Japanese Plays in English: 9 Scripts and Where to Read Them

Yes, many major Japanese plays are available in English, but most appear in anthologies rather than as single books. The nine plays below all have a published English translation that we checked against publisher pages or library catalogs.

The quickest place to start is The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (Columbia University Press, 2014). It contains three plays on this list: The Little Match Girl, Tokyo Notes and Five Days in March.

Where to read each play

Play	Playwright	First staged or published	Where to read it in English
Five Modern Nō Plays	Yukio Mishima	Translation first published 1957	Single volume, trans. Donald Keene
The Little Match Girl	Minoru Betsuyaku	1966	The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama; Alternative Japanese Drama
The Virgin's Mask	Juro Kara	1969	Alternative Japanese Drama
Festival for the Fish	Miri Yu	Kishida Prize, 1993	Half a Century of Japanese Theater II
Epitaph for the Whales	Yoji Sakate	1993	Half a Century of Japanese Theater I
Tokyo Notes	Oriza Hirata	1994	The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama; Citizens of Tokyo
The Red Demon	Hideki Noda	1996	Half a Century of Japanese Theater IV
Five Days in March	Toshiki Okada	Kishida Prize, 2005	The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama
The Bacchae–Holstein Milk Cows	Satoko Ichihara	2019	The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Japanese Plays

1. Five Modern Nō Plays by Yukio Mishima (三島由紀夫)

English edition: trans. Donald Keene. Alfred A. Knopf, 1957, with later Tuttle, Vintage and Europa Editions printings.

Mishima moved classical Noh stories into modern settings, including a park bench at night and a hospital room. His Japanese collection, Kindai Nōgakushū (近代能楽集), has eight plays; Keene's English book contains five. It is one of the easiest books on this list to buy, so it suits readers who want a single volume.

2. The Little Match Girl by Minoru Betsuyaku (別役実)

English editions: trans. Robert N. Lawson, in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (2014). Also in Alternative Japanese Drama: Ten Plays (University of Hawaii Press, 1992).

Betsuyaku wrote Matchi-uri no Shōjo (マッチ売りの少女) in 1966. A woman visits an elderly couple and claims to be their daughter, and Andersen's fairy tale becomes a way to ask what postwar Japan chose to forget. Betsuyaku won the 13th Kishida Prize in 1968 for this play and Akai Tori no Iru Fūkei (赤い鳥の居る風景). Read our guide to the play for more background.

3. The Virgin's Mask by Juro Kara (唐十郎)

English edition: in Alternative Japanese Drama: Ten Plays, ed. Robert T. Rolf and John K. Gillespie (University of Hawaii Press, 1992).

Kara wrote Shōjo Kamen (少女仮面) in 1969 for Tadashi Suzuki's Waseda Little Theater. It won the 15th Kishida Prize in 1970. Kara is also known for his red tent performances, which our guide to angura explains.

4. Festival for the Fish by Miri Yu (柳美里)

English edition: in Half a Century of Japanese Theater II: 1990s, Part 2 (Kinokuniya).

Uo no Matsuri (魚の祭) won the 37th Kishida Prize in 1993. Do not confuse it with Yu's Ishi ni Oyogu Sakana (石に泳ぐ魚), sometimes called Fish Swimming in Stone. That work is a novel, not a play, and we could not confirm a published English translation.

5. Epitaph for the Whales by Yoji Sakate (坂手洋二)

English edition: in Half a Century of Japanese Theater I: 1990s, Part 1 (Kinokuniya, 1999).

Kujira no Bohyō (くじらの墓標, 1993) follows seven brothers in a whaling family and deals with the 1988 ban on commercial whaling and the reaction against it. It is the first play in Sakate's series of "contemporary Noh" works.

6. Tokyo Notes by Oriza Hirata (平田オリザ)

English editions: trans. M. Cody Poulton, in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (2014) and Asian Theatre Journal 19.1 (2002). Also collected in Citizens of Tokyo: Six Plays (Seagull Books, 2019).

Tōkyō Nōto (東京ノート) premiered in 1994 and won the 39th Kishida Prize. Visitors meet in the lobby of an art museum in the near future while a war continues in Europe. Our guide to Tokyo Notes looks at the play in more detail.

7. The Red Demon by Hideki Noda (野田秀樹)

English edition: "The Red Demon Akaoni," in Half a Century of Japanese Theater IV: 1980s, Part 2 (Kinokuniya, 2002). The play dates from 1996, although this volume covers the 1980s.

In Akaoni (赤鬼), a stranger from a distant land drifts ashore. The villagers call him a red demon, fear him and try to drive him out. Noda has staged English, Thai and Korean versions, and the London production opened at the Young Vic in 2003.

8. Five Days in March by Toshiki Okada (岡田利規)

English edition: trans. Aya Ogawa, in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (2014).

Sangatsu no Itsukakan (三月の5日間) follows young people in Shibuya during the days around the start of the Iraq War in 2003. It won the 49th Kishida Prize in 2005. Okada's book The End of the Moment We Had (trans. Samuel Malissa) is a separate work of fiction, not this script.

9. The Bacchae–Holstein Milk Cows by Satoko Ichihara (市原佐都子)

English edition: trans. Aya Ogawa, in The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Japanese Plays (Methuen Drama, 2022).

Bakkosu no Shinjo: Horusutain no Mesu (バッコスの信女-ホルスタインの雌) reworks Euripides through a half-human, half-cow being born from artificial insemination. It premiered at Aichi Triennale 2019 and won the 64th Kishida Prize in 2020.

Which anthology should you get?

Book	Publisher	Best for
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama	Columbia University Press, 2014	A broad first book, with three plays from this list
Half a Century of Japanese Theater	Kinokuniya, multiple volumes	Plays grouped by decade, edited by the Japan Playwrights Association
Alternative Japanese Drama: Ten Plays	University of Hawaii Press, 1992	Underground theater of the 1960s and later
Citizens of Tokyo: Six Plays	Seagull Books, 2019	Readers who want more of Oriza Hirata
The Methuen Drama Book of Contemporary Japanese Plays	Methuen Drama, 2022	Recent writing

Some of these books can be hard to find, so a university library is often the easiest place to start.

Can you perform these translations?

Owning a translation does not give you the right to stage it. Before you announce a production, ask the publisher of the translation or the playwright's representative who handles the performance rights.