Essayist, novelist and playwright Hisashi Inoue, who passed away at age 75 in 2010, is one of Japan¡¯s most popular and most prolific writers of the 20th century, yet remains largely untranslated ¡ª among over 200 works, English translations can be counted on two hands.
His play ¡°Chichi to Kuraseba,¡± or ¡°The Face of Jizo¡± in English, is a notable exception, translated into several languages, such as French, Italian and Chinese, and performed in small, local productions across Europe and Russia, with a handful of staged readings in North America.
This year, a staging of the play in Sydney, Australia, by Omusubi Productions and the Seymour Centre marks the first major English production in an English-speaking country. The play¡¯s translator, Roger Pulvers, who¡¯s also a writer, filmmaker and lifelong friend of Inoue¡¯s, was an excited witness to the play¡¯s preliminary staging.
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