Skip Navigation  Drama: The Forgotten Genre  Drama: The
Forgotten Genre  Cody Poulton of the University of Victoria
traces the rise and fall of drama as a literary genre in early
20th-century Japan.  By Lorena Olvera  Drama as a literary genre
exercised some of the best minds of the Meiji era  Modern
Japanese drama developed late in the Meiji Period (1868-1912),
but was looked down upon by important critics and often
relegated to publication in print instead of performance.
Eagerness to westernize Japan reached the entertainment industry
when a group of critics who were concerned with Kabuki's
coarseness and failure to represent western ideals asked for the
theater to reform. A new theater emerged and a new literary
genre alongside it, explained Cody Poulton, a Professor at the
University of Victoria, at a colloquium sponsored by the Paul I.
and Hisako Terasaki Center on Feb. 9, 2009.  "Drama as a
literary genre exercised some of the best minds of the Meiji
era," even though many of these playwrights have bee