Gekidan Buraiha

One of the most mythical and sought-after albums to come out Japan in the 1970’s! Modern Bible is monster of an acid folk album confronting the legacy of colonial rule, consumerism, and an overall sense of powerlessness shared among students in the mid-1970s in the wake of the ’68 revolution. Gekidan Buraiha was a theater company, a part of the so-called Angura scene (an abbreviation of the Japanese pronunciation of “underground”) that included notable troupes such as Tenjo Sajiki, led by writer and film director Shuji Terayama (Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets) and Jokyo Gekijo, let by actor and playwriter Juro Kara (more known outside of Japan for his role in Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Thief).

Gekidan Buraiha began through the eorts of its main actor Kanna Ten and his friends, who were all members of the same theater workshop at Kokugakuin University. Although the troupe was only active between 1974 and 1976, they staged two highly rated performances, I Saw the Rose of Destruction Last Night and The Commandment of Evil. Originally made in 1975 and limited to only 100 copies, Modern Bible was only distributed to other theater companies and their cohorts and is now considered a holy grail by record collectors around the world. The album features 11 songs from their two plays, as well as two previously unrecorded songs by the aforementioned Juro Kara.

Reissued on CD/LP for the very first time with never-seen-before archival photos and new liner notes by subculture researcher and music writer Takeo Udagawa in both English and Japanese. The reissue also includes an English translation of the lyrics. The LP versions includes a 12-page booklet and the CD version includes two 8-panel poster folds. Audio restoration and mastering by five-time Grammy Award-winning engineer Michael Graves.