Kinoshita Junji

▪ Japanese writer

born Aug. 2, 1914, Tokyo, Japan

died Oct. 30, 2006, Tokyo

      playwright, a leader in the attempt to revitalize the post-World War II Japanese theatre.

      Kinoshita graduated from the English literature department of Tokyo University in 1939. His first play, Fūrō (“Wind and Waves”), which he began to write that year, was a historical drama of the Meiji Restoration, but it was not published until 1947. As wartime censorship grew in rigidity, he turned from contemporary or historical themes to folklore and created his own unique genre of “folk plays.” Yūzuru (1949; Twilight Crane) is an outstanding example and the play with which Kinoshita is most closely identified. After the war he returned to his historical interests and investigated the role of guilt, especially war guilt, and responsibility in human actions in such plays as Kaeru shōten (1951; “Ascension of the Frog”), Okinawa (1961), and Shimpan (1970; The Judgment). A later play, Shigosen no matsuri (1977; “The Dirge of the Meridian”), is a historical play whose protagonist represents Kinoshita's ideas on the dramatic hero. In addition to his plays, he is noted for his studies of the Japanese language, translations of Western playwrights, including Shakespeare, and essays on the theatre.

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