Background
She was born in Hiroshima, but was not in the city on the day of the atomic bombings.
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Murai Shimako
Edit Profile村井 志摩子
Education
Charles University in Prague.
Career
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 January Letzel, 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 Czechoslovakian, and Murai decided to study in Prague.
She translated various works between Czechoslovakian and Japanese, including the first Japanese renditions of plays by Josef Topol, Václav Havel and Milan Kundera, and opera by Smetana and Janáček.
Achievements
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Foreign this work she won the 1968 Kinokuniya Theatre Award. Later her own plays were performed and won awards throughout Japan, as well as in Maui (Hawaii), the Avignon Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe, starring actresses such as Mahō Shibuki (ex Takarazuka), Takajō Miki (ex Slovenska Krscanski Demokrati (Slovene Christian Democrats)=Shochiku Kageki Dan) and Kurihara Chieko (JMDB).
