Kubo Sakae's Land of Volcanic Ash (Kazanbaichi) is recognized as the major socialist realist drama of pre-war Japan. The play, which describes the struggles of a reform-minded intellectual in the Hokkaido countryside, is based on events surrounding the famine of 1934. It has been described "not only as Kubo Sakae's most representative work, but as the finest realist drama of the pre-war period."

David Goodman (1946-2011) is the translator of After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, editor of Five Plays by Kishida Kunio; and author of Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s. He was Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.