Kunio Shimizu

[5] As a student at Waseda University located in Tokyo Shimizu wrote The Signatory in 1958 as well as Tomorrow I'll Put Flowers There in 1959.

After he finished studying at Waseda University Shimizu worked at Iwanami Productions, which is a Tokyo firm.

Young people across Japan from what was called the New Left started political argumentative meetings.

Therefore, Shimizu wrote some plays in order to bring up a sense of the view of the people whose political reform demands were not being met.

Together they founded a group of entertainers called the Winter Tree Company (Mokutōsha).

[7] The plays he wrote include The Dressing Room (Gakuya), Such a Serious Frivolity (Shinjō afururu keihakusa), Tango at the End of Winter (Tango fugu no owari ni), When We Go Down That Great Unfeeling River (Bokura ga hijō no taiga o kudaru toki), and An Older Sister, Burning Like a Flame (Hi no yō ni samishii ane ga ita).

Shimizu Kunio went to Waseda University and started writing plays to be performed in the 1960s.

In the play An Older Sister, Burning Like a Flame (Hi no yo ni samishii ane ga ita) the actor in the play has mental problems due to weird powers that a person who says she is his older sister is putting on him.

Other Japanese playwrights who also wrote during this time period include Shūji Terayama, Jūrō Kara, Kōbō Abe, Minoru Betsuyaku, Shōgo Ōta and Ren Saitō.

Shimizu has recurring themes in his plays such as a frustrated search for a personal identity and madness.

Furthermore, another common component of Shimizu's plays are having the central drama come from siblings and their parents.

For example, An Older Sister, Burning Like a Flame (yō ni samishii ane ga ita) used the works of Othello by Shakespeare.

For example, the characters of Chekhov are not capable of bringing out the energy and sense they need to change their lives.

Another one of Shimizu's plays called When we go Down that Heartless River (Bokura ga Hijô no Taiga o Kudaro Toki) was first performed in the year 1972 is an example of an extended metaphor.

In the year 1978 his play An Older Sister, Burning like a Flame(yō ni samishii ane ga ita) was written.

A motif that occurs in Shimizu's plays include the contrast between the city and the country.

The three dead actresses are in the dressing room and wait so that they can be characters in a play that they will never be asked to take on.

In this play Sei tries to get freedom by performance however, the character ends up stuck in a movie theatre that is falling apart.