Fangs Breathing Underground - Wolfshed and the Anti-Surface Artistic Spirit (early 1970s)

Fangs Breathing Underground - Wolfshed and the Anti-Surface Artistic Spirit (early 1970s)
Takadanobaba, Totsuka 4-chome. Around 1970, a small theater was born in the periphery of Tokyo, a mixture of former farming and residential areas. Its name was "Roushya," or "wolf house. As the name suggests, this space, which exudes fangs, caution, loneliness, and obsession, was dug underground rather than above ground. Architecturally and symbolically, it was "a refuge for those who cannot live on the surface.

It was neither a capitalist nor an urban planner who built this wolf house. They were people without college degrees, without theater companies, so to speak, "people who did not deserve a theater or to have a theater. They did not build it because they had money, but "dug the hole for credibility," they say. In these words, the cultural climate of around 1970 oozes out.

Background 1: Underground Theater and Objections to the "System
From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Japan's performing arts were at a turning point. While the shingeki (new theater) system of the Bungakuza and Haiyuza theaters was becoming increasingly rigid, the "Ceiling Pier" of Shuji Terayama and the "Situation Theater" of Juro Karo were expanding their movement to create theater outside the theater, using red tents and mobile stages to travel around the city.

These were called "underground theater," and they attracted audiences with their violent, sexual, and mythological physical expressions and a style that laid bare a sense of discomfort with the everyday. The idea of "not belonging to the theater," "not being part of the system," and "not acting for the state" gave birth to new theatrical spaces such as the underground, tents, and alleyways.

Background 2: The End of the Student Movement and the Culture of "Escape
The student movement, which flared up from 1968 to 1969, gradually waned with the stalling of the 1970 Security Treaty struggle. With the withdrawal from street demonstrations and the dismantling of university student associations, young people began to seek new places "outside" politics. These were "places of expression" such as music, theater, manga, and independent films.

Among these, the "underground" had a strong meaning as a physical and psychological symbol of rebellion. Above ground = surface society = state, law, and order, while underground = heresy, escape, and instinct. The fact that the Wolf House was a "theater built in a hole" was not merely an architectural choice, but an intuitive commentary on the times.

Symbolism of the Wolf House: A Space with Fangs
The name of the theater, "Wolf House," implied "readiness to bite people. It contained the "bestiality" of those who believed in art without flattering the audience or pandering to the media. The man who made it says, "I didn't make it out of passion for the play, I just couldn't betray it.

These words reveal the clumsy sincerity of the youth of the time and the reality of an art form that could only breathe in a corner of the city. The wolfshed was not an institution for art, but a cave for faith and soul.

The Space of the Underground: Silence, Memory, and Resonance
At night, after the play is over and the lights have gone out, the man stands alone on the stage. In the silence, he says, he can hear "the chest-thumping of a wolf in the distant past. This is the memory of a primitive instinct, a "cry" before the system. The subterranean theater was a resonant space where voices that could not be uttered under the roof of civilization could be heard.

Thus, the birth of the underground theater called "wolfshed" was a cultural response to the rift in Japanese society in the early 1970s. There were indeed those who, from the very depths of the earth, were honing their fangs and keeping a watchful eye on the ground, which was dominated by economic growth and a controlled society. And the "hole" they dug continues to flow quietly as a subterranean vein of the Japanese artistic spirit.