Akimoto Matsuyo

[1] Akimoto was known for her shingeki plays, but also wrote some classical bunraku (puppet) and kabuki dramas, and she later became a scriptwriter for both radio and television shows.

As a realist playwright, she used her work to make political statements in order to warn the greater Japanese community that the government was trying to continue their pre-war imperial system of capitalism, militarism, and patriarchy.

She became a voracious reader as child and acquired theatrical language from reading Japanese classics that later helped develop her career as a playwright.

[6][page needed] "I want to use dialect in such a way that when hearing the dialogue, any person from the above areas will feel that is the language of their area…I feel that is a form of dialogue that people from Tokyo and other areas far away can understand and relate to" - Akimoto[7] However, in her later plays she strayed from her realists approach and switched to a shamaness style that incorporated dark poetry in order to capture her vision on how she saw the Japanese community of her time.

This theme can happen in several of ways: redemption from feeling guilty or ashamed, from affliction of physical or emotional suffering, from exploitation, or from death.

[9] Redemption is a consistent theme in all of Akimoto's works 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.

[2] 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 in 1946.

[1] Her 1964 work, Kaison the Priest of Hitachi, deals with a group of boys whose parents die in the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, this play is considered to be a landmark in Japanese drama.