An autumn night. As I gaze up at the moon, a man calls out to me. Invited along, I begin down the straight night road that was once a railway, guided by moonlight. Bit by bit, the poet begins to tell the legend of “Cat Town” passed down in this city.
They say that somewhere in this city lies an abandoned railway. Night after night, certain figures walk that line, patrolling for anomalies. In the dark, they glow pale blue — like “blue cats.”
Listening to the poet’s voice, matching the rhythm of his steps, my vision begins to overlap with his gaze. Memories and illusions belonging to no one appear, and among the crowd, the presence of pale glowing figures comes into view.
Am I seeing this by my own will?
Or am I, without knowing, being shown?
Wrapped in the anxiety of nearly losing our way, we arrive at a strange station. Down the stairs, around an old railway deep underground, blue glowing figures walk on in silence — like a colony of cats lurking in the shadow of the city. Watching them, I realize:
I, too, have walked that line — at the same pace, in the same direction. Without noticing, I had stepped into the current of things no longer human.
“The unseen begins to reveal itself.”
An urban immersive theater
About the Original ── Hagiwara Sakutarō and “Nekomachi”
Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886–1942) is the father of modern Japanese poetry, best known for “Howling at the Moon.” In his final years he lived in Setagaya-Daita — just steps from where this performance ends.
What Sakutarō depicted in “Nekomachi” was not the terror of straying into another world, but the quiet horror of walking in the same direction as everyone else and becoming, unnoticed, part of that order. This work overlays his “unconscious transformation” onto our present — days guided by AI and algorithms, drifting without knowing. Is it truly the town that is changing, or you yourself?
*This is an original production created in homage to Hagiwara Sakutarō’s short story “Nekomachi” (1935).
