Staging famous Western works, or those from well-known foreign playwrights, is an established feature of contemporary theater in Japan, with Japanese dramatists often adapting or reworking plays so they resonate more with domestic audiences.

One such accomplished adaptation currently running in Tokyo is "Minatomachi Junjo Othello" ("A Simple Othello in a Port Town"), based, of course, on William Shakespeare's love-tragedy "Othello: The Moor of Venice." Reworked for the Japanese audience, the basic plot remains the same but the characterizations of protagonists and many of their lines are new.

Presented by Gekidan☆Shinkansen, a company that has been noted by critics for both its financial and artistic success since the late 1980s, this modernization of "Othello" — which has just played to full houses in Osaka for a week — recasts the play's eponymous medieval North African general as a prewar yakuza boss in Kobe.