Ikebukuro boasts Tokyo's second-busiest rail station after Shinjuku, and until recently it was just a transport hub people passed through between their jobs in the city and homes in suburbs to the north.

Latterly, though, things have been changing in this once nondescript, somewhat seedy heart of Toshima Ward — with unusually, perhaps uniquely, theater in the vanguard.

It all started in 2009, when Japan's biggest live-performance event, Festival/Tokyo, was launched at numerous venues there. That year, too, the renowned contemporary dramatist Hideki Noda was appointed as artistic director to run Tokyo Metropolitan Art Theatre — just across a small park outside the station — in place of career bureaucrats.