Are there kabuki plays that take up the society of the past thirty years?

Answering this requires looking at what Edo kabuki was. It was, to a striking degree, a theatre of now. A love-suicide or a vendetta that had gripped the city reached the stage within a short span. Because the shogunate restricted the naming of real people, the setting was shifted into the past and names altered — but audiences watched knowing perfectly well which incident was meant. It was something like news, gossip programme and theatre fused into one.

Today that function has passed elsewhere. The media report; other forums debate social questions. As a result, few plays dramatise the events of recent decades directly. But this does not mean kabuki has become detached from the present. Only the mode of absorption has changed.

The main channel now is new kabuki drawn from contemporary sources. Stagings taken from manga, anime and modern fiction are mounted one after another, carrying younger audiences into the theatre. Some see this as a departure from tradition — but the word kabuki comes from kabuku, to tilt: to depart from the ordinary, to be strange. To be unafraid of the outrageous and greedy for new conceits has been kabuki's character since it began. The material changes; the disposition does not.