The setting is a small harbor town on the Japan Sea coast. When a man named Shinji reappears three days after his sudden disappearance, there has been a decided change in his character. Shinji claims that he was simply out on a stroll and talking with the people that he met along the way, but a series of problematic occurrences are sweeping the town a growing number of its people appear to have suddenly been stripped of a few fundamental concepts including “blood relations,” “ownership” and “prohibited.” It seems that Shinji’s stroll has prompted a strange epidemic in this small town that causes people to lose fundamental concepts. This is a play by theater company Ikiume’s leader, Tomohiro Maekawa, that premiered in 2005.

The Japan-US Friendship Commission (JUSFC) is an independent federal agency founded in 1975 as an initiative stemming from the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty and with a mission of promoting mutual understanding and cultural exchange in the US-Japan relationship through grant programs for institutions. In addition to grants directed toward research and Japanese language study programs at universities and other educational institutions, the Commission also has grant programs for U.S. research in Japan, education, public projects and wide-ranging exchanges in the arts and culture.
As the main grant program in the arts, JUSFC and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) jointly conduct the United States/Japan Creative Artists Residency program, which promotes exchange between artists of the two countries.