Fukuda Tsuneari

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Fukuda Tsuneari

Fukuda Tsuneari ( Japanese 福田 恆 存 ; * August 25, 1912 ; † November 20, 1994 ) was a Japanese playwright, translator and literary critic.

Life

Fukuda studied English at the University of Tokyo in the 1930s . He wrote his dissertation on DH Lawrence , whose works he later translated. After the Second World War he had success as a dramatist with plays such as Kitty Taifū (1950), Ryū o Nadeta Owoko (1952) and Meian (1956). In 1954 he was - alongside playwrights such as Kinoshita Junji and Mishima Yukio - employee of the magazine Shingeki (New Theater), in which he published reviews and essays.

In 1955 Fukuda directed Shakespeare's Hamlet in a translation of his own with Akutagawa Hiroshi in the leading role. The production is considered to be the turning point in Shakespeare's reception in Japan. Fukuda himself dealt theoretically with the performance of Shakespeare's works in several writings in the following years. His translation of his dramatic works replaced the translation used in Japan by Tsubouchi Shōyō from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of his own dramas have also been successfully performed in English translation in the USA (including at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater ).

In 1971 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Japanese Literature for his work Sōtō imada shisezu ( 総 統 い ま だ 死 せ ず ).

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