In this chapter I trace the history of a network of movements originating in the small mountain village of Kangawa, near Ueda City, in the 1920s and 1930s. The first of these was the Peasant Art Movement, a project developed by artist Yamamoto Kanae and others from 1919 onward to promote local prosperity by encouraging handicraft production. This was closely linked to the Free Drawing Movement, in which Yamamoto also played a central role: a project to promote individuality and creativity through children’s art education. A third significant movement originating in Kangawa was the Free University, in which a central figure was philosopher Tsuchida Kyōson. Free Universities, created in Ueda and later in other parts of Japan, aimed to provide adult education to farmers and others, enabling them to acquire the intellectual autonomy needed to be active citizens in a democratizing society. The chapter examines the connection between these activities and the ambiguous role of Youth Groups (Seinendan) in rural Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. It also discusses the suppression of the Free University movement in the context of rising militarism, and the legacies of the movement for postwar Japan.

The second ’half’, as identified in this book, of Stanislavsky’s artistic enterprise sees him insistently separating art – thus theatre – from politics in the decades after 1917 in which political engagement and political misalignment were matters of life and death. This chapter puts paid to the myths that Stanislavsky was politically naïve and incompetent and as well administratively incompetent. Such biased but reproduced ‘received wisdom’ has failed to acknowledge the actual complexities of the MAT’s struggles to survive the onslaughts of continuing brutal change, particularly of the later 1920s and well into the 1930s during which Stanislavsky was obliged by moral imperatives together with political subterfuges to protect his life’s work. Doing so meant entering into correspondence with Stalin, also to argue against decisions made by his totalitarian leadership concerning the theatre. Most notable was Stanislavsky’s unassuming but well understood protection of Meyerhold and Shostakovich.

Meyerhold’s theatre trajectory is juxtaposed against those of the Proletkult, the Blue Blouse groups, Agitprop and TRAM, highlighting Meyerhold’s theatre innovations while pointing out how the MAT managed its compromises until state co-option triumphed and left Stanislavsky continuing valuable research outside his own edifice but in his last studios.