“Big in Japan” consists of five linked stories. The question they pose individually and together is this: “Is it worth living the way I do, and if not, does the solution lie in giving up or fighting to change my life?”. The play is inspired by five extreme social phenomena encountered in contemporary Japan, in which desperate people reach the end of their tether and give up on life. But though the phenomena in question may seem foreign and extreme, we realize that their underlying causes exist in and plague every modern society as the entire world navigates a period of intense chaos and apparent futility. Which is why, while the characters may seem like specific individuals at first, we quickly identify them as people who live around us, nearby, within us. They express that part of ourselves which often finds itself trapped and despairing, which is exhausted from its efforts to cope with the demands placed on it, which feels the need to give up and withdraw completely.