Abstract

The year 2015 saw the advent of a simulation game serial, Touken Ranbu, that depicted the adventures of sword-turned-human warriors. The game has garnered positive reviews from gaming enthusiasts, but scholars have also been cautiously interested in this popularity. In general, the academic research is conducted from the perspectives of cultural anthropology and history. Reminded of Japan’s WWII militarism, some scholars perceive swords or touken as an enduring symbol of that aggressive militarism. In contrast, however, Japanese youth who are growing up in a relatively peaceful society are not military minded and genuinely enjoy gaming in virtual reality. In this vein, the 2023 kabuki remix of the game serial deserves critical attention from a scholarly perspective. Young kabuki actors created an unexampled theatrical synthesis of apparent opposites, i.e., video games and a live-action kabuki. From a case study perspective, this paper examines this kabuki remix’s contribution to a fresh outlook on a human imagination that can interact with human reality. Considering the protagonists are human-shaped objects (swords), Bruno Latour’s concept of actants is instrumental because these actants can be both human and nonhuman. This study posits that humanoid swords as protagonists are nonhuman actants and analyzes them in terms of thinghood, which serves as the primary theme. Additionally, it employs secondary themes: the linguistic-philosophical concept of performativity and the theatrical concept of ambivalence. They all interact not within the framework of social relations in real life but in those of virtual reality.