Kubota Mantaroh's play Ohdera Gakkoh was published in 1927, and was first performed at the Tsukiji Little Theater in the following year.

It received widespread critical acclaim at the time and has continued to be regarded as a masterpiece to this day. The purpose of this thesis is to throw light on how Ohdera Gakkoh came to achieve such high regard.

Specifically, through a study of Ohdera Gakkoh, I have established that the play's critical history was distorted and biased. I have also analyzed the contemporaneous discourse and research history surrounding the Tsukiji Little Theater. This has resulted in two new findings: firstly, that underlying the evaluation of Ohdera Gakkoh was the influence of a perspective which conflated Kubota Mantaroh and Chekhov, and secondly, that there was an intermediating normative consciousness that dismissed Chekhov as outdated. The present study also shows that the uncritical acceptance of this settled interpretation led to a limited, merely one-dimensional understanding of Ohdera Gakkoh and the writer Kubota Mantaroh.