Meijiza Theater

Meijiza Theater is where Hiromi Kadokura’s career ambition and a concealed family history converge. The theater gives her a long-awaited professional achievement: the staging of her work at the first proper theater where she performed. It also becomes a crucial point in the investigation, as the opening-night production provides a plausible reason for both Michiko Oshitani and Tadao Asai to be there—and for Oshitani to recognize a man Hiromi had said was dead.

A theater with personal significance

Hiromi’s connection to Meijiza Theater began before she became a director. Early in her acting career, she had performed in small, makeshift venues; Meijiza was the first proper theater where she appeared. Once she moved into writing and directing, staging a work there became a long-standing ambition. The opportunity had not come for years, making the theater more than a prestigious venue: it represented the return of a professional who had begun there in a modest capacity, now able to present her own direction on its stage.

The production was Love Suicides at Sonezaki: A Reimagining, a high-profile show with a cast of well-known actors. It opened on March 10 and ran through April 30, an unusually long fifty-day engagement for Meijiza. For Hiromi, the first performance was the realization of a dream; for the detectives, its date became a fixed point in reconstructing the movements of people whose lives had been kept apart.

The production and its dramatic structure

The play reworks the story of Ohatsu and Tokubei as a modern murder mystery. Rather than simply presenting the lovers’ suicide, it begins with the discovery of their bodies and follows Tokubei’s friend, a detective, as he investigates the events that led to their deaths. A financial swindle appears to have precipitated the tragedy, with Tokubei killing himself and his lover to establish his innocence. Just as the audience believes the mystery has been resolved, a further, startling version of events emerges.

At the climax, the production returns to the lovers’ deaths. Tokubei’s friend speaks about Ohatsu’s wish to die and Tokubei’s desire to grant what she wanted, while Tokubei kills himself onstage. The curtain falls, followed by thunderous applause. Hiromi watches from the back of the auditorium, unable to see individual audience members but able to tell that they have received the production well. She is poised to leave the control room and congratulate the cast and crew during the curtain calls when police officers arrive to question her.

The play’s layered mystery has a structural echo in the investigation surrounding the theater. Onstage, an apparent explanation is unsettled by another account; offstage, apparently settled facts about a father’s death are reopened by the possibility that he attended his daughter’s performance. The parallel is not proof of a connection between the play’s plot and the case, but it gives the theater’s production a marked role in the novel’s arrangement of revelation and uncertainty.

March 9 and the reunion with Michiko Oshitani

The day before opening night, Hiromi was under considerable pressure. March 9 was the dress rehearsal, her voice was hoarse, and she was perspiring despite the cool conditions. When a staff member interrupted to say that a determined visitor was waiting, Hiromi initially dismissed the request because she had little time. Learning that the visitor was Michiko Oshitani, an old school friend she had not seen for thirty years, changed her response: although she had reason to feel irritated, she found herself calm and agreed to meet her.

They spoke privately in a meeting room in the theater office, so no witness could say what passed between them. Staff did, however, see Hiromi escort Oshitani to the stage door afterward; they described the pair as relaxed and warmly at ease with one another. Their friendly appearance offers no direct account of the conversation, but it establishes that their meeting was not visibly hostile. Oshitani’s visit also places the two former friends at Meijiza immediately before the first performance, a timing that later matters to the investigation.

Opening night as a point of convergence

Kyoichiro Kaga’s reconstruction links the theater’s significance to the separate movements of Tadao and Hiromi. He reasons that Tadao had visited Nihonbashi at intervals to meet his daughter while avoiding public recognition. Meijiza was a particularly meaningful place for them because it was where Hiromi had first performed and where her ambition to direct had finally been fulfilled. Kaga therefore suspects that Tadao attended the opening night, despite the care he and Hiromi had taken to minimize contact.

Kaga also proposes that Oshitani came to the performance. She had stayed overnight at a business hotel in Kayabacho rather than return to Shiga, and, although she apparently did not have a ticket in advance, a limited number were sold on the day of the performance. In Kaga’s account, she bought one and saw Tadao at the theater. The precise moment of recognition remains uncertain: it could have been before the play, during the interval, or afterward. What matters is that Oshitani had known Hiromi’s father and could recognize his face.

The suspected encounter made Hiromi’s account of her father’s death newly troubling. Oshitani had just heard that Tadao had died, supposedly by suicide, yet may have seen him alive at Meijiza. Kaga’s theory is that she confronted Tadao, did not accept his denial that she had recognized him, and thereby threatened the secrecy on which his life depended. The investigation presents this as a reconstruction rather than a witnessed scene, but it makes the theater a hinge between Hiromi’s private history and the case concerning Oshitani.

From professional success to police questioning

Meijiza returns at the investigation’s end as a marker of time and as the setting of a final public appearance. When Kaga explains his theory, the current performance is the last of the fifty-day run, which began on March 10. The date also recalls the night on which he believes Tadao and Oshitani may have crossed paths. A theater schedule that first seemed to be ordinary publicity thus helps the detectives connect a professional event to a hidden family meeting and a later disappearance.

After the final performance, Hiromi stands at the back of the auditorium as the audience applauds. Outside the control room, a group of men is waiting; she recognizes Detective Matsumiya, while Squad Leader Kobayashi identifies himself with his police badge and asks her to accompany them to the station. Hiromi pauses to request a quick word with the cast and crew first. The transition from curtain calls to police questioning gives Meijiza a double function: it is the place where her artistic achievement receives public approval and where the private history behind the investigation finally presses into view.