Staging the climate of postwar Japan: Kubo Sakae's Nihon no kishō

Published and staged in 1953, The climate of Japan (Nihon no kishō) by Kubo Sakae (1900- 1958) is an ambitious and complex work in which Kubo describes the early postwar years in allegori- cal terms and addresses many of the issues of the day through a group of characters working in or associated with a meteorological observatory. However, compared with his previous works Land of volcanic ash (1937-38), which is still considered Kubo’s masterpiece, and The apple orchard diary (1948), this play has received little scholarly attention. In this paper, I help to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the genealogy and structure of this play, discussing in particular its status as a manifestation of the conception of realism that Kubo developed in the late 1930s and refined in the postwar years. I further show that the themes under- lying the play – the struggle of the members of the scientific intelligentsia to secure support for their research as well as to face their war responsibilities – are informed by the notion, adopted by Kubo soon after the war, that the freedom now being enjoyed by the Japanese people had not been won but merely bestowed upon them by the Occupation forces.