Theater Review: "The Unicorn's Sixth Sense" (Written by Hotaka Kawai, Directed by Mami Koshigaya) (Inryo-ji Temple, Okayama City)

Ryuji Seki (Member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan, Art Critic)

"The Unicorn's Sixth Sense" was performed at Inryo-ji Temple in Okayama City from Friday, January 30, to Sunday, February 1, 2026. Following the release of "Spring Gene" (2018), this was an ambitious and intellectually stimulating production directed by Mami Koshigaya (Yamanote Jijosha) based on a new play by Hotaka Kawai, currently the most energetic playwright active today. It is the story of a married couple: the husband, who gained an immortal body after receiving a vaccine of Motodoriganea—an artificial cell that purifies cellular waste and repairs errors—and the wife, who suffers from "mermaid disease," a condition that causes a loss of consciousness. The doctor at the research institute suggests: Why not extract your wife's past memories and transplant them into a new body?

It was a work that made one think about the various ways of living. The world is set 200 years from now (around 2200?). Humanity seems to have manipulated the genes of plants and animals to create humanoids to serve them. The humanoid plant "Gekka-bijin" (Queen of the Night), created from plant genes, has a lifespan of five years, but because it shares memories inherited from its clone peers, it says its own death is not a serious matter. Furthermore, the humanoid animal "Dolphin," which senses the faint sound waves emitted by the human body to read memories, lives much longer than other organisms but undergoes operations to periodically erase its memories. This is because if you "keep inputting the memories of various people," you "no longer know where your own memories end and where others' begin."
Until now, Hotaka Kawai's scripts have focused on genes, the human body, and humans as a species, attempting to deconstruct the human body biologically and through genetic engineering. This time, however, he focuses on the aspect of human memory, posing a sharp question about the continuity and homeostasis of the individual. The Dolphin's statement reminds one of the story of young people who, after reading Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (1774), became so emotionally attached to the fictional character Werther that they committed suicide. Perhaps literary language, or the sharing of language and memory, has the effect of blurring the boundaries between oneself and others (and perhaps that is what we call literary).

This production may also share the same theme as Gabriel García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967). The writer Milan Kundera described "One Hundred Years of Solitude" as a family novel based on reproduction, characterizing the characters appearing in it as a long, interchangeable procession. "If my life continues beyond my own life, it means my life is not an independent entity. Our lives are incomplete... (If) the individual agrees to dissolve, to dissolve and be forgotten... then the individual as the 'basic unit of all things' is nothing more than an illusion, a gamble, a dream of several centuries of Europe." (Milan Kundera, "Encounter: Essays on Literature and Art" [Kawade Bunko], p. 58)
The theme that appears repeatedly in "The Unicorn's Sixth Sense"—the continuity and discontinuity of the individual—carries a heavy weight in that it sharply questions the reasons for the existence of modern novels, or of us modern people who can no longer live with a sense of narrative (Ulrich Beck). It goes without saying that Mr. Kawai's extensive knowledge and medical insights lie behind this. (Personally, I was also reminded of the RSK Evening News segment "Uta-san, a Nurse Supporting Life on a Remote Island: Teshima 8 Years Later" [July 26, 2023], which is available to view on YouTube.)

This work is the final part of a trilogy that continued with "Mermaid's Organ," "Drifting Hippocampus," and "The Unicorn's Sixth Sense." It was impressive how Mami Koshigaya's direction finished the quiet and contemplative script of Hotaka Kawai with a palpable, visceral touch, without compromising its tone. (Her comment during the after-talk, "I directed it with the thought that I must not depict it as a human living in the Reiwa era," also left an impression.) It is understandable that there was a comment about "if there were an opportunity to perform the trilogy all at once."
Mr. Kawai says, "For me, writing a play is like a journey. I travel to unknown lands and record the events that occur there." (Performance pamphlet) I am very much looking forward to seeing what unknown continents Mr. Kawai and the theater company OTO, which organized the trilogy performances, will take us to in the future. (February 5, 2026)

Documentary photography: yukiwo