| has gloss | eng: (also rendered shimpa) is a form of theater and cinema in Japan usually featuring melodramatic stories. Its roots can be traced to a form of agitation propaganda theater in the 1880s promoted by Liberal Party members Sadanori Sudo and Otojirō Kawakami. It eventually earned the name "shinpa" (literally meaning "new school") to contrast it from "kyūha" ("old school" or kabuki) due its more contemporary and realistic stories. Some shinpa stage actors like Masao Inoue were heavily involved in film and a form called rensageki or literally "chain drama" appeared which mixed cinema and theater on stage. With the rise of the reformist Pure Film Movement in the 1910s, which strongly criticized shinpa films for their melodramatic tales of women suffering from the strictures of class and social prejudice, films about contemporary subjects eventually were called gendaigeki in opposition to jidaigeki by the 1920s, even though shinpa stories continued to be made into film for decades to come. In Japan, the troupe Gekidan Shinpa still continues to perform, taking advantage especially of the involvement of kabuki actors. |