Inside Japan Selection
daisydoze — Cat Town – Immersive Theatre

The production was inspired by the 1935 short story of the same title, Cat Town, by Japanese poet Sakutarō Hagiwara. The production was staged in Tokyo’s Shimokitazawa area, a neighbourhood closely associated with the writer. It invites audiences to retrace the steps of Hagiwara himself, who is known to have taken daily walks in the area.
The experience begins as the audience puts on headphones and follows the simple instructions on the app. Guided by the voice of an unnamed poet, never explicitly identified as Hagiwara, they leave the train station and enter the shopping streets. Throughout the journey, participants encounter a series of hidden instructions. For example, they are told to walk backwards, so it feels like they are getting further away from the real world. People may be asked to crouch or stand upon the edge of a flower bed. As these physical actions combine with the sounds from the headphones and the surrounding views, the participants start to feel a certain presence.
Eventually, performers resembling cats appear among the streets. Without fully realising how it has happened, participants find themselves entering the fictional Cat Town, a place inhabited by people who have transformed into cats. By the end of the performance, participants feel as though they too have become something other than human.

Two key qualities define the production: its uniquely immersive experience and the message it brings to the audience.

The headphones are fundamental to the production’s immersive quality. Using binaural recording techniques that replicate the way human ears perceive sound, participants can hear someone whispering in their ear, or sense someone passing by. Even the rustling leaves can be rendered with extraordinary precision. It can even create the sensation of hearing something particularly clearly because you are concentrating on it, or play the music so faintly it feels as though it’s just playing in your mind. These carefully constructed soundscapes bring to life a world that is not quite our own, enabling participants to discover traces of another world embedded within ordinary reality.
Equally important is the intimacy of the performance. Each performer interacts with only around four participants at a time, creating an unusually personal encounter. At the same time, the production remains fundamentally open because it unfolds in an actual city. For example, in one scene, a performer playing a cat directs the audience from a rooftop while unsuspecting pedestrians continue their daily routines below. The pedestrians become part of the performance, but from their point of view, the performers and headphone-wearing spectators are the ones in the production. The audience also sees themselves as part of the story. This unique multi-perspective can be achieved because it is an immersive production set in the city.

Hagiwara wrote Cat Town in 1935, shortly before Japan entered the Second World War.
daisydoze interprets the story as an allegory for the unsettling way societies can drift collectively toward dangerous futures without fully recognising the transformation taking place. The cats in the story represent the silent transition. There are striking parallels between then and the present, where artificial intelligence increasingly makes decisions on behalf of individuals and algorithmic systems quietly homogenise values and behaviour. Through the experience of Cat Town, participants encounter a world where everyday reality imperceptibly becomes a different world, and they are transformed without noticing.

The production is based heavily on sensing things that are invisible, or not obvious. Rather than relying solely upon narrative, daisydoze evokes this worldview by directing the audience’s senses a certain way. The costumes designed by Kondo and the silent dancers create a mystical presence within everyday reality. By the time audiences return to everyday life, they will realise that reality itself is layered, and that the invisible coexists with the visible. This seamless movement between reality and non-reality is not simply the result of immersive theatre techniques; it is a defining characteristic of daisydoze’s artistic vision.
Creative producer Kondo explains:
“Participants will encounter a world that is unnerving, yet beautiful, and they will be relieved to return to reality. We hope that some of the moments in the show will be overwhelming. People could lose their sense of self, or there may be a lingering fear after what has happened.”

For daisydoze, every production begins with the location. The company researches the buildings, landscape, and how people live in each location before creating a work that allows these realities to overlap with fiction. Even if it’s the same work, the production changes depending on the audience’s route and where the key locations are. Each version becomes a localised work shaped by the atmosphere, history, and culture of its surroundings.

daisydoze was founded in 2018 by writer-director Yui Takeshima and Creative Producer Kaori Kondo, united by the ambition to become the pioneer for immersive theatre in Japan.
Having worked in dance for over fifteen years, Kondo believed immersive theatre offered Japanese dancers an entirely new opportunity to gain international recognition. Takeshima previously worked in musical theatre and has since developed an interdisciplinary practice combining architecture, traditional Japanese performing arts, and immersive experiences. In June 2026, she received the Grand Prize at the Festival des Architectures Vives in Montpellier for her work combining architecture, Noh theatre, and immersive performance.

To date, the company has created nine immersive productions. Its first work, Shadows of the Flower, explored Tokyo’s historic geisha district in Asakusa, combining traditional geisha culture with street dance and staging scenes inside actual practice rooms used by geishas. Anima transformed a twenty-six-room hotel into an immersive environment for small audiences of thirty people at a time.
Over the past two years, daisydoze has focused on combining audio with physical performance to develop its distinctive “city × immersive theatre” format. The 2025 production The Letters began outside PARCO in central Shibuya before leading audiences across the famous Scramble Crossing to one of Japan’s oldest rock cafés where the story reached its turning point. Its companion work, The Silk Town, presented an entirely performer-free immersive experience built solely through sound and installation art. Positive feedback came from participants, with many stating that they saw the town differently after the experience, and felt a stronger emotional attachment to it.

In creating these otherworldly scenes, dancers play a vital role. Instead of relying on spoken dialogue, the dancers create a dramatic impact on them by performing closely to the participants. With their ambiguity, they allow audiences to interpret meaning for themselves. Sometimes the dancers pass close enough to brush against participants’ hair, a technique used to bring them into the fictional world.
Costumes designed by Kondo contribute equally to the atmosphere. Viewed up close, the costumes reveal subtle distortions and unexpected details, which deepens the production’s imaginary quality.

Each new work begins with approximately six months of research into the chosen location’s history and memory. Walking the streets is an essential part of the creative process. Script, choreography, and binaural sound are then woven together to create the sensation of unintentionally entering a dream, a hidden world existing just beneath everyday life.