Five Plays by Kishida Kunio

Although he has been touted as Japan’s finest prewar playwright, few of Kishida Kunio’s works have been translated into English. This volume brings together for the first time representative plays that span the entire course of Kishida’s career, including in this expanded edition, a new translation of his maiden work, Autumn in the Tyrols. The plays collected in this anthology are the ones critics have regarded as Kishida’s best and that the dramatist himself preferred. An introductory essay by the editor relates Kishida’s work to his personal psychology and his historical environment and discusses the controversy that has surrounded him for his collaboration with military authorities during World War II.