was a Japanese playwright. She was born in

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

, but was not in the city on the day of the

atomic bombings The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

. She lost many friends in the bombing, and her profound sense of guilt led her to devote most of her life to producing plays connected with the Hiroshima bombings. She felt a strong affinity with the architect

Jan Letzel Jan Letzel (April 9, 1880 – December 26, 1925) was a Czech architect, most famous for designing a building in Hiroshima whose ruins are now the A-Bomb Dome or Peace Memorial. Biography Jan Letzel was born in the town of Náchod, Bohemia. ...

, who had designed the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition building, which — by a stroke of luck — somehow survived the atomic bomb's blast, and thereby became the famous A-bomb dome. Letzel was Czech, and Murai decided to study in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. She translated various works between Czech and Japanese, including the first Japanese renditions of plays by

Josef Topol Josef Topol (1 April 1935 – 15 June 2015) was a Czech playwright. In 1965, he co-founded ''Divadlo za branou'', a theatre in Prague which was closed in 1972 after being banned by Czechoslovak government. In 1977 he signed Charter 77. He was m ...

Václav Havel Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as ...

and

Milan Kundera Milan Kundera (, ; born 1 April 1929) is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera's Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, then conferred again in 2019. He "sees himself ...

, and opera by Smetana and Janáček. For this work she won the 1968

Kinokuniya is a Japanese bookstore chain operated by , founded in 1927, with its first store located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Its name translates to "Bookstore of Kii Province". The company has its headquarters in Meguro, Tokyo. One of the company's g ...

Theatre Award. Later her own plays were performed and won awards throughout Japan, as well as in

Maui The island of Maui (; Hawaiian: ) is the second-largest of the islands of the state of Hawaii at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2) and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which ...

(Hawaii), the

Avignon Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label=Provençal dialect, Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Vaucluse Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region of So ...

Festival and the

Edinburgh Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...

, starring actresses such as Mahō Shibuki (ex Takarazuka), Takajō Miki (ex SKD=

Shochiku () is a Japanese film and kabuki production and distribution company. It also produces and distributes anime films, in particular those produced by Bandai Namco Filmworks (which has a long-time partnership—the company released most, if not all ...

Kageki Dan) and Kurihara Chieko
JMDB
. She was married to Kuzui Kinshirō ( :ja:葛井欣士郎), a film producer and manager of the alternativ
Art Theatre Shinjuku Bunka
during the 1960s and early 1970s. She died on 9 May 2018, at her home in Shinjuku.

Footnotes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Murai, Shimako 1928 births 2018 deaths Japanese dramatists and playwrights Japanese women writers Japanese women dramatists and playwrights Writers from Hiroshima Translators from Czech Translators to Japanese 20th-century Japanese translators

Footnotes

See also

External links