Hisashi Inoue (井上ひさし): Japan's Master of Comic Wisdom

Introduction

Hisashi Inoue (井上ひさし, 1934--2010) was a Japanese playwright and novelist who combined comedy with social criticism. He won the 17th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1972 for Dōgen's Adventure (道元の冒険), and the Naoki Prize the same year for the novel Tegusari Shinjū. From the 1980s he was the house playwright of Komatsu-za (こまつ座), a company that stages only his work.

Early Life and Career

Inoue was born in November 1934 in what is now Kawanishi, Yamagata Prefecture, in northeastern Japan. His father died when he was five, and he was later placed in a Catholic orphanage in Sendai run by the La Salle order.

He entered Sophia University in Tokyo in 1953 and graduated from its French program. He worked in the literary department of the Asakusa France-za theater, and from 1964 to 1969 he co-wrote, with Morihisa Yamamoto, the NHK puppet show Hyokkori Hyōtanjima (ひょっこりひょうたん島).

His stage breakthrough came with Nihonjin no Heso (日本人のへそ), written for Theatre Echo in 1969.

The Kishida Prize-Winning Work

Dōgen's Adventure (道元の冒険), published by Shinchosha in 1971, won the 17th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1972, along with an Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists. It takes as its subject Dōgen, the thirteenth-century founder of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism.

The play is known for its many songs and for cynical, pun-filled humor, which it uses to portray the anguish and arrogance of a religious figure. It has returned to the stage since: Yukio Ninagawa directed a production starring Hiroshi Abe at Theatre Cocoon in Tokyo in 2008.

Theatrical Style and Philosophy

Inoue's theatrical work is known for several characteristics:

Linguistic Play: His plays draw on wordplay and puns, as in Dōgen's Adventure.

Historical Subjects: Many of his plays are built around historical or literary figures, among them General Nogi, the haiku poet Kobayashi Issa, the writer Higuchi Ichiyō, and the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi.

Music: Songs are a prominent part of plays such as Dōgen's Adventure.

The Japanese Language as Subject: Kokugo Gannen (國語元年), a television drama of 1985 that Komatsu-za staged in 1986, takes the Japanese language as its theme.

Major Works

Among his best-known plays are:

Nihonjin no Heso (日本人のへそ) (1969) --- Written for Theatre Echo.
Dōgen's Adventure (道元の冒険) (1971) --- The Kishida Prize-winning play about the founder of Sōtō Zen.
Yabuhara Kengyō (藪原検校) (1973) --- Translated and performed overseas; published in English as Yabuhara, the Blind Master Minstrel.
Shimijimi Nippon: Nogi Taishō (しみじみ日本・乃木大将) (1979) --- Winner of drama awards including the Yomiuri Literature Award.
Keshō (化粧, "Makeup") (1982) --- A one-woman play set in the dressing room of a run-down playhouse, whose protagonist leads a popular-theater troupe. It has been translated and performed overseas.
Chichi to Kuraseba (父と暮せば) (1994) --- Set in Hiroshima in 1948, the play follows a young woman who feels guilty for surviving the atomic bomb, and the apparition of her dead father. It was filmed in 2004 by Kazuo Kuroki. Roger Pulvers translated it into English as The Face of Jizo.
Musashi (ムサシ) (2009) --- Directed by Yukio Ninagawa. Set in Kamakura in 1618, six years after the duel at Ganryūjima, it has the surviving Sasaki Kojirō track down Miyamoto Musashi and demand a rematch.

Legacy and Influence

Hisashi Inoue died on April 9, 2010, at the age of 75.

Komatsu-za was established in January 1983 and gave its first performance, Zutsū Katakori Higuchi Ichiyō (頭痛肩こり樋口一葉), in April 1984. It remains active today, assembling a separate cast and crew for each production and touring across Japan.

Inoue was also publicly engaged in politics: in 2004 he was one of the nine founding signatories of the Article 9 Association (九条の会), formed to defend the war-renouncing clause of the Japanese Constitution.

How to Experience Their Work

To explore Hisashi Inoue's plays, visit our script search page. Komatsu-za continues to produce his plays in Tokyo and on tour. In English, Living with Father, translated by Zeljko Cipris, appears in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (Columbia University Press, 2014). The Japan Foundation lists Chichi to Kuraseba as translated into several languages, including English, French, German, and Russian.

Hisashi Inoue (井上ひさし) | Kishida Prize-Winning Playwright Guide