Transformations Existential and Aesthetic: Okada Toshiki and His Post-3/11 Work

The epically tragic earthquake-tsunami that hit Japan's Northeast on 11 March 2011, inflicted profound physical destruction and psychological angst, and resulted in changes nationwide, including on the world of performance. Okada Toshiki, among Japan's leading contemporary playwright-directors, was also influenced. This essay examines the nature of those changes in his life and plays after 3/11. John K. Gillespie is a trans-Pacific, intercultural business consultant with a deep interest in modern Japanese theatre. He is coauthor, with Robert T. Rolf, of Alternative Japanese Drama: Ten Plays (1992), edited the modern Japanese theatre section of the Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre (2007), and contributed the chapter on modern Japanese theatre to the Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre (2016).
What does it mean to live in that society without really living it? --Okada The cataclysm that struckJapan's Tohoku (northeast) region on 11 March 2011, an earthquake of 9.1 magnitude, [...]