Minoru Betsuyaku

Minoru Betsuyaku ( Japanese 別 役 実 , Betsuyaku Minoru , also Betchaku Minoru ; born June 4, 1937 in Manchuria ; † March 3, 2020 ) was a Japanese playwright , essayist and literary critic . He was married to the Japanese actress and Seiyū Kusunoki Yūko .

Life

Betsuyaku grew up in Manchuria, where he experienced World War II, and came to Japan with his mother in 1946 after the loss of his father. In 1958 he began studying journalism at Waseda University . Here he met the avant-garde theater director Suzuki Tadashi , with whom he worked for more than twenty years.

In 1960 he took part in the protest against the cooperation and security treaty between Japan and the USA. He left Wasada University and began a career as a playwright. He joined the group around the Jiyū Butai ( 自由 舞台 , about: Free Stage), for which he wrote the piece Zō (German elephant) in 1962 .

For Matchi uri no shōjo and Akai tori no ifo fūkei , Betsuyaku received the Kishida Kunio Prize for Drama in 1968 . With Suzuki and the actor Ono Seki he founded the Waseda Shōgekijō in 1966 , which he left in 1969 to become a freelance playwright.

He wrote nearly a hundred pieces, primarily for Shingeki groups like Bungakuza and Gekidan En . In 1987 he received the Yomiuri Literature Prize , and in 2008 he was awarded the Asahi Prize for his services to establishing theater of the absurd in Japan .

Works (selection)

• Byōin no aru fūkei ( 病院 の あ る 風景 )
  • German "Landscape with a hospital", translated by Siegfried Schaarschmidt , Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, 1972

swell

• John Scott Miller: Historical dictionary of modern Japanese literature and theater. Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8108-6319-4 , p. 10.
• Gabrielle H. Cody, Evert Sprinchorn: The Columbia encyclopedia of modern drama. Volume 1, Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-231-14422-3 , pp. 155.
• J. Thomas Rimer, Van C. Gessel: The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From 1945 to the Present. Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-231-13804-8 , p. 452.
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Theater and Performance: Betsuyaku Minoru

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Japanese Literature in Translation Search. (No longer available online.) Japan Foundation, 2012, archived from the original on June 3, 2012 ; Retrieved June 12, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.