Good-Bye

World War II is over and Japan has lost.

One of Japan’s foremost experimental theatre companies presents GOOD-BYE, based on the 1949 work of popular Japanese novelist, Osamu Dazai, (No Longer Human), and a collage of his later works. Dazai committed suicide before finishing GOOD-BYE.

As a man plans his death, he meets with friends and past lovers to say goodbye with a beautiful and exhilarating farewell. In a feverish story filled with lightness, brightness and peppered with macabre humour, he relives his life as a student, after university and during and after the war.

Set in a bar, accompanied live by the Japanese rock band Kukangendai, where everyone gets increasingly drunk, the piece addresses the struggle to identify what it was, and now is, to be Japanese.

‘Dazai’s final novel is totally relevant because we still haven’t resolved losing the war. In Good-bye traditional culture sits shoulder to shoulder with globalisation and Americanisation, reflecting the thought processes of contemporary Japan from the kimono to rock and roll.’ – Motoi Miura

Presented in Japanese with English subtitles