Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was an active and brilliant novelist representing the Showa period (1926-1989) who dedicated himself to the idea of pursuing beauty. He was also an excellent playwright and was active in writing and directing both contemporary plays and kabuki, achieving tremendous results in this field. One of Mishima's most highly acclaimed plays, Madame de Sade, is the last in our series "Japanese Drama - To the Present Day", which presents works that must be considered treasures of contemporary theatre. With its shocking subject matter, Mishima's play caused a sensation when it premiered in 1965, and since then various versions of the play have been performed, and received enthusiastically in Japan and in overseas countries.
The setting of the play is politically unstable Paris during the transition from the ostentatious and decadent Rocco period up to the outbreak of the French Revolution. What was the truth that the Marquis de Sade's wife Renée "who indefatigably protected her husband who was imprisoned for sexual practices considered aberrant in light of the morals of the day and suffered to understand him, while coming into fierce conflict with her own mother," finally found when she grew old? In the play, six women appear who have a connection with Marquis de Sade; the man who continues even today to be considered a symbol of immorality and from whom the term "sadism" originated. Renée is depicted as representing chastity; her mother Madame de Montreuil, law, society and morals; Baronesse de Simiane, God; Comtesse de Saint-Fond, carnal desires; Renée's sister Anne, female innocence and lack of principles; and the servant Charlotte, the people. The human relationships that the six characters establish with one another are baffling, as they wage war over the beliefs they hold firmly. Audiences will be able to fully enjoy the refined dialogue and beautiful contrast between the elegant language of the French nobility, who truly embody the Rococo style, and the immoral and carnal desires they express. Herein lies the true value of Mishima's play.
Directing this play and attempting to shed new night on a work which boasts a incomparable level of perfection, will be Kaneshita Tatsuo, who enjoys a reputation for being able to skillfully express the most profound human feelings. One highlight of the play will be to see how the six talented actresses transmit conversations filled with rhetorical flourishes and tension.

Six women stand around a man named Sade. At times he is described by these women as a vicious man, and at other times as an immaculate boy. From their descriptions emerge a confrontation between immorality and chastity. Mishima believed that, "The dramatic climax of shingeki (new theatre) should strictly lie in dialogues, and consist of a confrontation between two contradictory ideas." Madame de Sade is certainly a masterpiece in which this theory is fully developed. Someone once said that within the depths of a person's mind exists the impulse to violate what is forbidden. Mishima's play always provokes such thoughts within our subconscious. In this sense, his play may indeed be suitable for the deadlocked present day.