Minoru Betsuyaku

He won a name for himself as a writer in the "nonsense" genre and helped lay the foundations of the Japanese "theater of the absurd.

Betsuyaku's early years were difficult because in addition to experiencing severe deprivation during World War II, his father also died.

In July 1946, a year after the sudden Soviet invasion of Manchuria, his mother succeeded in repatriating by ship with her children.

At this time Betsuyaku hoped to become a painter, but due to his family's strong disapproval, he instead moved to Tokyo in 1958 and enrolled in Waseda University with the intention of becoming a newspaper correspondent.

Thus, he joined a drama club called the Jiyu Butai, where he met Tadashi Suzuki, the director who would start the Waseda Little Theater Company with Betsuyaku.

This led Betsuyaku to neglect both his studies and his finances, causing him to drop out of Waseda in 1961 due to non-payment of tuition.

Around this time, Betsuyaku took a leave of absence from the theatre to become involved in protests against the establishment of a military base on the island of Niijima.

[1] Another early influence was Samuel Beckett, whose works came to be known in Japan around the time that young playwrights in Japan were seeking to break away from realist plays, and especially socialist realism, which sought to further the cause of socialist revolution.

He created many works with the principle of theater of the absurd; however, his style of play changed multiple times along the way.

This is a work that shows a fight resulting from unidentified animosity and feelings of inferiority between two men A and B who deride each other and argue.

It is a story about a patient who is a victim of the atomic bombing with a strange desire to show off his scar in order to get sympathy and applause from his audiences.

His nephew tries to stop him and convince him that the audience neither loves, hates, nor cares about the atomic bombing victims.

It turns out that the lady waiting for the bus may be Estragon's mother and that the child carried by the other woman may be Vladimir's son.