BETSUYAKU MINORU

   Betsuyaku Minoru is a playwright and children’s author born in Manchuria when it was a Japanese colony. As an infant he lost his father and moved back to Japan with his mother after World War II. He attended Waseda University after high school, was introduced to theater activists there, and joined the jiyu butai (free theater) group. Betsuyaku dropped out of Waseda for financial reasons, however, and began life as a salaryman, writing plays in coffee shops. His hard work paid off, as he was awarded the Kishida Kunio Prize for Drama in 1963 for Matchi uri no shojo (The Little Match Girl) and Akai tori no iru fukei (A View with Red Birds). Betsuyaku’s collaboration with leading actors kept him in the mainstream, and he has been working for the Japan Playwrights Association from the 1990s and since 2003 has worked for the Pikkoro shiataa (Piccolo Theater) in Hyogo Prefecture. Betsuyaku is also known for establishing the Theater of the Absurd in Japan after reading Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s works.

   See also CHILDREN’S LITERATURE; MODERN THEATER.