Chika Engeki / Underground Theater No. 4 — Shuji Terayama et al. Tokyo 1971. First Edition. With Slipcase & Supplement Newspaper.

[PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS]

• Title: 地下演劇 第4号 (Chika Engeki / Underground Theater, No. 4)
• Publisher: Chika Engeki-sha (地下演劇社), Tokyo
• Year Published: 1971 (Showa 46) — First Edition, June 1971
• Key Contributors: Shuji Terayama (寺山修司) and others
• Format: Softcover in slipcase, 21 × 15 × 2.5 cm. Unpaginated. All B&W text, photographs, and illustrations throughout.
• Contents include: 「Homofiktus 20℃ Sengen」 / 「Shuto Homoludens Houan」 / 「Chijou no Densetsu Bungaku Juusanshou」 / 「Keitai Toshi」 / 「Soha-ro Kougun-ki」 / 「Gairo Opera」 / 「Shounen Shoujo Bungaku Zenshuu」 / 「Jinsei Shiron」 / 「Niku no Rippou」 / 「Akahada no Shuto — Daiisshou」, and more.
• Language: Japanese
• Inclusions: Slipcase (present, with staining to rear panel); supplement newspaper Capital Tribune, June 1971 (laid in, small tears.

[OVERVIEW]

June 1971, Tokyo. The student movement has crested and broken. The barricades at Todai have been dismantled. And yet Chika Engeki — Underground Theater — continues to publish, issue by issue, one of the most radical and visually ferocious little magazines in the history of Japanese counterculture. No. 4 is a sustained assault on the senses: a dense, unpaginated accumulation of manifestos, prose poems, theoretical texts, and full-bleed illustrations that refuses every convention of the literary magazine. The cover — a vivid painting of a subterranean bar packed with bodies in motion — gives way to interior spreads of hallucinatory power: a double-page diagram of the 「Keitai Toshi」 (Morphological City), its axes labeled with categories of law, desire, death, and revolution; a full-bleed spread of a demonic figure looming over scattered fetuses; photographs of street performances dissolving into text.

Shuji Terayama — poet, playwright, filmmaker, provocateur, and the presiding genius of Japanese underground culture in the 1960s and 70s — is the gravitational center of this issue. His presence connects Chika Engeki to the broader international network of performance art, Situationist theory, and body politics that defined the radical imagination of the period.

[IMPORTANT NOTE FOR INTERNATIONAL BUYERS: EASY AI TRANSLATION]

While the text is printed in Japanese, you can easily read and study this historic book using modern smartphone AI tools. By taking a photo of any page with your smartphone and using free apps like Google Lens, ChatGPT, or Google Translate, the embedded AI will instantly scan and translate the text on your screen layout. Language is no longer a barrier to owning and enjoying this rare piece of cultural history.

[WHY THIS VOLUME IS A PRIZED COLLECTOR'S ITEM]

1. Shuji Terayama: Terayama (寺山修司, 1935–1983) is one of the most internationally recognized figures of the Japanese avant-garde — a poet, playwright, and filmmaker whose work with Tenjō Sajiki theatre company and his films Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets and Pastoral: To Die in the Country have secured his place in the canon of world experimental culture. Material associated with his work commands serious collector attention in Japan, Europe, and North America.
2. Rarity: Chika Engeki was published in small print runs for a coterie audience and was never distributed through mainstream channels. Individual issues are difficult to find; copies in slipcase are exceptionally rare.
3. Visual & Artistic Value: The illustrations throughout — full-bleed, uncompromising, and executed with the graphic intensity of the best underground press of the period — make this a significant artifact of Japanese counterculture visual art, independently of its textual content.

[CONDITION]

Very Good+ Vintage Condition

• Slipcase: Present. Front and spine strong. Significant staining to rear panel — clearly visible in listing photographs. Does not affect the book.
• Cover: Very Good+. Clean, bright, no tears.
• Binding: Tight and fully intact.
• Interior: Very Good+. Clean throughout. No writing, no stamps, no cut sections. All pages complete.
• Supplement (Capital Tribune newspaper): Present. Small tears consistent with 55-year-old newsprint. Fully legible.
• Please carefully inspect all high-resolution listing photos to verify condition.