Bringing the revolution home: Murayama Tomoyoshi, leftist theater, and the Chinese proletariat

This article examines how Murayama Tomoyoshi’s proletarian theater engaged with the socialist revolutionary movement in Republican China (1912–1949) to articulate proletarian solidarity between the Chinese and Japanese working-class and critique Japanese imperialism. Focusing on his two plays set in China, Account of a Violent Gang (1929) and Record of Victory (1931), I argue that Murayama conceptualized the Chinese proletariat not only as dramatic subjects but as mirrors through which Japanese audiences could recognize their own class struggles. Drawing on interviews, translated Chinese sources, and interactions with Chinese exchange students in Japan, Murayama reimagined China not as an exoticized other, but as a site of potential resistance. These two plays, written amid intensifying political repression in Japan, show Murayama using revolutionary China as a dramaturgical method for thinking through collective struggle and political organization. The article situates Murayama’s China plays within the context of broader East Asian proletarian networks and highlights their role in reshaping modern Japanese literature and theater.