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Akimoto Matsuyo (秋元松代) was one of Japan's most leading women playwrights of post war Japan. She is known for her shingeki plays, but have written some classical puppet bunraku and kabuki dramas, and later became a scriptwriter for both the radio and television. Along with Akimoto’s childhood, World War II played a significant role in her career. As a realist playwright she used her work to make a political statement in order to warn the greater Japanese community that the government was trying to continue their pre-war imperial system fulfilled with capitalism, militarism, and patriarchy.

Childhood
Born in Yokohama on January 2, 1911. As a child Akimoto was frequently ill and had little formal education. For many years of her childhood she was home schooled with the help of her two elder brothers. Nonetheless, she became a voracious reader as child and acquired theatrical language from reading Japanese classics as a child all in which later helped develop her as a playwright.

Career
In 1945 at the age of 34 she became a a student at the Drama Workshop Gikyoku Kenkyū (The Society of Drama Study) which was founded by leftist playwright Miyoshi Jūrō (1902-1958), a leading playwright of her time. Not only did Miyoshi encourage Akimoto to write professionally, but he also inspired her. While, Akimoto disregarded comments that pertained to her as a disciple of Miyoshi, she was nevertheless influenced by his works of humanism, communism, and nationalism. In 1947 she debuted A Sprinkling of Dust with Miyoshi’s expertise.

As a playwright she wrote for the major shingeki companies, and even got to run her own company Theatre Troupe Engekza from 1967-1970. Akimoto writers her plays in a realist style with a focus on interpersonal family relationships. However, in her later plays she strays from her realists approach and switches to a shamaness style that incorporates dark poetry in order to capture her vision on how see she’s the Japanese community of her time. This can be seen in her award winning masterpiece Kaison of Priest of Hitachi (1967 translated 1988) where the dialogue is used to present Japan’s postwar culture. Her interest in human suffering and her compassion for those who suffer no doubt reflect her own experience as a child.

A recurring theme in many of Akimoto’s work is a human quest for redemption. This theme can happen in various of ways: redemption from feeling guilty or ashamed, from affliction of physical or emotional suffering, from exploitation, and from death. Redemption is a consistent theme in all of Akimoto’s work that in any play you will find that the main character is searching for some way to release themselves and others from what is holding them back from their quest. Many of Akimoto’s main characters will encounter either a social, political, or religious entity to guide them in their quest for redemption, but one of these systems obstructs them from doing so. By shining light on Japan’s government through these types of references in her plays Akimoto was able to warn the Japanese community that the government does not want them to find redemption, but support in their pre-war empire efforts.

Major Works
The following year after Akimoto enrolled into Miyoshi’s Drama Workshop Gikyoku Kenkyū she published her first play Keijin (The Light Dust) in the journal Gekisaku. Her second play, Mourning Clothes (Reifuku), in 1949 was when her career started to take off, working with important directors such as Senda Koreya and Ninagawa Yukio who stages her plays.

When she became to feel under appreciated as a playwright she chose to become a scriptwriter for the radio and television, but did not make what she hoped to get out of it. Regardless, her play Kaision of Priest of Hitachi won over Hanada Kiyoteru, a well-known critic in 1967 at the Engeki Theatre and since then her plays have been performed.

In Akimoto's work death reoccurs and the various Japanese customs developed to conquer it. Topics included mourning (Mourning Clothes, 1949), immortality (The Life of Muraoka Iheji, 1960), and shinkō shūkyō, or "new religions" (Thoughts on our Lady of Scabs, 1968). Her 1964 work, Kaison the Priest of Hitachi, which deals with a group of boys whose parents die in the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, is considered a landmark in Japanese drama. Despite her serious and often tragic topics, one of Akimoto's strengths lay in injecting comic elements into her plays.

Her collected works were published in five volumes in 2002, a year after her death.

Namesake award
In 2001, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper established the Asahi Awards for the Theater Arts (Asahi Butai Geijutsu Shō). The annual awards comprise five prizes, one of which is named for Akimoto Matsuyo and is awarded for "theatrical works, individuals, or organizations that have succeeded in combining popular entertainment with artistic merit."