Paper short abstract:

The paper will focus on an analysis of Setoyama Misaki's Invisible Clouds (Mienai kumo, 2014) and scrutinize how central problems of contemporary Japanese society are addressed from a global perspective.

Paper long abstract:

In the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 disasters an immediate and ever increasing output of post-Fukushima theatre productions could be observed. While there was a strong focus on documentary, only few playwrights made use of fiction or tried to address some basic problems of contemporary Japanese society as revealed by the disaster. Setoyama Misaki's Invisible Clouds (Mienai kumo, 2014) is an interesting case in point. The promising Japanese playwright and director, who was born in 1977, raises the question of individual responsibility and hints at the global dimension of the nuclear disaster by putting 'Fukushima' in a Post-Chernobyl context. The play is an adaptation of The Cloud (Die Wolke, 1987), a best-selling youth novel written by Gudrun Pausewang (b. 1928) in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster when large parts of Europe were threatened by nuclear fallout. The story unfolds around a young girl escaping from the radiation released by a similar disaster in Germany. Setoyama introduces the character of a Japanese playwright who happened to read Pausewang's novel as a youth and now, after the March 11 disasters, travels to Germany to have an interview with the author. Apparently, the additional character is an alter ego of Setoyama being known for her interest in staging reality and developing her plays based on meticulous research and in-depth interviews with the people concerned. I will argue that, while the geographical distance between Europe and Japan facilitates audiences' critical engagement with the delicate subject, the Japanese figure in the story links the nuclear disasters of Fukushima and Chernobyl and brings the message home.