Tomohiro Maekawa | Sampo suru shinryakusha (Strolling Invader)

Tomohiro Maekawa

Playwright and director Tomohiro Maekawa was born in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, in 1974. After graduating with a in philosophy from Toyo University, he founded his theater company and the base for his activities, Ikiume, in 2003. His unique style incorporating elements of science fiction, philosophy, and the occult has attracted much attention and acclaim.
Internationally, productions of his work are increasing. Maekawa’s work was performed in Seoul by Korean actors, first in 2019 with Strolling Invader, followed by The Sun in 2021. When The Sun was then restaged at the National Jeongdong Theater in 2023, a dance piece of the same name was also performed.
In 2021, Ikiume staged À la marge in Paris to critical acclaim. In recent years, his plays continue to be published in a variety of languages, including French, Korean, Spanish, English, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.
Maekawa has won several prizes in Japan, most recently the Excellence Award at the 31st Yomiuri Theater Awards for To Deliver a Soul, which was staged in 2023. (Updated April 2024)

There is a girl named Akira Tachibana who has been asleep for five days in Dr. Kurumada’s clinic. She is the only survivor of a family that was cruelly murdered by an old woman. This girl Akira has the same kind of symptoms as Shinji. It doesn’t appear to be a loss of memory, but she has lost the sense of family and friends and thus appears somehow different from normal human beings.

Even after being rescued from his initial 3-day “stroll, “ Shinji’s compulsion to go on walks only escalates. He claims that he is simply strolling and talking with the people that he meets along the way, but it turns out that the people he has had friendly conversations with on his walks end up losing certain concepts like “blood relations,” “ownership” and “prohibited,” and as result they begin to act in problematic ways. Shinji’s strolls have brought on an epidemic of “concept loss” in this small town.

In fact, both Shinji and Akira have become possessed by an alien that is researching human though patterns and emotions and are using their findings in preparation for an invasion to take over planet Earth. This alien is using the people close to the ones it possesses as “guides” to expand the group of research “subjects” in a safe, undetected manner. And interestingly, as Shinji steals concepts from the people he converses with, he becomes more and more human in nature.

It appears that there is a military base of one of the country’s allies in this small town. There is increasing military tension with a country across the sea and from time to time misguided missiles fly over the harbor, all contributing to the spread of the concept of “war” throughout the town.

Through this all, the alien has continued to collect people’s concepts in Shinji and is preparing to return to its home planet, an act that would presumably mean the end of Shinji’s bodily functioning, and thus death. Sensing this coming departure of her husband, whom she has come to love more than before as the alien’s manipulations have changed his character, Narumi—who has faithfully fulfilled her duties as a “guide” up until this point—makes one last request of Shinji. She begs that he steal her concept of “love” before he goes. When he does so and learns of the existence of the concept of love, Shinji is deeply moved and troubled.

Finally, Narumi begs Shinji to tell her what concept should be stolen from people to prevent war. Is it “nation” or “possessions” or the “race” or “religion”?