Hisashi Inoue - Biography

Biography

Inoue was born in the small town of Komatsu in Yamagata Prefecture. He lost his father when he was 5 years old and was subsequently sent off to a Lasallian home for children where he received a Christian baptism. He graduated from Sophia University.

After an initial career in radio, he wrote his first stage play Nihonjin no Heso in 1969 for Theatre Echo. He first gained literary recognition for his satirical comic plays in the tradition of the Edo period gesaku genre. Inoue has won a very large number of literary awards in the course of his career, including the 67th Naoki Prize in 1972 for his novel Tegusari Shinju ("Handcuffed Double Suicide"). He followed on this success in 1981 with Kirikirijin ("The People of Kirikiri"), which was awarded both the Yomiuri Literary Prize and the 2nd Japan Science Fiction Award.

In 1984, he established his own theatre troupe, called Komatsuza, to perform his own plays. These include biographical works on Meiji period writers Ishikawa Takuboku and Higuchi Ichiyō, whom he had long admired. In 1988, he completed a comic trilogy: Kirameku seiza, Yami ni saku hana, Yuki ya kon kon, depicting the lives of ordinary people in the Shōwa period. Despite his activity with the theatre, Inoue continued to write, winning the 1982 Seiun Award for Best Novel for Kirikirijin, the Yoshikawa Eiji Literary Prize for Treasury of Disloyal Retainers in 1986, the 27th Tanizaki Prize for Shanghai Moon in 1991, and the Kikuchi Kan Literary Award for Tokyo Seven Roses in 1999. In 1984, the Writer's Block Library was opened in Kawanishimachi, Yamagata prefecture, thanks to Inoue's donation of his 100,000 volume book collection. Inoue served as president of the Japan P.E.N. Club from 2003 to 2007. Chichi to kuraseba, has been translated into the English language by Roger Pulvers under the title The Face of Jizo.

Inoue had lived in Kamakura, Kanagawa since 1989. He died of lung cancer at his home on 9 April 2010 at the age of 75.