Apart from glitzy musicals and kabuki, most theatrical stagings in Japan finish their run after a couple of weeks or even a few days. With no long-run system as the norm, unlike Broadway or the West End, by the time a buzz has got around that something is good, it will almost always have closed or be sold out.
Lucky for us then that "Rokudenashi Takuboku" ("Rascal Takuboku"), which is creating quite a stir, will return to Tokyo next month after its first run here ends this weekend and it goes on the road to Osaka.
Written and directed by box-office- savvy Koki Mitani, 49, "Rokudenashi Takuboku" is, in the words of its creator, "his first erotic-crime suspense." It deals with a fictional love triangle between a Japanese poet, Takuboku Ishikawa (1886-1912), and two characters conjured up by Mitani — Ishikawa's best friend, Tetsu, and Ishikawa's lover, Tomi. This is a rich seam for Mitani to mine, because the real Takuboku is renowned for his hugely popular, outspoken and colloquial poems about the destitution of his daily life before his early death from tuberculosis at age 26.