As a member of the
Shingeki ("new theatre") movement, Fukuda's early works adopted a
socialist realist stance, as reflected in plays such as
Long Rows of the Gravestones, which dramatized the Kawai Eijiro incident of 1938, in which a liberal professor had his books banned, and which had left a profound impression on Fukuda's mentor Kinoshita when he was a student. Another early play in this mode was
Oppekepe, which dramatized the struggle of the
Freedom and People's Rights Movement during the
Meiji period and received the National Arts Festival's Encouragement Award (奨励賞) in 1958. From 1959 to 1960, virtually the entire Shingeki movement was mobilized to take part in the massive
Anpo protests against revision of the
U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (known as "Anpo" in Japanese), under the auspices of an umbrella organization called the Shingeki Workers Association (新劇人会議
Shingekijin Kaigi). However, many younger members of the movement, including Fukuda, sympathized with the student radicals in the
Zengakuren student federation and were extremely disappointed that the Shingeki Association enforced strict conformity to the passive and ineffectual protest policies of the Japan Communist Party, even after right-wing counter-protesters brutally attacked Shingeki members during a protest march at the
National Diet on 15 June 1960, resulting in 80 members being injured. Although discontent had been building throughout the 1950s, the radicalizing experience of the Anpo Protests helped convince Fukuda and other younger Shingeki members to break away and found their own theater troupes, where they could experiment with much more radical forms of theater. In 1960, Fukuda became one of the founders, along with noh actor
Hideo Kanze, composer
Hikaru Hayashi, and 20 actors from the third graduating class of Mingei's training program, of the new Seinen Geijutsu Gekijō ("Youth Art Theater"), abbreviated Seigei. Immediately following the Anpo Protests, Seigei staged a play written by Fukuda called
Record Number 1, which is often cited as the first play in the newly emerging
Angura ("underground") theatre movement in Japan.
Record Number 1 was extremely unorthodox and experimental, blurring the lines between reality and play and breaking the
fourth wall. In this play, the actors of Seigei expressed their emotions and frustration around their experiences in the recently concluded Anpo protests. Historian of Japanese theater David G. Goodman has called
Record Number 1 “a pivotal moment in the history of the modern Japanese theater movement,” one that “challenged every aspect of the Shingeki orthodoxy.” A large number of Angura directors and playwrights worked with Seigei and Fukuda in the early 1960s, including
Jūrō Kara,
Makoto Satō, and
Minoru Betsuyaku. They then went on to found their own experimental theater troupes later in the 1960s. Fukuda's next major play was
Brave Records of the Sanada Clan (
Sanada fuunroku), an account of
Sanada Yukimura's doomed defense of
Osaka Castle in 1615 which straddled a fine line between honoring and mocking his earlier works valorizing social struggle by turning it into a musical. First staged as a play in 1962, the work was
released as a film the following year, proving to be a box office bomb, but achieving
cult film status in later years. The original play was nominated for the
Kishida Prize for Drama, but did not win. Perhaps Fukuda's most famous play is
Find Hakamadare! (
Hakamadare wa doko da), which was staged by Seigei in 1964. In this satyrical play, a group of medieval peasants search for a Robin Hood-like figure called "Hakamadare" to lead them in their struggles, but when the finally find him and he turns out to be a self-serving villain, they kill him and establish their own government.
Find Hakamadare! was awarded the Kishida Prize for Drama, but Fukuda turned it down due to past conflicts with some of the judges. ==Later life and death==