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These characteristics are commonly observed in Japanese traditional performing arts, and have been considered an important aspect of performance up until the present day. One wonders, however, whether they are uniquely Japanese. In this chapter, the author will attempt to answer this question by comparing the work of Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), a symbolist writer whom the author has been researching for many years, with plays written by Japanese writers who were influenced by Maeterlinck at the time they wrote their works. As a place where living human beings perform in the flesh in front of a live audience, the theater presents a world of fiction and fantasy using drama as a medium but at the same time always conveys a sense of the here-and-now, no matter how many years previous the drama was written.

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-59194-4_8

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