa” as the object of the drama.

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Since the mid-1920s, agitprop troupes were established in Japan under the influence of the Russian Revolution and the international socialist movement. Performances took place not only in theatres but also in public spaces such as factory grounds, where the agitprop troupes performed critical social sketches for workers who hardly went to the theatre.

Among these Japanese agitprop troupes, the “Mezamashi-Tai (Alarm clock troupe)” was especially remarkable. The Japanese actor Koreya Senda, who had studied and worked in an agitprop troupe in Germany from 1927 to 1931, became a troupe member in 1932 and promoted its development according to his experiences in Germany. The performances of the troupe included montages of short dramatic pieces,

and musical pieces. The troupe also performed in front of regular audiences. Their performances created a new theatrical genre. They were simply constructed and the agitprop effect was preferred to artistic perfection. The Mezamashi-Tai became very popular, but it had to close its operations in 1934 under the pressure of the national security law. Some of its former members worked in governmental theatre organizations until 1945.

The activities of the “Mezamashi-Tai” have hardly been researched yet because of their political message and of their “non-artistic” form. However, the approach of the Mazamashi-Tai contained elements which in the meantime have become characteristic features of many theatrical performances since the 1970s until today.

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The theory and practice of a chorus in the German contemporary theatre, for example productions of Einar Schleef, have created another model of playing than traditional mimesis. The narrative structure of chorus doesn't represent a certain personality but has a direct influence on the audience. Collectiveness, musicality and narration of chorus emphasize the performativity of theatre, that is to say a co-creativity of actor and audience, rather than the plot. It is an important task for the “productive dramaturgy” of German theatre to collect theoretical and practical results of each topic and to create a unique dramaturgy.

89/90 at Schauspiel Leipzig is a good example of productive dramaturgy by the form of the chorus referring to a way of describing history. The group of singers and the other actors repeatedly express agreement and disagreement , taking on the form a chorus. The chorus embodies anonymous collectiveness on the one hand, and makes the specific personalities visible on the other hand. However, their linguistic, musical and physical narration don't describe the story but conveys and reconstruct the story as a chaotic situation in the historical epoch of 1989/1990. This is neither representation nor re-enactment of historical events. Historical narration of the chorus is narration as a history at the same time.

To sum up, the productive dramaturgy of 89/90 is therefore to transform historical events into the performative space and time by means of the collective narration of the chorus to make a fictional history tangible. This unique function of the chorus in the play can influence further dramaturgy in German theatre.

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