Three Heroes: Haseyama Toshihiko's Student Play in Wartime Japan

A battlefield report about three Japanese soldiers who deliberately blew themselves to pieces during the 1932 Shanghai War captured the imagination of the Japanese people. The newspaper headlines and subsequent craze inspired playwrights across the country to offer their own renditions of the Three Human Bombs narrative. This article is about the Three Human Bombs phenomenon, told from the perspective of the performing arts and detailed through an introduction and translation of the 1935 juvenile play Three Heroes by Haseyama Toshihiko.