Until Japan was opened to the West in the mid-19th century, its theater culture mainly comprised traditional forms such as kabuki, comic kyōgen, bunraku (puppet theater) and noh.
Afterward, once European acting styles were thrown into the mix, there emerged a theater genre known as shingeki (new theater), which continues to this day.
What set shingeki apart was its reliance on original works — rather than reverential stagings of age-old ones — and the great emphasis put on the playwright's intentions regardless of commercial temptations.