The late Meiji Era (1868-1912) to early Showa Era (1926-1989) saw the creation of a body of short, one-act dramas akin in their electrifying impact to the 1960s in Japan, with its upsurge in theatrical experimentation. This book begins with a telling quote from the playwright and director Osanai Kaoru, inveighing his actors to "Forget Kabuki. Ignore tradition. Move, don't dance! Talk, don't sing!"

A BEGGAR'S ART: Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama, 1900-1930, by M. Cody Poulton, University of Hawai'i Press, 2010, 272 pp., $29 (paper)

Influenced by the transgressive dramas of Ibsen and other European contemporaries, Japan's new playwrights, eager to explore the theatrical possibilities of portraying complex relationships on stage, attempted to extricate themselves from the great dramaturgies of Kabuki, Noh and Bunraku, to create content that was more apropos the times. This was no easy task.

The problems of writing scripts ripe with the type of confrontational tensions associated with modern European drama, in a country only in the early stages of absorbing Western ideas and behavioral codes, were manifest. The upheaval required in adapting traditional drama to contemporary realities is inferred when Poulton writes, "The language of modern drama, which posits highly individualized characters struggling for self-realization in conflict with their peers, was alien to the Japanese social sphere."