Tanaka Chikao

Tanaka Chikao
Born	1905 Nagasaki, Japan
Died	1995
Occupation	Playwright, director, dramatist, poet
Nationality	Japanese
Alma mater	Tokyo University
Genre	Shingeki

Chikao Tanaka (田中 千禾夫^?, Tanaka Chikao, 1905-1995) was a Japanese playwright and dramatist whose plays focused on the mental, physical, and religious hardships of post-World War II Japan.

Tanaka's writing differed greatly from that of other Japanese playwrights at the time because he wrote of essential human conflicts through the eyes of a Christian, which was atypical of the majority of his countrymen. His word structure and dramatic style creates an intense and lyrical force which has been satisfying for many theater enthusiasts, both to his own audiences and to foreign audiences as well. Tanaka is perhaps the first modern Japanese playwright about whom this can be said. He is notable for his play Head of Mary (1959) and his expanded dramatic structures that convey metaphysical, spiritual, and existential themes in the form of masterful, rhythmic dialogue.

Tanaka was born in 1905 in the culturally diverse city of Nagasaki, Japan where his father practiced medicine. His father was a scholar and could fluently read Chinese kambun. He would constantly make young Tanaka read Chinese literature as a primary school student. This became the first major influence in the way Tanaka composed his later plays, because, as he described it, "Reading in that fashion produces in you a sense of rhythm: consciousness and resilience. That sense of rhythm has remained behind in me, and I feel it has had some effect on the way I compose my own plays".

At the time, Nagasaki was considered a city that had one of the longest cosmopolitan traditions in Japan. Hundreds of families in Nagasaki were able to freely conduct public rituals of Christianity. The presence of these people in Nagasaki gave a peculiar flavor, in speech and in attitude, to the psychology of the region.

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